There are a few books on the unfortunately named bucket list. Dostoyevsky 's tome is one . Others include Anna Karenina and Captain Ahab and his whale. I tried Finnegans Wake years ago but gave up after 30 pages or so. Shem and Shaun and the book of dreams was hard work . Any book with a explanatory text as complicated as Anthony Burgess's guide has disappeared to the nether regions of the never read. I have read most of Jimmy Joyce's work and it is wonderful. The Wake is a bridge too far.
I am now reading Fyodor's opus. I read a few of his books years ago including Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment. Reading Karamasov years later I am struck how prolix the prose style . Granted it is in translation but I suspect the original Russian was little better. I remember reading Nabokov s dissection of Fyodor's prose years ago and feeling affronted. Crime and Punishment had made a striking impression on a young student and I was defensive of his work.
In retrospect Nabokov was correct. Dostoyevsky was a visionary but not a literary stylist. Reading from the perspective of today 19th century novels can seem discursive and long winded. We forget photography was in its infancy, cinema and TV had not been invented and travel was for privileged few . Novelists had to describe a scene in detail because many of the readership had no mental picture to draw upon .
Dostoyevsky themes have not aged and are universal. Revolution, anarchism and trying to lead a moral life in a world without religious belief.
No jokes though.
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