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> The main difficulty is the names. The names make it so hard.

I think that's an exciting part. When I am bored with names of similar kind, the names make the characters somewhat exotic. I don't know about you, but the name "Grushenka" adds to everything that is going on with that woman.

As a Russian native speaker, names were not the problem, but the dense boring prose of Dostoyevsky was. On top of this, I did not like Crime and Punishment at all. I believe a lot of it has to do with the degree of association of the reader with the main character. As a 14 year old, I could not understand what the whole fuss is about, the whole thing felt like a feverish dream in the pool of molasses.

> The main difficulty is the names. The names make it so hard.

What's wrong with the names? I find Chinese novels much harder to read because everyone's named C{V[n[g]]|ei|ao|ou} C{V[n[g]]|ei|ao|ou}C{V[n[g]]|ei|ao|ou}.

Same. Then I tried to read Brothers karamazov, “ooof”, it literally took 200 pages before I stopped hating the ‘pointless’ book with its plot that went nowhere. Then I got it. Only certain authors can do this I reckon, but how you’d get a doom-scrolling teenager to do it? Goooood luck.

I only had the patience to read long books in high school; now I really want to but they're too difficult.

> The main difficulty is the names. The names make it so hard.

If you really want a challenge, try the Malazan series:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen

Similar, read Crime and Punishment earlier this year and it took me a few pages to realize two different names were the same character. Felt silly when I realized lol. Also just started Brothers Karamazov, but decided to switch translations and am waiting for new copy to arrive.

Read Crime and Punishment ~25 years ago, the Idiot ~20 years ago. I read Karamazov last year and Demons early this year. I still think C&P is the best of his books with Karamazov a close 2nd. Demons is very dark, but also it seems prophetic - it's like he foresaw some of what would happen in 1917 way back in 1870. He's even got a character in there that's short and bald and likes to wave his arms around wildly as he's speaking, whipping the crowd into a frenzy - sounds a lot like Lenin who was born about the time Demons was written. Still, I wouldn't have made it through Demons if I hadn't read it in an online book group where once a week we met to discuss.

Crime and Punishment is one of the very few school curriculum mandatory books that I enjoyed reading and actively got ahead of the required per week pages.

The name problem totally disappears when you use any e-reader's built-in search on the highlighted name

I read Crime & Punishment in high school and I was also blown away at how good it was. I did that teenage thing where I had a brief interest in “reading classics,” and found everything to be a little dense and full of “it’s something to appreciate not enjoy” energy. But not Crime & Punishment. That was a real page turner.

Also, who doesn’t love Razumikhin?

I've tried Crime and Punishment like three times but always stopped at some point because I wasn't feeling it.

Maybe I'll give it another go.

same here, I remember it vividly reading while backpacking in my 3USD Bangkok guesthouse 20 years ago

if if would be mandatory school reading I would probably enjoy it much less

from classics I can recommend also 1984, Animal Farm and Catch XXII (if you served in army you will have better appreciation for it, it was exactly describing absurd situations happening when I served)

I read it in the hopes of finding a written character I could relate to, but the dude in Crime and Punishment is just such a massive loser... I lack empathy too, but I would never murder anyone out of pity.

>An average teenager, myself included, always has some better things to do than reading a huge novel, barely understanding characters' motivations, because neither of these books were ever intended for teens.

Bookish teens have been reading these books since they came out.

And the average teenager has way worse things to do than reading a classic novel.

As for "barely understanding characters' motivations" that's how you understand characters motivations, and literature in general, by getting into even without understand it at first. That's true in almost every field in life.

Isn’t that the purpose of school? To make kids try and expand their thinking to think about things they don’t think about in normal life. A normal average teen does not think about chemistry, math, physics either. Will everything stick? Probably not. But some might stick for some students and that’s better than just giving up and only teaching teens about things average teens are naturally interest in (sex education?)

Yes it’s an interesting question and applies to many books chosen for teenagers in school.

Technically they can handle the text and it may improve their reading and writing, I assume this is the justification for setting these texts.

Emotionally and socially they are nowhere near ready to deal with Dostoyevsky’s nihilism and angst and Austen’s witty social comedy of manners about a situation young girls no longer find themselves in.

Compared to Dickens or Shakespeare for example though they are unlikely to engage teenagers and very likely to actively put them off reading.

