Comment by Yizahi
6 hours ago
I regret every minute I've spent reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The most overhyped literature ever, with an unhealthy obsession by contemporary readers living far away from the epicenter of it all.
6 hours ago
I regret every minute I've spent reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The most overhyped literature ever, with an unhealthy obsession by contemporary readers living far away from the epicenter of it all.
> The most overhyped literature ever
Just because you aren't ready for it doesn't mean it's bad literature. That's basic.
I really like Dostoevsky. He was really onto something. What he wrote was deep and meaningful and profound.
Tolstoy is also great. His short story "The Three Hermits" (1885) profoundly impacted how I look into these things.
They are not bad. But neither they are great, just average. They are also super outdated and missing a lot of context from the time authors lived in. These books just have this fleurs exotique by the virtue of being russian and written in a very hard language for the Roman group speakers. It's a self-perpetuating self-reinforcing cycle of hype. Like a joke a about "no one was fired for ordering IBM" the same goes for the "classic" literature. No one was criticized for including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in a 100 Best Books Of All Times list, and so they are invariably included again and again.
What's a book you would recommend instead? I quite like what I've read from those authors but I would be interested in something with a different appeal.