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Some time back I decided I should branch out my reading beyond mostly sci-fi stuff and check out some time honoured great American authors in other genres. This was partially an intellectual development exercise and partially because I literally was running out of even half decent sci-fi. Like if you pulled up a list of "100 greatest sci-fi novels of all time" I've probably read the vast majority of them. I am well aware that's goony as gently caress and frankly a little bit embarrassing.  Read me a bunch of Hemmingway as that seemed a good place as any, really enjoyed it, good poo poo. Some Mark Twain, some Melville, all good. Lots of Kerouac, Bukowski, Vonnegut, top notch poo poo. So I figure the experiment is going pretty well, my tastes are getting a little better rounded, time to check out some famous dudes outside of America. Heard a lot of stuff about this Fyodor Dostoyevsky guy. The Brothers Karamazov is one of his most famous, 4.3/5 on goodreads, lets give it a shot. So I start off thinking, okay, this is a pretty dense tome, very different style then I'm used to. Hell of a lot of talking. Long rear end monologues. Where is this story even going? Maybe it takes awhile to take off. Keep slogging through. Get to around 60% and I realize that nope, the whole thing is like this. Sunk cost fallacy kicks in, just finish the drat thing. Feels like I'm walking through knee deep mud and eventually force my way to the end. Slowest I've ever gone through a book. The whole thing could have been about 70% shorter. Characters say a thing and then spend 3 pages saying the same thing in a bunch of slightly different ways. Why were there so many long rear end meandering diversions that had nothing really to do with the plot? At least the characters were super well developed and you could really see in their heads, but that's kind of naturally going to happen when 90% of your book is them monologing their thoughts. So my point in posting this I guess is three questions for you folks: 1) What the hell did I miss? Why is this considered so good? I'm guessing the problem is me and not everyone else who calls this a great classic. 2) Is the issue that it's a translation? (Read the Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky one fwiw.) Is it really good in the original Russian but just comes over dry as hell in English? I could see if you took something like Kerouac where the prose is almost poetry at times and translated it that the beauty and emotion inherent to the structure and flow of the language itself could be lost. 3) Is all classic Russian literature of a similar style? I don't want to discount a whole country over one book, but if it's all samey... Does Tolstoy read the same way? Thanks for your thoughts.
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Feb 17, 2017 19:35
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Russian literature is long-winded garbage.
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Feb 17, 2017 20:30
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Haven't read Brothers Karamazov but his Crime and Punishment is really a great book.
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Feb 17, 2017 20:43
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Hemmingway really changed how people wrote. Prior to that, novels were long, characters has long monologs, brevity was not considered to be good writing. More was more. I think Russian literature was probably even worse in this regard, but Dostoevsky is probably even worse so. One thing is just think, if there was no tv, computer, netflix, instagram, radio, cell phone, really much of anything to do, you were reading a book for entertainment, the longer the book was, the more dense, the more value you got out of it. 1) It's read in the context of it's time. 2) Might not be helping, but it's not the whole thing. 3) Not all.
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Feb 18, 2017 01:44
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I love The Brothers Karamazov, but it did take me two or three times to appreciate it. I think the key is that the plot is really more of a metaphor than it is an actual plot engine. Each of the brothers is a metaphor for a different part of Man's psyche - Dmitri is the id, Ivan is the ego, Alyosha is the superego, and the unconscious is also lurking around in the background. They all wish to kill the father and take his place, but they all have different ideas about how to do that. It's a metaphor for the different paths that Dostoyevsky thought that Man could take in the modern age. (It's also a metaphor for Russia more specifically - the brothers all represent alternate paths of philosophical and political development for Russian society, now that the old Russia of Fyodor is dying out.) Also, if you want a more condensed version of Dostoyevsky, this comic is a ten-page retelling of Crime and Punishment (also a great book), but if the protagonist were Batman. http://www.againwiththecomics.com/2007/08/batman-by-dostoyevsky.html
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Feb 18, 2017 06:44
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The problem, The Butcher, is that you are a boring reader. Just lol if you can't appreciate how he explores morality and philosophy while combining great lurid drama with everyday human concerns and pettiness. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Feb 18, 2017 |
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Feb 18, 2017 11:58
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Ponsonby Britt posted:I love The Brothers Karamazov, but it did take me two or three times to appreciate it. I think the key is that the plot is really more of a metaphor than it is an actual plot engine. Each of the brothers is a metaphor for a different part of Man's psyche - Dmitri is the id, Ivan is the ego, Alyosha is the superego, and the unconscious is also lurking around in the background. This is somehow the dumbest thing said in this thread
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Feb 18, 2017 12:51
