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Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

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Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#41

Post by still-learning »

crypttales wrote: post #35
still-learning wrote: post #32

I thoroughly enjoyed Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and White Nights, but I'm finding myself slogging through Karamazov. I'm about 600 pages in and its picking up at least. Banking on it all being worth it in the end. Normally I subscribe to the quote "life's too short to read a bad book", but making an exception for Dostoyevsky.

Karamazov is amazing. But if you're 600 pages in and it's a slog you might have lost the train of thought of the novel. It is a lot to keep in your head!

Yeah I've picked it up and put it down multiple times over the past year, might have had some context loss. Theres been a few very lucid monologues I've enjoyed, but I haven't felt the same level of internal revelation as the previous novels.

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#42

Post by HDThoreaun »

still-learning wrote: post #32

I thoroughly enjoyed Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and White Nights, but I'm finding myself slogging through Karamazov. I'm about 600 pages in and its picking up at least. Banking on it all being worth it in the end. Normally I subscribe to the quote "life's too short to read a bad book", but making an exception for Dostoyevsky.

Nabokov didnt like Dostoyevsky either, especially Karamazov https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/magazine/nabokov-on-dosto...

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#43

Post by HDThoreaun »

Barrin92 wrote: post #22

He isn't difficult but I always thought Nabokov (in his fairly incendiary reviews http://wmjas.wikidot.com/nabokov-s-recommendations ) was on point that he was sentimental, preachy and mediocre as an artist. I found Dostoyevsky a slog to get through and it might have been made worse because he was sold to me as this 'great psychologist' when psychological realism is often missing from his stories and characters becom…

I think Nabokov definitely has a point with brothers. Ivan's portrayal and brain fever always struck me as a cop out because Dostoyevsky couldnt actually articulate what was wrong with his ideology. Of course thats kind of the point, but still it always felt cheap and clumsy to me

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#44

Post by konart »

simpaticoder wrote: post #27
stevenwoo wrote: post #20

One thing is a lot of common television/movie tropes are instantly recognizable in one form or another in there, the murder in Crime and Punishment is a series of coincidences and lucky timing for him to initially get away with it that would not be out of place in modern thriller or comedy. I had the same issue with the names so I took notes and bookmarked the Wikipedia page for the books to refresh my memory of whom…

What disginguishes Dostoevsky is his attention to detail and this unusual ability to describe someone inside and out with a voice that finds some sort of intrinsic fascination with the person no matter how dark, dingy, flawed, or just plain strange they are. It's like he withholds judgement without being clinical. His writing is peppered with these sketches, filled with insight, and it's not just a still-life - he ma…

Awareness. He learned it when he was (as he thought) about to be executed.

As he wrote to his brother the same day:

"When I look back into the past and think how much time has been wasted, how much of it wasted in delusions, mistakes, idleness, in the inability to live; how little I cherished it, how many times I sinned against my heart and my soul — my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute could have been a century of happiness. Si jeunesse savait!"

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#45

Post by blast »

CalChris wrote: post #39

I liked The Possessed by Elif Batuman. I had read The Idiot in high school, a death march for a term paper. But I liked Batuman's reading of it better than mine (but not enough to re-read it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elif_Batuman

> The Possessed (2010), The Idiot (2017), and Either/Or (2022)

That's like publishing Hamlet (2010), King Lear (2017), and Thus Spake Zarathustra (2022). I wonder what her thought process is in choosing these titles? And what will her next work be?

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#46

Post by wahnfrieden »

still-learning wrote: post #32

I thoroughly enjoyed Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and White Nights, but I'm finding myself slogging through Karamazov. I'm about 600 pages in and its picking up at least. Banking on it all being worth it in the end. Normally I subscribe to the quote "life's too short to read a bad book", but making an exception for Dostoyevsky.

Try the Ignat Avsey translation, it’s great

To give you one idea of the approach - the accurately translated title is The Karamazov Brothers. Every other translator chooses the usual way because it sounds grander or eccentric or just because that’s how others did it before them, even though it’s simply incorrect as a translation.

P&V - one of them edits without even knowing Russian, a polar opposite

Karamazov is basically YA fiction though. Find other works if you’re not into it as an older adult, it’s fine

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#47

Post by jszymborski »

still-learning wrote: post #32

I thoroughly enjoyed Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and White Nights, but I'm finding myself slogging through Karamazov. I'm about 600 pages in and its picking up at least. Banking on it all being worth it in the end. Normally I subscribe to the quote "life's too short to read a bad book", but making an exception for Dostoyevsky.

I started with Karamazov, then C&P, then the Idiot.

I loved excerpts of Karamazov (The Grand Inquisitor, Dimitry's troika ride, any passage with Grushenka) but I also found it rough to get through. I really don't think I was ultimately able to appreciate it as a whole.

C&P felt much smoother and finally I devoured The Idiot. Those novels felt like night and day compared to Karamazov.

With Karamazov, I feel like there is some subtext or context I'm missing and would have loved to have had a companion text or course to help me.

When I first Master and Margarita, it came with incredible footnotes, and rereading it again I found I sometimes recalled the footnotes more than the text. I recommended the book to a friend, but their edition didn't have the footnotes so they bounced right off it.

Anyway if anyone knows of an edition better than the Penguin Classic of BK I'm all ears.

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#48

Post by wahnfrieden »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #42
still-learning wrote: post #32

I thoroughly enjoyed Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and White Nights, but I'm finding myself slogging through Karamazov. I'm about 600 pages in and its picking up at least. Banking on it all being worth it in the end. Normally I subscribe to the quote "life's too short to read a bad book", but making an exception for Dostoyevsky.

Nabokov didnt like Dostoyevsky either, especially Karamazov https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/magazine/nabokov-on-dosto...

He was a noted hater of many great authors and works so naming one target of his doesn’t carry much weight

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#49

Post by dang »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #48
HDThoreaun wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nabokov didnt like Dostoyevsky either, especially Karamazov https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/magazine/nabokov-on-dosto...

He was a noted hater of many great authors and works so naming one target of his doesn’t carry much weight

It's true, but he was such a good hater that one has to love him for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8OwyqvSh2g#t=438

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#50

Post by sno129 »

carabiner wrote: post #13

LMAO he's saying russian lit is readable when using the most bastardized, westernized translations available, Garnet. That was the point of her work and what P&V sought to rectify when they put out their vastly more faithful renditions.

Don't really know what point you're trying to make here. Maybe Garnett is more westernized, but that doesn't make it more readable. IMO Garnett's not great (at least for Anna Karenina, which is all I've read by her); from what I've read P&V is more readable than Garnett.
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