Reading Dostoevsky: A Problem

[Joumana]

I have a problem appreciating other works and writers as much as I like his work and I like him. He set so high standards for his readers that very few other writers have reached. Even when I watch movies, I give lots of attention to the characterazation and the plot. I see most characters flat.
Anyone else feels the same?

[Joumana]

Thanks for this interesting reply Butterfly  



butterfly:
sure, you're welcome, i'm always happy to add more spice to the heap~gtg

[lerik]

I think that Dostoevsky is a very challenging author. I always find problems starting any of his works but then I just cannot stop reading. I guess it's because Dostoevsky has very complex characters, who are tortured by various emotions

[black_abyss]

I'm hesitant to post this, but I believe that what is great about Dostoyevsky is his writing style.  It's not unusual for Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, or Kafka to write vivid descriptions in painsticking detail, the layout of a given house and give readers a good dose of hints of underlying issues/problems that main characters have.  Contemporary writers may lack the "density" of the writing that Dostoyevsky and others produced, but that doesn't mean that you can't find books about the human condition and meaning.  Cormac McCarthy's The Road is of a completely different style, but his message and the meaning of the book is equally powerful.  I will say that I enjoy the writing of 19th century writers as the social etiquette and unspoken rules of civility are something that I just love to follow in a given work.

[Floor]

Interesting view there.

I love to read everything, from Dostoevsky and Kafka to ingredients lists*...so I just consider it all a great big canon of words. But, obviously, I have my favorites.


*This is somewhat false. I don't like "chick-lit" and romance novels.

[Silvio]

I think the reason these 19th century giants are so
readable is because we read them in translation. It's
a lot more difficult to read Moby Dick than The Brothers K. and 20th century English lit (if English be
your first language) is usually much harder
to read than any 19th century literary titan. I'm reading Huckleberry Finn at the moment and it's just
a joy to read.
When Floor states she doesn't care for 'chic-lit' or
Romances, would that include Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and half of the work of Turgenev,
Guy De Maupassant and Stendhal?
Silvio

[D-503]

I have had a similar feeling about Dostoevsky's work. Not even the other Russian greats can live up to his genius somehow ... though I realise this is, ultimately, only personal preference.

I am a fan of Bret Easton Ellis (who is himself a massive Dostoevsky fan - he references him often) - but I think that while BEE took a whole book to make the point in American Psycho, Dostoevsky could have made that point in one chapter, and spent the rest of the book making that idea interact with a thousand different others.

One could argue that the central idea of American Psycho would be lost if convoluted and watered down into a larger collection of plots/themes, but I disagree. Was Stavrogin's fable any less profound for its not having a whole novel to itself?

[Silvio]

I only read American Psycho up until he started torturing animals and while I'd enjoyed the endless
descriptions of his designer clothes and business cards
I never felt enough of a character or maybe just one
I cared enough about to keep reading. I took a ten
year break while reading Moby Dick for the first time but knew I'd have to return to it one day because I
felt I knew the characters and cared about what happened to them. Dostoevsky's people, even those
playing 'bit parts' seem to step right out of the pages.
Have you read 'The Overcoat' by Gogol? As F.D. once
remarked: "We all came out of 'The Overcoat' " refering to himself and contemporaries.

[D-503]

Yes, I know what you mean about American Psycho. The inability to truly empathise with Patrick Bateman, no matter how well you 'know' him, is kind of the point of the book.

Yes Dostoevsky's characters totally leap out of the page. That's what gives him such excellent depth.

Yeah, I've read "The Overcoat" - it's the only Gogol I've read, so far. Want to read "Dead Souls" one day. I didn't feel the intensity of characterisation in "The Overcoat" that is in Dostoevsky's stories though.

[helgis]

I feel exactly the same. We have to kill "Two and a Half Men" before we have any hope of raising the standards in this world!

[DavidIvanovich]

I think it is a matter of narrative structure & writing style. Dostoyevsky's novels were psychologically very penetrating. Middleton Murray called him the "The archierophant of intellectual self-consciousness".  Motion pictures tell a story/narrative in pictures & this can oftrn be graphically portrayed well. Some novels can respond to this very well if they are visually powerful with imagery. Although it would be wrong to say that Dostoyevsky's novels don't have this vivid imagery, they certainly do, his characters themselves are often very symbolic of concepts or modes of thought. I think that this is difficult to do on film, perhaps using techniques like a 'voice-over' to tell us what the protagonist is thinking may work, but as a whole it can seem contrived. Unless it's done well of course.