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Goldmine
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Feb 18, 2017 15:51
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CestMoi posted:Goldmine
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Feb 18, 2017 16:27
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The literary theories espoused in this thread, while interesting, are a little bit off the mark. Russia was still a monarchy when Dostoyevsky was writing. While Alexander "the Liberator" is famous for freeing the serfs his actions ironically led to a new stratification of knowledge in the country and a new way for the lords of the time to express their wealth. The electric light was invented in 1879 and not well adopted until much later. Prior to that most lighting was done with oil lamp and candles. When the peasants where emancipated in 1861 the demand for light sources rose incredibly and thus so did their retail cost. The wealthy men of the time found a new form of conspicuous consumption in reading late into the night. The fewer nights it took someone to read a book the more impressive it was and of course, the thicker the better. Russian authors caught on to this trend and started writing what they called пердеть лохи or challenge books. These books were long, drawn out, and complicated. Authors knew that if someone with high social standing read their book as a challenge it would surely sell numerous copies to others in the gentry who also wanted to take the challenge. Dostoyevsky was famous for being in the right place at the right time. The famous scene in Crime and Punishment where Raskolnikov hides his stolen goods under a rock is a reference to his attempt to rid himself of his first novel which he could no longer bear to continue writing. When it was uncovered by accident the unfinished work was praised as one of the greatest challenges of all time. It didn't have any particular meaning nor a well established beginning, middle, or end. Scholars argue today whether this was due to it being an unfinished work or if Dostoyevsky had planned it this way from the start, a true master of his craft. Following the communist revolution nearly all art was abolished in Russia. Marx in Capital and the Communist Manifesto railed against challenge books in particular as a waste of good candles that could be distributed to the proletariat. His reasoning was that if labour had access to candles they could even work through the night. Contemporary Russia is very different today. The country has moved on from its tsarist and communist past into a new form of society. Today's oligarchs like to read novels that are short and pithy, mostly dealing with the problems that come from high society people falling in love with someone in much lower social circles. Meanwhile Russian intellectuals and academics continue to read and write challenge books, albeit with some modern considerations, in an endless battle over who can read the hardest book.
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Feb 18, 2017 17:06
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The Butcher posted:
the problem is that your tastes haven't advanced beyond senior year AP English. at best, with the kerouac, bukowski and vonnegut, you're pushing into 'insufferably boring college sophomore' territory chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Feb 18, 2017 |
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Feb 18, 2017 20:07
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Ponsonby Britt posted:Each of the brothers is a metaphor for a different part of Man's psyche - Dmitri is the id, Ivan is the ego, Alyosha is the superego, and the unconscious is also lurking around in the background. hmm yes i also think the brothers karamazov is an elaborate metaphor for a psychoanalytic theory not first published until 40 years after dostoyevsky died
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Feb 18, 2017 20:11
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I've been reading a public domain version of The Idiot but I feel like the translation may really be holding it back. Would buying a copy with a more contemporary translation help, or is forgetting which character is which sometimes just to be expected when you read 20 pages of something every 2 weeks?
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Feb 18, 2017 21:39
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ArgumentatumE.C.T. posted:I've been reading a public domain version of The Idiot but I feel like the translation may really be holding it back. Would buying a copy with a more contemporary translation help, or is forgetting which character is which sometimes just to be expected when you read 20 pages of something every 2 weeks? The Constance Garnett translation isn't great and Dostoyevsky's got a bit of a reputation for using a lot of different names for his characters but, yes reading an average of a page and a half per day isn't a great way to immerse yourself in a book.
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Feb 18, 2017 22:36
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The problem, The Butcher, is that you are a boring reader. See I kept looking for the deeper and more interesting philosophical themes or ideas behind the face value story, but I think I kept missing them getting buried beneath the mindfuckingly long windedness of the whole thing. Twenties Superstar posted:The literary theories espoused in this thread, while interesting, are a little bit off the mark. Hm, that's pretty interesting. I went into it without any historical context at all which was probably why it was so jarring. chernobyl kinsman posted:the problem is that your tastes haven't advanced beyond senior year AP English. at best, with the kerouac, bukowski and vonnegut, you're pushing into 'insufferably boring college sophomore' territory That's why I'm working on it, my man.  What's a good stepping stone between college sophomore level and big boy intellectual classics seeing as I may have bit off more then I could chew here?