This is a conundrum to me. I was a pretty bookwormish youngster and read a lot of classics. Often I had to push myself through works like Crime and Punishment but I felt like it was good for me. I’m glad I exercised the muscle of reading, but now I can understand that those books just don’t hit like they should when you don’t have the life experience to understand them. Something like Ulysses is still difficult, but at mid life you can really get it.

Would I rather have waited until 35? No, but I’ll probably go back and reread a lot of those books I read when I was younger.

I think it takes a very specific kind of person to read Crime and Punishment.

So, as a baseline, I think most people have or can understand internal monologues. That's not what I mean, though that is a prerequisite.

But many real-life people, especially those that have gone through phases in their life where they were Raskilnikov (not criminals, not necessarily egomaniacs, but the whole melodramatic shut in deal) would tell you that they both understand Raskilnikov type people and would tell them to shut up.

For me, it was honestly a bit depressing. Raskilnikov reminded me of me in my worst moments. Honestly, a lot of the characters did. Having these strong, abstract, high and lofty ideals is contrasted against the real, practical characters like Rahmuzkhin. Every single one of the lofty idealists (besides maybe the full commune living guy - what he says is weird, but not his actions) is contrasted with the people on the ground, doing good work. Even Sonya - she's devout, but not so devout as to become a pastor, abstractly preaching about goodness and kindness, but blind to the suffering around her.

And isn't that what the lesson is at the end of the book, anyways? (trying to be vague to avoid spoilers).

Though it's not like just "doing good work" will bring you the sort of the "ultimate" that many of these characters seemed to have wanted. Once you try to formalize it and intellectualize it, you can point to how Crime and Punishment is such an illogical novel. And yet it feels so real.

Ah whatever. Enough armchairing from me :)

That's a fair point. I read The Idiot in high school, when I was 14 years old, for an assignment. (I don't think I specifically had to read that book, but we were asked to pick from a list, and I picked that one.) I had so much trouble getting through it, and while I had the impression that the writing was brilliant, I wasn't educated or mature enough at that point to appreciate it or even understand many of the themes in the book.

I was generally an avid reader as a child, regularly blowing through the (age appropriate) summer reading lists every year as far back as I can remember, and then finding new things to read. During the school year when I had a 9pm bedtime, I would regularly bring a flashlight to bed, pull my blankets over my head, and read until much later. But The Idiot was tough, and I don't think teens should read books like that.

I've considered re-reading it as an adult, but I still have some scars from my first read-through, even if those scars aren't fair to the material at all.

Only one or two of Russian classics were obligatory in Serbia high-schools — yet I devoured them all (esp Dostoeyvsky, Bulgakov, Gogol... Tolstoy a bit less so).

I am sure I'd find them different if I re-read them, but I could relate to characters and their struggles quite easily.

I do not necessarily think that those who wouldn't appreciate them as teenagers would ever appreciate them as adults either — maybe a small percentage would.

I dunno, I feel like Dostoevsky hits perfectly around high school. I enjoyed Crime and Punishment around 9th grade, but tried read some Dostoevsky as an adult, and it really reads like young adult luterature.

I only learned to appreciate Tolstoy as an adult though - it was extremely boring for me as a teenager barring some smaller pieces

I would have agreed that making teenagers read way above their (life) experience level may scare some off of returning to the same books after growing up, but am not so sure anymore. Most adults don't read period - if not for the school reading list they wouldn't have even touched the classics anyway.

On the other hand, some of the kids actually like the books they are given. I know I did. Not every single book, but a lot, and maybe that's the whole point- you find out what you like by trying a bunch of stuff that you don't

IMHO it's less about being a teenager, and more about turning those great classics into school assignments.

With one exception (Musset's Lorenzaccio), every single book my teachers gave me to read felt like a boring chore.

But when I try Crime and Punishment at 17 by myself, I loved it so much that I immediately purchased The Brothers Karamazov (and loved it even more).

I can guarantee that if it had been a school assignment, I wouldn't have made it past page 50.

The same thing used to happen in Brazil. Machado de Assis is great for older audiences, but a bore for children and teenagers. Making them read his books probably did more harm than good.

As a teenager I chose Dostoyevsky for a few big English assignments, much was lost on me. Trying to tackle something you're unprepared for has educational value; like being in a Hacker News startup when you're inexperienced. You might fail at the attempt, but you've learned a lot.

By my third reading, I'd decided Crime and Punishment was a Comedy-Horror; think American Psycho.

