Have you ever read Dostoevsky?

[Zvezdichko]

Greetings,

I know this is an English-speaking forum and you may not be familiar with this author - Fyodor Dostoevsky, who is Russian. He's quite famous in Russia and the former members of the Eastern bloc...

I'm currently reading Crime and Punishment and it's an awesome book... Why am I starting this thread? I hope to find people here who have read or are currently reading his books ...

[HenrikOlsen]

He's also quite famous outside Russia to the point where he's one of the two authors people will likely mention if asked to name Russian authors (Leo Tolstoy is likely to be the other, Pushkin or Chekov if they heard of three).
I've never gotten around to reading anything of his works though. Same with Tolstoy and Pushkin.

Russian authors I have read includes Vladimir Nabokov and the brothers Boris & Arkadi Strugatski.

[Ivan Viehoff]

He's also famous in the English-speaking world. Here in Britain most people who have any literary interest would be able to give you a one-line summary of the plot of "Crime and Punishment", even if they haven't read it. Though you will find his books in the classics section of any half-decent bookshop, and on the shelves of the well-read, I don't think he is actually read very much: his books have a reputation of being very slow, and perhaps not, on careful reappraisal, quite as good as his literary superstar reputation would suggest, though of course we mostly read him through the words of a translator. I can't remember anyone ever saying "oh you must read it", unlike, say Bulgakov, Turgenev or Chekov, not even the well-read Russian secretary I used to have. My father has several badly yellowed Dostoevsky novels sitting on his shelf since about 1960, but I don't think he ever finished one, and some he probably never even opened. My (late) grandmother read a couple for a literature class she went to; she went with a communist friend who had learned Russian, and claimed to have read them in the original; my grandmother considered this to be both vain and inexplicably odd behaviour, but also, I think, didn't quite believe her. I haven't read any them myself, though I have listened to abridged radio versions of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, (which the BBC unforgivably mispronounced Karamatsov throughout), and think to myself, perhaps one day I will.

[Paul Beardsley]

In the early 80s I discovered a post-punk rock band called Magazine who did a rather good song called "A Song From Under The Floorboards". A literary friend told me that it was based on the novel "Notes From Under The Floorboards" (usually called "Notes From Underground"). So I read it. It was a struggle at first but worth the effort.

"Philadelphia", another song by Magazine, included the lyric, "I could 've been Raskolnikov but Mother Nature ripped me off." The same literary friend told me Raskolnikov was a character in "Crime and Punishment" so I read that too. At the time I almost exclusively read science fiction, and I was (and am) a slow reader with a limited attention span, so reading a long non-fantasy novel like that was quite unusual for me. More remarkably, I really enjoyed it.

I got 79 pages into TBK, even though it wasn't mentioned in any Magazine song, but got sidetracked. Next time I have some spare reading time I'll read the whole thing.

[ToSeek]

I've read most of his books, but it's been a while (as in decades). He's definitely a brilliant writer, but he's not someone you read for fun.

[Jim]

I actually did a verbal book report on C&P in high school. We will not discuss how long ago that was, but the ink in the book was still damp.

[MAPNUT]

I've read "Crime and Punishment", "Brothers Karamazov", "The Idiot" and "The Possessed", all twice to figure out what I missed the first time. C&P was the easiest and most fun, because of the suspense and the focus on one character. Karamazov was the most difficult; I still don't much understand what I was supposed to get out of it. But I may read some of them again.

[Perikles]

Crime and Punishment was compulsory reading at my school in the UK, age group around 17-18 pre-university. Fortunately, in English translation. It was one of those books which had a good chance of coming up in interviews for places at Oxford and Cambridge.

[Trebuchet]

I read The Brothers Karamazov in high school. Part of a Russian History class I signed up for to avoid being stuck in study hall. I can't say I enjoyed it much. I later started, but did not finish, Crime and Punishment.

For most Americans nowadays I'm afraid it's going to be a TL/DR situation anyway.