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Feb 19, 2017 04:06
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you're doin good im just being a dick out of self loathing what are you into? is there any time period/movement/country that you're into? sorts of plots or moods you're looking for?
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Feb 19, 2017 04:29
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The Butcher posted:2) Is the issue that it's a translation? (Read the Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky one fwiw.) Is it really good in the original Russian but just comes over dry as hell in English? I could see if you took something like Kerouac where the prose is almost poetry at times and translated it that the beauty and emotion inherent to the structure and flow of the language itself could be lost. You know a goon made an interesting post on this elsewhere https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3728926&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=50#post464107869
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Feb 19, 2017 16:52
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chernobyl kinsman posted:what are you into? is there any time period/movement/country that you're into? sorts of plots or moods you're looking for? Space ships that go pew pew at each other while still mostly adhering to real world physics/science and plausible technologies. Buuuuut that's what I'm trying to branch out from a bit, and I'm also all caught up on the Expanse series.  So I guess beyond that and at the risk of sounding meaningless and or pretentious, personal stories about the human experience/condition seem to be my jam. Love, loss, aging, relationships, conflict, personal growth, blah blah blah. Which uh, is a pretty wide net to cast I guess. I think I'm gonna try one more classic Russian thing since I'm still in that headspace before I swear it off or not. So thread, if I was to check out one more that's not Dostoyevsky and is also not a P&V translation, what would you recommend?
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Feb 19, 2017 22:03
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The Butcher posted:Space ships that go pew pew at each other while still mostly adhering to real world physics/science and plausible technologies. Buuuuut that's what I'm trying to branch out from a bit, and I'm also all caught up on the Expanse series. Either Gogol's Petersburg stories or a collection of late Chekhov
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Feb 19, 2017 22:20
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The Vosgian Beast posted:You know a goon made an interesting post on this elsewhere https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3728926&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=50#post464107869 Yeah, that's worth repeating: I'm sure that they mean well. But we all know how the road to Hell is paved. There are really only two things wrong with Pevear and Volokhonsky: They can't do the one thing that they've set themselves to, and the credulity of the literary establishment and the reading public marginalizes the people who can - which is just about anybody else translating Russian literature. You go to a bookstore to buy some Russian classic, and you'll be lucky to see one other translator besides Constance Garnett (who wasn't terrible, but who's almost never going to be your first choice, and even then only with later revisions... which aren't public domain, so you won't see them anyway). Dostoyevsky has this the worst; I've seen displays with all of his major works, all in P&V translations. And even on Amazon, where you can buy any translation you care to, nine times out of ten, theirs are going to be perched at the top of your search results, basking in endless hopelessly naive five-star reviews. P&V are a loving cancer, but if I wrote that in Russian, they'd probably translate it as "a cancer that copulates". Here's how they translate. Volokhonsky is a native Russian speaker who just about knows English. Pevear does not know Russian. Volokhonsky goes through the Russian text and translates it word-by-word, with Pevear rewriting the resulting English into syntactically intelligible sentences. To what should be nobody's surprise, they manage to miss the most basic points of whatever they translate. Here are some examples that come quickest to my mind: Notes from the Underground is about a spiteful man. He is animated by his spite. P&V, bravely defying a century of tradition, have him describe himself as "wicked". Short of "bad", there could not be a more simple-minded rendering of the idea; in fact, it becomes all but meaningless in context. I'm not calling Volokhonsky simple-minded, but I am saying that her grasp of English is insufficient for her Dostoyevsky to be anything else. (I once saw a staff-written blurb in a bookstore for the P&V translation that called it "a powerful depiction of modern urban depression" - a pleasant enough description that has nothing at all to do with the book's philosophy. If that's the kind of impression you get from it, you might not actually be reading Dostoyevsky's book.) In War and Peace, one of the characters is a teenaged girl who already has hairs on her upper lip. Any translation prior to 2007 will tell you that. In P&V's, she has a moustache. The Brothers Karamazov has a scene where the abusive Fyodor Karamazov mocks his son Alexey for his reverence to his dead mother. When Alexey breaks down sobbing, his brother Ivan, himself enraged, reminds Fyodor that Alexey's mother is his mother too. P&V's version reverses this, with him instead saying that his mother is Alexey's too, as if Fyodor had been thinking of her as "Ivan's" mother. This pivotal moment becomes complete nonsense. I could go into more detail, but other people already have (and they cover my Dostoyevsky examples, but I swear I found them myself). Honestly, though, most of the time they don't so blatantly mistranslate; it's usually a matter of being technically correct but bungling tone, a generalized numbing effect. It's still terrible. Don't read them. Also see https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/ Perhaps you should try again with a different author and translation team?