Things that need to be taught need to be taught. Reading, writing, and counting can also be kept for later. Misanthropic heralds could even say that many strata of modern society don't really need literacy, and should just be given smartphones with cameras. “Later” easily turns to “never”.

A student should be given the best examples of human art, not some watered down versions, otherwise there is a chance that people will never try to reach that level. A lot of them won't (and reading some books never was a guaranteed path to a good life anyway), but by deciding what is “good enough for the common person” you artificially limit their world on that path (thankfully, there are other paths).

Whether they realise it or not, people are shaped by their environment. A book that you don't like can still point that certain questions and ways of thinking exist. Its place can easily be taken by seemingly “more appropriate” pop cultural or pop psychological works that, unfortunately, don't reach that level in order to be as “accessible” as possible.

The problem here is the existence of “required reading” lists, and mass education in general. That institute is completely flawed, bureaucratised production process of “studying”, and only the heroic actions of individuals who have to fight it from the inside make it less dumb. A good teacher can teach why the good book is good, but where to find so many of them?

See, for example,

https://www.olgasedakova.com/Moralia/280

https://www.olgasedakova.com/ecclesia/2174

(in Russian)

https://www.olgasedakova.com/eng/Moralia/269

https://www.olgasedakova.com/eng/Moralia/264

(in English, excerpt)

Russian literature is based on suffering. Someone always suffers - either the protagonist, the author or the reader. If all of them are suffering you have a masterpiece of Russian literature.

I guess it is because it prepares you quite well to suffer endless corporate memos.

This isn't a specific Russian problem. English speaking school children are forced to read Shakespeare, and I really don't think that works either. (That isn't a condemnation of Shakespeare but of schooling.)

I do love literature, but that is in spite of school not because of it. School did a lot to put me off some books. I was lucky to have read Golding's "Lord of the Flies" before our class did, because it gave me a better appreciation of it. I did read some big books as a teenager. I waited until my twenties to tackle Dostoyevsky though. "The Brothers Karamazov" was especially difficult.

Are kids "ready" to deal with organic chemistry? Or integrals? Do you think that more people will need the knowledge of the reproductive system of plants than the skill of reading and uderstanding large texts? Not simply understanding the words, but actually analyzing and comprehending what's being said

Yes the amount of damage this does to kids must be huge.

Some people here argue that "math is also what kids don't like" but math and chemistry can be understood by a teenager even if he doesn't like it. But these "classic" books can't because much more life, adult problems and having children, deaths of parents and illnesses have to happen in order for one to comprehend this books.

It's like trying to force a 8 year old to read romance novels: since his sexual hormones are not yet activated, he won't understand why a boy all of a sudden likes a girl.

Same thing with religion and other forms of high culture. Introducing it too early will only result in a distaste, and that the person thinks they already know it. Reading the Bible as an adult can be thrilling.

I liked it especially as a teenager - that is the time when you are the most depressed and the books makes most sense. Not everyone will like every book. That personal preference does not mean the book cant speak to the whole age category.

Russian stuff were translated into Bengali a lot in 1970s - especially works favoured in the USSR. I came across multiple translations of children's books, and loved reading them as a kid. My father and aunt read those in their childhood. Raduga and Mir published Bengali books and printed them in Moscow, and shipped them to Calcutta. They were cheap, too.

I didn't like the flow of translation of Bengali versions of "adult" books, and read them in English.

My favourite Russian writer has to be Bulgakov who fell from grace of the Party, and his work was not translated. I am yet to read Solzhenitsyn.

Nowadays, there are indie blogs that scan and preserve those Bengali books. A lot of people I know download and print those books. You can still find Moscow-printed Bengali books in used-book stores of book fairs.

Actually USSR pushed a lot of soft power and spent real money behind it. Especially the authors whose narratives didn't directly violate the narrative of the Party.

Leftist parts of society looked up to USSR a lot, and a lot of humanities professors, teachers all over the world were left-leaning, and promoted these books as Russian culture.

This is one factor, and doesn't explain the whole thing, of course.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48673777. Neither our family nor I ever leaned towards the Party or any form of Leftism, but books are always kosher in our culture.

Well it is kind of an integral part of the classic european literature canon. Certain novel genre's were invented by Russian writers, say, Tolstoy's epic novels.

So the question really is how does one find out about classic writing overall? Outside of school?

