[HN Gopher] Why did Dostoyevsky write Crime and Punishment?
___________________________________________________________________
Why did Dostoyevsky write Crime and Punishment?
Author : apollinaire
Score : 111 points
Date : 2021-10-24 04:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| keiferski wrote:
| _Crime and Punishment_ is pretty well-known, but not many know
| that Joseph Conrad wrote at least one novel in direct reaction to
| it / to Dostoyevsky.
|
| _Under Western Eyes (1911) is a novel by Joseph Conrad. The
| novel takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva,
| Switzerland, and is viewed as Conrad 's response to the themes
| explored in Crime and Punishment; Conrad was reputed to have
| detested Dostoevsky._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Western_Eyes_(novel)
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/26/featuresreview...
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| I had no idea this book existed.
|
| The best Russian writers (Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy)
| were something like Russian chauvinists. They thought Russia --
| in particular, culturally and religiously -- was above all
| other nations. There was propaganda in the 19th century about
| Russia being the "protector of the Slavic peoples" which the
| targeted countries didn't exactly want. It's an idea that still
| resonates both in Russia and among her ex-pats.
|
| Skimming the Wikipedia page, Conrad seems to have taken offense
| to precisely this. The book looks fascinating.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Where does Dostoyevsky advocate such ethno-nationalism? Don't
| remember any such from my readings of either _Crime and
| Punishment_ or _The Brothers Karamazov_.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| "Ethno-Nationalism" is not the word I'd use to describe it.
|
| The question is broad and difficult to answer but I can out
| a few examples of what I mean. [0] Lots of ideas about
| Russia's unique place in the world and why they're better
| than others (e.g. Dostoyevsky on why Russian Orthodoxy was
| better than other forms of religion). Most of these writers
| had spent time in the west, did not hold high opinions of
| it, and were vaguely Slavophiles. [1] There was a reason
| Dostoyevsky returned to Russia after living in France for
| some time, even after going to Siberia.
|
| Solzhenitsyn did write about other ethnic groups in the
| Gulags and these often get misinterpreted in their English
| translations as "kind and meek" whereas their Russian
| originals would imply something more like "Good-natured
| simpleton." [2] He, of course, wrote far more controversial
| books, to put it mildly, but I won't link to those here.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_soul
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavophilia
|
| [2]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43210399
| keiferski wrote:
| I don't think I'd call it ethno-nationalism. It's more of
| the equivalent of American Exceptionalism.
|
| And since we are talking about Conrad, Poland has/had a
| similar phenomenon at the same time, called "The Christ of
| Nations."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_of_Europe
|
| Many of these ideas had roots in 19th century romanticism.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| > I don't think I'd call it ethno-nationalism. It's more
| of the equivalent of American Exceptionalism.
|
| That's exactly it.
|
| In retrospect, calling it Russian Chauvinism may be a
| loaded term on my part.
| eCa wrote:
| There seems to be a bug on the Atlantic. On my phone the article
| in it's entirety says:
|
| > He had no choice.
|
| Guess that works as a tl;dr.
| mkotowski wrote:
| It seems to be a failed attempt at paywalling or AdBlock
| detection. Disabling JavaScript helps.
| eCa wrote:
| The easiest solution was actually Safari's reader mode.
| sudoaza wrote:
| I guess to get some food money
| simonh wrote:
| Thats why he did some work for which he could earn money. It's
| not why he wrote that particular book, the way that he did.
| throw0101a wrote:
| There's an (apocryphal?) Nabokov quotation: I write for love,
| but I publish for money.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Interestingly enough, one of his lifelong dreams was to earn a
| million.
| agustif wrote:
| He should have waited to born until he could practice some
| leetcode and get a FAANG job then!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Honest question; are you actually 'set' once you get past
| the leetcode interview phase, or are there frequent
| performance reviews and the like with the risk of getting
| sacked if you suck at your day job?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| There are certain companies that come with a significant
| risk of getting sacked for performance reasons: Amazon,
| Netflix, Facebook primarily. Others like Google, Cisco,
| Microsoft are known for being very chill on non-cloud
| teams and would be pretty hard to be fired from if you're
| doing the bare minimum.