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Feb 20, 2017 00:17
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The P&V backlash has been nearly as dumb as the initial hype they reserved. Their style is clunky and obscure, but often in a charming way. Dostoyevsky, for example, is clunky in any translation. Besides, the implication that the good people at Penguin and Modern Library are just witless stooges of the naked emperors is highly stupid
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Feb 20, 2017 00:29
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The Butcher posted:What's a good stepping stone between college sophomore level and big boy intellectual classics seeing as I may have bit off more then I could chew here? William Gaddis is pretty great. JR is a good place to start. JR is one of the main characters, an 11 year old boy and financial genius who builds a business empire from a payphone he has installed in his school. It's very funny and you've got a lot going on that you might miss, but don't worry about that just go with the flow and it'll all come together. quote:I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there's always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!
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Feb 20, 2017 06:43
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Ras Het posted:The P&V backlash has been nearly as dumb as the initial hype they reserved. Their style is clunky and obscure, but often in a charming way. Dostoyevsky, for example, is clunky in any translation. Besides, the implication that the good people at Penguin and Modern Library are just witless stooges of the naked emperors is highly stupid Do not overestimate the competency of any given translator in the language they are translating from and the language they are translating to. Because what P&V did is basically what anime fansubbers did in the early 2000s and it wasn't ok then in that particular hellhole of a fandom, and it sure isn't ok for classic literature.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:29
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Have you ever considered reading a book by a woman, my man, my bro, my good internet gentlesir
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Feb 21, 2017 23:24
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Ivan Yurkinov posted:Haven't read Brothers Karamazov but his Crime and Punishment is really a great book. Crime and Punishment is a legit good book and also "Brothers K -- the good parts version". Unless you are grappling with your late 19th century Russian Orthodox faith and/or are interested in pre-revolutionary Russia, Brothers K is too long and too much. If you want modern nihilist LOLism just read Notes from the Underground. It's shorter and easier.
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Feb 22, 2017 07:14
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Shbobdb posted:modern nihilist LOLism Hey man can you explain this one because I don't think it was a term in 19th century Russia
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Feb 22, 2017 07:32
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The Master & Margarita is what you want. Written under Stalin, it's a black comedy about Satan invading atheist Russia and causing chaos. It's fun and you'll still enjoy it without knowledge of the historical context, and it doesn't get bogged down in religious intricacies like TBZ does. There's a talking cat.
snoremac fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 13:41
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A human heart posted:Hey man can you explain this one because I don't think it was a term in 19th century Russia LOLism wasn't a term but look up Sergey Nechayev some time for the first two parts.
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Feb 22, 2017 16:52
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The Vosgian Beast posted:LOLism wasn't a term but look up Sergey Nechayev some time for the first two parts. wow thanks
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Feb 22, 2017 23:42
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OWLS! posted:Do not overestimate the competency of any given translator in the language they are translating from and the language they are translating to. You guys turned me right around on P&V. Also should I be reading the McDuff translation of C&P, or is there a better one?
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Feb 23, 2017 00:49
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mdemone posted:You guys turned me right around on P&V. Also should I be reading the McDuff translation of C&P, or is there a better one? The consensus is pretty much Garnett or Duff (or a revision of Garnett.) Or, if you want to be funny, Princess Kropotkin, but only if you're into relatives of the anarchist. OWLS! fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Mar 3, 2017 |
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Mar 3, 2017 15:25
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 20:47 |
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Hello The Butcher, could I perchance recommend the book Tom Jones to you? Thanks for your consideration and regards, Count Fosco.
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Mar 3, 2017 18:35
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