[Arneb]

I Read the five grand novels + a few novellas as a 17-25 yo approximately, and it was an awesome experience. Tried to read The Adolescent last fall, and I found it dreadfully boring. Maybe at 60 again.

[Gillianren]

We were required to read Crime and Punishment my senior year, or possibly junior, in high school. We gave a round of applause to the one person who actually finished it. This led me to develop my Russian Winters theory of literature--they have to do something during those winters, so they write extraordinarily long books and then read them.

[jfribrg]

I read "Crime and Punishment". I thought it was a good book. As I have mentioned in other posts, Joseph Heller makes a subtle reference to Roskolnikov in his book "Catch 22".

[ToSeek]

We were required to read Crime and Punishment my senior year, or possibly junior, in high school. We gave a round of applause to the one person who actually finished it. This led me to develop my Russian Winters theory of literature--they have to do something during those winters, so they write extraordinarily long books and then read them.

My wife has noted that several hundred pages into The Brothers Karamazov, there's the phrase, "It was now noon." Yes, at that point you've only gotten through one morning.

[swampyankee]

I've certainly heard of Dostoevsky -- even though I'm USian, I'm not a completely некультурный -- but I've not read any of his books. But I've also not read most great English-language authors, like Henry James. I tend to view all fiction as escape literature, and if it requires significant mental effort, I won't read it. I have read Chlaplygin (On Gas Jets), in translation of course, so I can't really comment on its literary merit.

[Scriitor]

I've read a number of his books, in English.

Thing is, a Russian friend of mine tells me that the experience of reading it in Russian is completely different. That's he's a master of language, his writing is an art that just doesn't translate. All we English readers end up experiencing are his plots and characters.

[Celestial Mechanic]

I tried reading Crime and Punishment (in translation) when I was 14, then again in my 20s and I finally got through it in my 30s. Alas, I haven't tried to read any other novels of Dostoevsky or any other Russian novelists.

I had the nagging feeling while watching Woody Allen's Love and Death that there were probably a lot of in-jokes from Russian literature in there and that I would enjoy the movie even more if I knew them.

[Cougar]

I know this is an English-speaking forum and you may not be familiar with this author - Fyodor Dostoevsky, who is Russian. He's quite famous in Russia and the former members of the Eastern bloc...

Oh, I'd say Dostoevsky is famous worldwide. I've read The Idiot and The Brothers K. As Jim said, we will not discuss how long ago that was. I've also read some of Solzhenitsyn. Not sure why I've never got around to Tolstoy.

As a counter-question, are you familiar with John Barth?

[Parrothead]

Have read The Idiot, Crime and Punishment and his short story The Peasant Marey. Took a Russian literature and society course in university.

[Paul Beardsley]

Oh, I also read his lovely bittersweet romantic story "White Nights", and his sort-of SF/fantasy story "Dream of a Queer Fellow".

A few years ago I was teaching a Russian student. She was really surprised that most people in the UK are familiar with Dostoyevsky, Chekov, Tolstoy, Pushkin and others. Chekov's great for his short-short stories.

[Jim]

He was also one of the more entertaining figures in ST:TOS.

(Hey, someone had to say it.)

[Paul Beardsley]

(Hey, someone had to say it.)

No, someone didn't have to say it.

[Trebuchet]

And slightly off-topic, I'll mention that I used to pass by the headquarters for The Flying Karamazov Brothers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Karamazov_Brothers) regularly in Port Townsend, WA. The place has been sold; I don't know where they call home now.

[Romanus]

I've only read Letters from Underground, though The Possessed (also translated as The Demons) is very high on my to-do list.

[baskerbosse]

Yes.

I like Dostoyevsky,
-Especially "The Brothers Karamazov", which is also the one I (re-)read last..


Peter

[caveman1917]

I've read C&P, notes from the underground and the idiot. As Paul said, it's a struggle but well worth it by the end.