Lex wrote:I've read somewhere that everybody is either a Tolstoy person or a Dostoyevsky person; that nobody really loves both.
I wanted to love T, but his stuff is, as paulusnb said,
"...sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling...."
paulusnb wrote: Can you hate both? I read both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky a long time ago (10 years) . I recently tried picking up Crime and Punishment and became very impatient with it. I do not know what it is, but I have become nearly incapable of reading novels, especially sprawling Russian ones. And yet, I remember the joys of reading the sick narrator of Notes from the Underground......
At least I wanted to (35 years ago) see how Dostoevsky presented his insights, even with his largesse and generosity of words; except his stories were short and sweet.
Although I could have done without one of D's images (in Brothers K, I think?). Someone was visiting someone in a typically sad, dirty, and poorly lit rooming house hovel, and the guest mentions that the host was unclean and had an odor of feces emanating from his nether region. Unhappily, at unexpected times that image pops into my mind, no more pleasantly than it did back then.
Of course, "...banging one's head as hard as one can against the stone wall," is a universally suffered image of D's, but it is not nearly so painful as that other image he has bequeathed.