| agustif wrote:
| Hopefully someone better than me can answer...
|
| But for what I read on HN, leetcode it's just a filter to
| get in like having harvard or stanford in your resume is
| too...
|
| Once you pass the filters, however you do, I say there
| are much more important stuff to know than leetcode that
| can predit how well you will do... Also in any big
| company the size of those, it's literally a gamble as in
| the team you'll be working with will be the most
| important thing affecting you, besides salary or
| whatever... So you've a lot of variance on success on
| those big shops.
|
| I've never tried/had a leetcode interview tbh, 4-8h take-
| home code challenges (in frontend positions I apply) are
| more abundant in my experience. But I'm not in the US so
| who knows...
| Nasrudith wrote:
| If we take inflation into account and use USD (I am not as
| easily able to find Tsarist ruple inflation information) and
| checked it to the years of his birth and death that would be
| about $24M to $26M. Quite an ambitious number then. Now as an
| inevitable consequence of continual inflation a million
| dollars is good for an estimated 19 years of retirement
| income with investments. Certainly nothing to sneeze at today
| but not the same great wealth it once was.
| BayAreaEscapee wrote:
| Did anyone else get to the end of this article and ask
| themselves, "So why _did_ the article 's author think Dostoyevsky
| wrote Crime and Punishment?" I felt I reached the end of the
| article without it substantially addressing the headline.
|
| Or maybe I'm just not deep enough.
| kevadk wrote:
| My reading was that the article just didn't get much deeper
| than "because of course this is the kind of book an indebted
| gambling addict with a history of physical health problems and
| political persecution would write."
| gyom wrote:
| Same here. It's a bunch of facts, some context, and more of a
| rant about the question than any attempt at answering the
| question.
|
| You could even write an article asking why that original
| article was even written, and it might make for more
| interesting content.
| mdanger007 wrote:
| So as to not become another Lacenaire
| Lendal wrote:
| I can't remember ever being satisfied with an article having a
| title that starts with the word "Why."
|
| I'm going to stop reading them. Anything that starts with the
| word "Why" is clickbait to me now. I'm done. Also any "Top 5
| blah," and any phone call where they immediately mention my car
| warranty.
| 0des wrote:
| I like this, I think I'll join. I have a similar list, which
| also includes paywalled content even when a free option
| exists.
| taneq wrote:
| Kind of like a corollary to Betteridge's Law of Headlines.
| Just as the answer to any yes/no question in a headline is
| "no", the answer to any "why" question in a headline is not
| given in the article.
| gverrilla wrote:
| it's your fault for reading an article that starts with "jesus
| meets D"
| codingclaws wrote:
| I immediately got a GPT3 vibe.
| 3minus1 wrote:
| Crime and Punishment had a big influence on my when I read it in
| 12th grade. Prior to it, I had been reading Ayn Rand and thinking
| a lot about objectivism/libertarian ideas. Crime and Punishment
| was like an antidote. I don't think C&P actually addresses
| libertarian ideas, but it is a rejection of some kind of cold,
| rationalist philosophy. Anyway I remember it fondly and should
| probably reread it at some point.
| musicale wrote:
| Because his publisher made him change the original title, "Crime
| and Getting Away With It."
| agustif wrote:
| Because crime without punishment?
| HPsquared wrote:
| That, or punishment without crime.
|
| https://wiki.ubc.ca/The_Mock-execution_of_Fyodor_Dostoevsky
| Grustaf wrote:
| There was a crime though.
| venomsnake wrote:
| Russian literature is based on suffering. In it always someone
| suffers. Could be the protagonist, the author or the reader. If
| all of them are in pain - then it is a masterpiece of russian
| literature.
