Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

Posted by surprisetalk 3 days ago

Dostoyevsky isn't difficult(www.autodidacts.io)

220 points | 279 commentspage 2

d1ss0nanz 14 hours ago|

> I discovered that I don’t actually read names, I just pattern match, and I have sometimes gotten hundreds of pages into a novel before I realize that I have no clear sense of the the middle syllables of the protagonist’s name.

Same. TIL this is not just me being lazy.

jszymborski 14 hours ago|

I did the same for a long time, but the diminuitives and nicknames for characters made that too hard to do, so I just ate the acorn and learned a bit about patronyms, pronunciation, etc...

stevenwoo 17 hours ago||

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 was whom until it stuck. Audiobooks (most of the russian classics are free from my local library)help a lot with the pronunciation if one is like the writer and pattern matches names - hearing them a few times initially is very helpful. Side note - not a sea person but only from audiobooks learned i didn’t know how to pronounce English words boatswain, gunwale and forecastle.

simpaticoder 17 hours ago||

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 manages to weave in these character studies with action and interaction. Most of us look out and see a lawn, boring and inert. He looks out and sees a lawn comprised of individual blades of grass, growing in soil of a specific kind, some weeds, cut some time ago, insects striving and fighting and dying and reproducing, the effects of weather and sun and shade making microclimates from which whole communities of life escape from or to....if there is anything to learn from him it is his gorgeous attention to details that we know are there but have long since ceased bothering to note.

konart 16 hours ago||

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!"

nine_k 17 hours ago||

Crime and Punishment is a bona fide detective story / crime novel, and can be enjoyed as such.

dang 16 hours ago||

One of my professors, so long ago that I can't remember which*, said it was not a who-dun-it but a why-dun-it.

The murder scene is so vivid that it's easy to forget how the long middle of the novel is the cat-and-mouse game between him and the detective whose name I forget.

* I think I remembered. Thank you Roman! https://www.dignitymemorial.com/en-ca/obituaries/calgary-ab/...

projektfu 2 hours ago||

Porfiry Petrovich

tau5210 10 hours ago||

I'd much prefer people just stay away from reading it altogether if they find it difficult... If it's difficult, then it probably isn't for you. At least I wouldn't bother wasting my time, unless I treat it as some kind of exercise.

I read his writings because they read like my own thoughts from the very start and I never had any trouble finishing. He is the only writer who's works I've read countless times (never thought about counting, but Idiot, Karamazov at least 20 times). That would make him what would normally be called my "favorite writer", although I do not say that either. On the other hand, I have difficultly reading most other writers.

fl4regun 15 hours ago||

I see a lot of praise for Dostoevsky in here, personally, my attempt to read Crime and Punishment resulted in me giving up after a couple hundred pages, it read kind of like a crime novel if it was mostly slice of life and random characters rambling about the goings on of their personal lives, which I did not have interest in and so I dropped it. Maybe I am too stupid for it, but I can't say it is my cup of tea.

uberex 15 hours ago|

That is fine. You may not do well in the UK's The Office trivia quiz* (next question is about Suez Canal!) but apart from that who cares.

* The joke being they do a huge running one upmanship sketch on how much they know about Dostoyevsky before the quiz.

keiferski 10 hours ago||

Crime and Punishment is basically the modern Ur-novel for “your rational plans for success seem logical to you, but will not work out in the way you imagine.”

Pretty relevant for the contemporary tech world, if you ask me.

enthdegree 17 hours ago||

From the circles I am exposed to Pevear and Volokhonsky's translations are not seen as the most natural ones (although they are the only ones I have read because of the cool abstract paperback covers). I have heard they miss anecdotes and humor in favor of word accuracy. Characters are always "twisting their mouth" and similar. I'm looking forward to re-reading Demons in some other translation. He might have been well served by Garnett.

coldtea 11 hours ago||

For people who read literature, yes.

But the average person in the US atm can't even read a children's book, and this includes recent college students:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-eli...

https://futurism.com/future-society/college-students-losing-...

We're becoming an oral and pictorial society.

archonis 18 hours ago||

Sometime in the 90s we started getting really good Dostoyevsky translations, and they make a huge difference.

postalcoder 15 hours ago||

I became motivated to read Russian literature after Norm Macdonald died, knowing how much influence it had on him and chasing more of his voice. Reading Brothers Karamazov in Norm's voice made it so much more entertaining. Ironically, Norm viewed Dostoyevsky as one of the inferior Russian writers.

Here's some of Norm's thoughts about Russian literature and how to read it:

    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
    Tolstoy is the best writer who has ever lived. Some people are intimidated
    by that fact.

    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
    Read, in chronological order if possible, everything Tolstoy has ever
    written.
    
    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
    People think Tolstoy would be too difficult to understand since he is the
    greatest writer to ever have drawn breath.
    
    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
    Since I am asked about Tolstoy I will suggest all read him. Read all he has
    written. Here's the thing about Tolstoy.
    
    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
    Tolstoy could write a massive book like War & Peace and have every word be
    necessary.
    
    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
    Dosto is a fine writer. Better are Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev and
    Pushkin.
    
    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
    To be a great writer you must be able to communicate with the reader.
    Tolstoy communicates better than anyone else ever.
    
    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
    Dostoevsky was far the inferior to Tolstoy, he was inferior to most of the
    great Russians.
    
    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
    Agree completely. Should read both actually. and P&V have not translated
    most Tolstoy, so then go to Constance.
    
    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Feb 7, 2018
    Well, Jocelyn, I don't know of what other authors you refer to, but Tolstoy
    isn't a nihilist. X.com/FLEURdian_slip...
    
    T.L. States  @epmornsesh · Dec 21, 2018
    @normmacdonald Any authors you would recommend that are writing killer
    comedic fiction?
    
    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Dec 21, 2018
    Tolstoy, Chekhov, Philip Roth, Salinger, me.
    
    Norm Macdonald  @normmacdonald · Jan 21, 2019
    @GaryGulman Read great works of Literature out loud. If you do not
    understand what you are reading, stop, figure out what it means, then
    repeat the exercise. Do this an hour a day and in time, your own voice,
    your own thoughts will become the same as Tolstoy, Faulkner, Twain.

scrame 3 hours ago|

Oh, yes, he was doing a "book club" on twitter for a little while. I remember him doing an interesting thread on an Updike book where he was making a point that the author was a great writer because he could make a character that was simply a good writer, with the larger point that people can't write convincing characters that are smarter than they are.

waynecochran 17 hours ago|

I have never read a book I hated more than The Brothers Karamazov. I never read a book that depressed me more than Crime and Punishment. No more Dostoevsky for me.

B1FF_PSUVM 7 hours ago||

You're doing it wrong. I bumped into this 'Short Guide to Russian literature':

"Russian literature consists of suffering. Either writer suffers, or protagonist, or reader. If all three suffer simultaneously--then it is a masterpiece. In every difficult situation always read Russian classic literature--it is even worse in there."

waynecochran 3 hours ago||

Maybe I like my characters to be in worse situations but inspire me by overcoming them and giving hope. Dostoyevsky leaves you in a pool of gray melancholy and dispair.

dang 16 hours ago||

You and Nabokov.

Edit: except for The Double.

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