|
| So the question is why is Crime and Punishment forced on so many
| innocent high school and college students ...
| jmacd wrote:
| I managed to read Crime and Punishment in my late 20s. I was a
| decent read at the time but I wasn't struck by it. In the ~20
| years since however, the visuals that were created in my mind
| while reading it have really stuck with me and have developed.
| I'm now hoping to be able to go to St Petersburg, just to walk
| around.
|
| I am by no means in to literature in any significant way, but
| russian literature truly is something special. I've read a few
| chapters of War and Peace as well. Very different styles, but
| there is clearly some commonality in the way the authors use
| elaborate descriptions to create very robust mental models for
| the reader. I never feel like I get that in western literature
| other than some of the stuff like Chatwin and Carra from the 70s.
| bvrmn wrote:
| > I'm now hoping to be able to go to St Petersburg, just to
| walk around.
|
| You'd better to hurry. Historic districts are in a sad state
| and city administration wants do nothing about it. It's pretty
| depressive atmosphere but completely off comparing with
| Dostoevsky's time.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| We are getting really good at mind reading.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I seem to end up blowing my own trumpet on every classic book
| thread on HN, but if you're looking for a nice and libre ebook of
| _Crime and Punishment_ (Constance Garnett translation) I put one
| together for Standard Ebooks, with bonus astounding Edvard Munch
| cover.
|
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky/crime-an...
| jxcl wrote:
| If you're interested in reading Russian literature, do yourself
| a favor and avoid the Constance Garnett translations. Her main
| goals were speed and volume of translations, rather than to
| actually make the translated works a pleasure to read or keep
| them true to the original author's intent.
|
| > "The reason English-speaking readers can barely tell the
| difference between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is that they aren't
| reading the prose of either one. They're reading Constance
| Garnett."
|
| > Garnett's flaws were not the figment of a native speaker's
| snobbery. She worked with such speed, with such an eye toward
| the finish line, that when she came across a word or a phrase
| that she couldn't make sense of she would skip it and move on.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translatio...
| prvc wrote:
| Counter-point: https://www.commentary.org/articles/gary-
| morson/the-pevearsi...
| 1cvmask wrote:
| This reminded on another "lost in translation" article from
| The New Yorker on Albert Camus and The Stranger:
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-
| translat...
|
| And the article you cite is by David Remnick who was
| instrumental on spreading Iraq war lies at the New Yorker.
| Should we trust him now?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Remnick
|
| "A lot of the people who made those mistakes are still
| occupying prominent positions, their credibility undamaged
| thanks to a new legend best articulated by New Yorker editor
| David Remnick, who later scoffed, "Nobody got that story
| completely right."
|
| Nobody except the record number of people who marched against
| the war on February 15, 2003 -- conservative estimates placed
| it between six and ten million worldwide (I marched in D.C.).
| Every one of those people was way ahead of Remnick."
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
| features/iraq...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| The marchers weren't necessarily right. How many of those
| people would have been marching against a totally just,
| necessary war? Probably many of them. Many Americans didn't
| want the US to get embroiled in WWII, even after Dec 7th
| nerdponx wrote:
| If anything, the fact that he's such a good propagandist
| should be an _endorsement_ of his literary opinion, evil
| notwithstanding. He clearly knows how to communicate well!
| robin_reala wrote:
| I find Garnett pretty readable, even if she doesn't capture
| the original Russian as well as others.
|
| The big problem, though, is that we're constricted by the
| supply of public domain translations. We simply can't
| typically offer much more than Garnett, and if we could,
| they're usually worse to read from a purely side-by-side
| English view, even if they're more authentically Russian.
| jxcl wrote:
| > The big problem, though, is that we're constricted by the
| supply of public domain translations. We simply can't
| typically offer much more than Garnett
|
| Certainly! If your reading is constrained to public domain
| works, you have basically no other option. I've read many
| books in translation and before I learned about the
| Constance Garnett controversy, I paid little to no
| attention to who translated the work that I'm reading.
|
| I guess I'm trying to spread the word that the translation
| matters almost as much as the original work itself, and it
| may be worth doing research on various translations before
| picking one to read. And although the original works are
| still as great as ever, it seems to me that the translating
| profession has really come a long way since the 1800s. As a
| result I tend usually to look at more recent translations
| first.
|
| > they're usually worse to read from a purely side-by-side
| English view, even if they're more authentically Russian.
|
| I don't think I understand what you mean by this.
| smcameron wrote:
| Interesting. I have long thought that "Crime and Punishment"
| should have been called "The Idiot" due to the protagonist's
| infuriating idiocy, (all he had to do was keep his mouth
| shut), but now I wonder if the translation I read (which was
| Constance Garnett, it turns out) was just terrible.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Raskolnikov was literally going insane even before he said
| anything of his crimes. I don't think everything would have
| been fine for him if he just didn't talk to Porfiry
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| You didn't quite understand the protagonist's problem and
| his motivation to commit crime.
| geebee wrote:
| I agree with you, thoroughly, but I don't think it's
| entirely fair to write a one-liner like this. If you're
| going to say this, you should write an explanation for
| why.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| "Crime and Punishment" is such an important landmark in
| world literature, that there are literally millions of
| words written on this subject. Whatever my own
| interpretation, I could hardly write something that would
| meaningfully add to the existing works. However, I
| thought it fitting to point out that Raskolnikov's real
| motive wasn't raising some cash and getting away with it.
| geebee wrote:
| who in this thread claimed that Raskolinov's real motive
| was "raising some cash and getting away with it"?
|
| You can provide a sort summary of an argument you find
| compelling regarding Raskolnikov's motivations without
| adding about to the millions of words written on this
| subject. You are also free to describe your own
| interpretation without feeling obliged to add something
| novel or useful to what's already out there.
|
| Considering how much I agree with you that Raskolnikov
| didn't "just need to keep his mouth shut" (a phrase that
| did show up in this thread), I'm actually and sincerely
| very interested in your interpretation.
| andrewjl wrote:
| I found it very illuminating to read Dostoyevsky's works
| alongside Goethe's Faust when thinking about the
| protagonist.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| Crime and Punishment doesn't tend to be what most Americans
| would expect. The major plot points happen up front and the
| remainder of the book is a philosophical exploration of,
| well, crime and punishment. The fact that the protagonist
| was free of the justice system but still tormented by what
| he did was the whole point.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| If Dostoyevsky is a pleasure to read, you have a bad
| translation. It is not a pleasure to read in Russian. His
| language is rather difficult.
|
| Source: I'm Russian and have read Dostoyevsky.
| rkuska wrote:
| The Brothers Karamazov is probably the only book I never
| finished reading. I since have never tried to read anything
| from Dostoyevsky and was wondering whether reading his book
| in Slovak language (my native language which is relatively
| close to Russian and as such should provide a better
| translation) would help me (I bought english print at
| airport). It eases my mind a bit knowing it is difficult
| also in the language the book was written in.
| jfk13 wrote:
| _The Brothers Karamazov_ is one of the few books I 've
| started but abandoned without finishing. Perhaps it was
| related to the particular translation I had (I don't
| remember details of it now), but it just wasn't working
| for me.
|
| _Crime and Punishment_ , on the other hand, I found
| utterly compelling, and will probably re-read some day
| (which is a status few books achieve in my world).
| guimplen wrote:
| Sure, his prose requires a little bit longer attention span
| than what is common today, but otherwise Karamazov brothers
| was one of the most captivating and pleasant books I've
| ever read. Source: I'm Russian and read Dostoevsky.
| laserlight wrote:
| Is it possible that he was a pleasure to read back in his
| time? Translations have the benefit of using a more recent
| language. Russian lacks that advantage.
| jxcl wrote:
| I haven't yet read Dostoyevsky, though I have read Chekhov
| and Pushkin in translation. I'm speaking more generally
| about Garnett's translations rather than a specific work.
| I'm currently learning Russian, and I'm sure it'll be a
| while before I can read Dostoyevsky in it's original form;
| though I have read some Chekhov and he is an absolute
| pleasure to read in Russian.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Chekhov and Pushkin are extremely easy to read in
| russian. Always straight on point, with few distractions,
| rarely engaging in highbrow ornamental phrases. Good
| choice when learning a language.
| flicker-rate wrote:
| Agreed. The best translation of this book is done by Oliver
| Ready or Michael Katz-- I found these the translations the
| most readable and enjoyable.
| peapicker wrote:
| My favorite translation is by Richard Pevear and Larissa
| Volokhonsky - I prefer it to Katz anyway. I haven't
| examined the Ready edition. (I ended up aquiring all of
| Dostoevsky in Pevear/Volokhonsky translations, I like them
| so much -- I understand other dislike their editions for a
| number of reasons, tho)
|
| I also really liked David McDuff's translation years ago.
|
| Any of these are going to be miles better then Garnett,
| though.
| throwaway123x2 wrote:
| Do you have an alternative you recommend?
| borepop wrote:
| Personally, I've always found the underlying structure of
| Crime and Punishment extremely tedious, never mind how any
| particular line or paragraph is translated. Obviously that
| makes me a philistine, etc., but there is some classic
| literature that I just find to be an utter slog, and that's
| one of 'em. Proust is in the same category for me. I think
| Dostoevsky's short fiction is wonderful.
| sva_ wrote:
| Personally, I really liked the translation by Pevear and
| Volokhonsky. But it is also the only version I have read.
| tfcata wrote:
| There are seven in-print translations of Crime and Punishment
| (and another six that are out-of-print). Which one is best
| depends on who you ask, or what you're looking for. The
| Garnett translation is itself considered a classic, and is in
| the public domain. The trendy one is Pevear and Volokhonsky.
| But there are other well-regarded versions to consider. This
| page lists them all and has extracts and links to articles to
| aid comparison.
| https://welovetranslations.com/2020/04/25/whats-the-best-
| tra...
| quesera wrote:
| That's an interesting article -- thanks for posting.
|
| One thing that struck me: two of the translation samples
| included the (correct/reasonable?) names for the street and
| bridge ( _Stolyarnyi Lane_ , _Kokushkin Bridge_ ). The
| others replaced the words with _S-----i Lane_ , and _K
| ------n Bridge_ (or _S. Lane_ etc).
|
| I think I understand the problem. Cyrillic alphabet doesn't
| map to Latin alphabet, and there was no established
| English-language translation for the names in question. The
| two that attempted it even had slightly different
| spellings, akin to the problem we see with many Arabic
| names in English today.
|
| This makes a big difference in readability, to me. The
| setting is supposed to be foreign and a bit unfamiliar to
| excultural readers, but _K-------n_ looks like an error, a
| misprint, or an "(unintelligible)" in a transcription.
| That becomes part of the story, and it isn't intended as
| such by the author.
|
| For this and other reasons, my vote goes to Sidney Monas,
| 1968. I'll add that note to my long and ever-growing TOREAD
| list. :)
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I think it is just the opposite, and I'm not sure how
| much Dostoevsky thought about excultural readers. The
| setting is supposed to be familiar, or at least feel
| familiar, to many of the readers, to the point where
| certain names are redacted to give the feeling that the
| author is "protecting the innocent", or avoiding
| accusations of libel, because you are actually reading a
| true story and not something made out of whole cloth.
|
| The first line of the original is (asterisks mine,
| indicating where Dostoyevski intentionally did not write
| the name of a street or bridge):
|
| "V nachale iiulia, v chrezvychaino zharkoe vremia, pod
| vecher, odin molodoi chelovek vyshel iz svoei kamorki,
| kotoruiu nanimal ot zhil'tsov v **S -- **m pereulke, na
| ulitsu i medlenno, kak by v nereshimosti, otpravilsia k
| **K --** nu mostu."
|
| In English:
|
| "On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young
| man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place
| and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K.
| bridge."
| quesera wrote:
| I see. Well that changes things completely!
|
| I assumed that the redactions were _not_ in the original,
| and that the translators were avoiding complexity by
| presenting the English-speaking audience with a digstible
| form.
|
| I guess I underestimated the translators, or the reading
| public. Thanks for the correction.
|
| PS: I did not mean that Dostoevsky _intended_ excultural
| readers to feel unfamiliar, but that excultural readers
| should expect (and maybe prefer) a certain amount of
| unfamiliarity in foreign works. I thought the translators
| were insulating their readers from it, which felt
| inauthentic.
|
| I'm even more bothered by the idea of the translators
| "filling in the blanks" that were intentionally placed by
| the author. Curious that both translators who did so,
| used roughly the same names for each -- perhaps they are
| the real names that we know the author was referencing?
| Still, that's a bit presumptuous, I think.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Their translation has been found to have many faults as well.
| It's like the speech of Ahti from Control: a literal
| translation of the source that adds "Russian character" to
| everyone, obscuring actual differences between the
| characters.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| If they are all referals to quality libre versions of public
| domain books, we can certainly forgive the braggartry.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I was going to say the same thing. Giving me free stuff? Brag
| all you want.
| 2sk21 wrote:
| This is a wonderful resource, thanks for posting.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Standard Ebooks is such a great project, a big thank you to all
| the volunteers.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Yeah you do. But this thread isn't about you. So, I find it
| pretty irritating.
| Grustaf wrote:
| To pay off gambling debts?
| dang wrote:
| Indeed! and another novel at the same time:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17898248
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21152240
| mistrial9 wrote:
| not going to delve into the mind of an author remotely- as a
| reader of CaP it was really captivating (english translation). I
| read it at a similar time as some classic existentialist novels
| from Camus and Sarte. The language, the setting, the pace and
| sometimes lack of pace are all notable and make the book worth
| the time. What I do not see so far in these comments are an
| engagement of the psychological conditions. There is no "answer"
| so maybe part of why an analytics/math crowd is on unfamiliar
| ground -- the ground of ambiguity, feelings of being lost, and
| perhaps even mild delusion.
|
| The development of a sense of "right and wrong" is not a sure
| thing, even among intelligent, functional people. A sense of
| "conscience" (pick your definition) even less so. Consider this
| minute example - you walk into a garden and see a beautiful
| butterfly, you admire it, it seems nice, then as you watch, it
| flies into a spider's web, is caught and killed by the spider. Is
| this a moral situation? very likely, not at all..
|
| Next example, a sports team at your school when you are 15. You
| do not play for that team, and do not care for the sport much.
| The team plays another school, and there is group support, yells,
| matching colors, perhaps name calling and villification of the
| opposing team. Do you support your school, about something you do
| not care about. What about the players on the other team - do you
| direct insults or hostility towards these others that do nothing
| to you personally? Is this a moral situation? How do you feel
| about the people yelling so much, either side?
|
| You are on your own in a city, and it is clear you need money to
| pay bills. The people around you appear to be petty, flawed and
| self-interested. You can quickly find contradictions, "white
| lies" in their actions. Yet you must pay your bills to these
| people personally, or face expulsion. Is this a moral sitation?
| How do you feel about yourself when interacting with these
| people? Your own sense of self may be compromised, injured..
| actually everyone's is in some way .. or you may have a larger
| kind of sight, to see the universal in the everyday, including
| these people and their ways. That warps your reactions..
|
| at any rate, there are many gray areas, and ambiguities, possible
| in examples like this, and the sense of being lost, of confusion,
| of wilting in the face of contradictions.. are embodied in the
| tale. It has been a long time since I read that book, but a copy
| is sitting about ten feet from me now. Maybe it is worth a look.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| In modern times a common reason would be to pay off alimony
| payments.
| ncfausti wrote:
| Crime and Punishment is probably my favorite novel of all time.
| Never before/since have I been so completely immersed in the mind
| of character.
|
| There were times while reading the rationalizations/thought
| processes of the main character that I started to feel physically
| nauseous and had to take a break.
|
| If you are at all interested in psychology, sociology, history,
| and/or philosophy, give it (or the audiobook) a go.
| nestorD wrote:
| The piece of art the gave me that feeling is the movie _Taxy
| driver_.
|
| A great, disturbingly accurate, representation of what happens
| when loneliness starts to eat away at a person's mind.
| mediaman wrote:
| I enjoyed Crime and Punishment for similar reasons. Tolstoy was
| masterful at engaging the reader in the mind of an unsteady
| protagonist.
|
| I just finished reading Crossroads, a new novel by Franzen.
| There are some similarities you might like. No murder, but
| Franzen has gotten quite good at inhabiting the mind of
| unsteady, sometimes unwell characters.
| trutannus wrote:
| Another excellent book that injects you into an unstable
| protagonist is Fyodor Dostoevsky's _Notes from Underground_.
| Can be read in a day. Highly recommend. This was my first
| intro to Russian lit.
| nzmsv wrote:
| You probably mean War and Peace. You are right, it is an
| excellent book.
| mediaman wrote:
| Sorry, brain fart on Tolstoy/Dostoevsky. Though yes War and
| Peace I really enjoyed as well. I don't fully agree with
| him on his absolute takedown of the 'great man theory' in
| W&P, but it's an incredible story.
| nzmsv wrote:
| I actually think he has a point with the great man
| theory. What we call a great man is a carefully
| engineered product and is the result of work of many
| people. A Steve Jobs or a Napoleon is a head node of a
| massive computing cluster. Is someone like that
| necessary? Of course. Would they be powerful at all
| without all the resources behind them? Not really. And
| this is sort of what I took away from W&P: Napoleon was a
| product of his time, and due to circumstances people
| happened to connect themselves into this giant borg with
| Napoleon at the helm.
| mediaman wrote:
| I think I agree with you, but my reading of Tolstoy was
| that his position was more absolutist: the Great Man
| didn't matter at all, and someone else would be in his
| place if he wasn't there and that person would make the
| same decisions with the same results. His metaphor was a
| herd of sheep that wandered randomly this way and that,
| and that through the lens of history we look at whichever
| sheep was at the leading edge of the direction the herd
| was moving at the time as a "great leader," because the
| rest of the sheep seemed to be following that sheep.
|
| I do agree that we make a "Great Man" to be much more
| than they are: that the achievements we ascribe to them
| would be impossible without support, work, and desire by
| a great number of people for the thing the leader wants
| to do, and that this leader can't unilaterally
| substantially change the course of history without
| immense support.
|
| Where I disagree is the idea that that person is
| completely inconsequential; that a similar person would
| rise just the same, given the circumstances of the time,
| and that the results would be of no difference.
|
| I'm open to the idea that Tolstoy was just taking an
| absolutist approach as a method of rhetoric and that he
| didn't actually believe that leaders have no consequence.
| FabHK wrote:
| > Drunken degenerates say limpid and beautiful things.
|
| Such as drunkard Marmeladov (soon to be run over by a horse
| carriage) in a tavern, to Raskalnikov: "May I venture, honoured
| sir, to engage you in polite conversation? Forasmuch as, though
| your exterior would not command respect, my experience admonishes
| me that you are a man of education and not accustomed to
| drinking. I have always respected education when in conjunction
| with genuine sentiments, and I am besides a titular counsellor in
| rank. Marmeladov--such is my name; titular counsellor. I make
| bold to inquire--have you been in the service?"
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