Well, Crime and Punishment is often taught in US high schools. Or at least was back in the 1980s. During the Cold War there was a lot of interest in Russian literature in general in part because in the bipolar world they were seen as "the other civilization" that we needed to understand if we wanted to avoid nuclear war. You'd think these days people would be more into Chinese literature but except for the Three Body Problem series, I haven't really heard of many Chinese books becoming popular here.

The same was as literature from anywhere else. Some authors are famous and you grow up knowing about them: I know about great Russian authors the same way I know about great authors from anywhere. They also get referenced and quoted by authors in other languages. Playwrights get translated and performed.

Less famous authors? Everything you say and more - again, just like any other books and author.

This is just the past and the modern propaganda nothing more.

I was a precocious teen - reading philosophy and history in addition to fantasy and science fiction - and came across Crime & Punishment in a local bookstore that I purchased paperbacks and Dungeons & Dragons books. The back sounded interesting and the book looked deep and philosophical so I purchased it. Despite it not being a great translation I found the book and topics covered really interesting and went on to read most of Dostoyevsky works.

those books are considered as classics because they deal with different aspects of the human condition which haven't changed significantly. they also give a different and valid intepretation / perspective on these "eternal topics", which are unique and discernible enough from their counterparts from other countries and cultures.

This resonates with me very much. I remember being very proud of myself each time I was tested in school and I was told I was reading at such-and-such a grade level above my own. Now in my 30s, I still like reading a lot, but there's so much more to reading than finishing books.

I still have a bit of reticence toward admitting that I find some books hard or haven't finished them. I found the Iliad enthralling and the Odyssey very good, but basically any other English epic poetry or drama is such a grind and I've given up many times.

I recently started reading Anna Karenina, and even for me as an adult, there's a lot of people with a lot of interconnected relationships to keep track of. But I am surprised by how moving I find it - I guess I expected it to be more distant somehow, but the people really spring to life. If I'd read it as a kid, I imagine I would be relating differently to all of these very adult concerns.

One of the best gifts I ever got was when my dad plopped down a big box full of old classical adventure novels (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, King Solomon's Mines, Captains Courageous, Three Musketeers, Count of Monte Cristo type of stuff) and I devoured all of them over the course of the next year or so. I'm sure I would appreciate a lot of different things about them if I read them now, but they certainly held up in terms of being engaging in spite of them all being 100+ years old by the time I got my hands on them.

I was a precocious reading kid too, and I sometimes wonder how much I understood of all the stuff I read. I feel like I remember it decently enough, but there must have been a lot going over my head.

This made me smile because I did exactly the same thing (i.e. I also read Anna Karenina in 7th grade, and was very pretentious). I mostly read during lunch periods when it probably would have been a better idea to be developing my social skills.

I remember being most interested in Konstantin Levin's efforts to modernize his farm estate.

I think that at the time I thought that I understood the difficult books that I was reading fully, but looking back on it I must have missed so much. I'll need to have a re-read one of these days.

Dostoyevsky was originally published in magazines chapter by chapter, so he would end the December’s on a cliffhanger so that the readers re-subscribed

Dunno. I can't read Russian for shit (pre-kindergarten level, I'd guess), but it seems like cheating to read it in English.

I started with Karamazov, then C&P, then the Idiot.

I loved excerpts of Karamazov (The Grand Inquisitor, Dimitry's troika ride, any passage with Grushenka) but I also found it rough to get through. I really don't think I was ultimately able to appreciate it as a whole.

C&P felt much smoother and finally I devoured The Idiot. Those novels felt like night and day compared to Karamazov.

With Karamazov, I feel like there is some subtext or context I'm missing and would have loved to have had a companion text or course to help me.

When I first Master and Margarita, it came with incredible footnotes, and rereading it again I found I sometimes recalled the footnotes more than the text. I recommended the book to a friend, but their edition didn't have the footnotes so they bounced right off it.

Anyway if anyone knows of an edition better than the Penguin Classic of BK I'm all ears.

I had the same experience, lol. I started with Crime and Punishment expecting thinly veiled philosophy where each character is a mouthpiece for one of the author's thought processes. Granted there's some of that, but I wasn't expecting such an exciting murder drama. Went into Karamazov expecting an exciting murder drama, and got the type of Russian literature I initially expected Crime and Punishment to be! Really it's a question of expectations.

I've taken several stabs at it over the years but I always give up in exhaustion. It feels badly in need of an editor, not that anyone would dare. Maybe this is a consequence of the format: it was released serially in chapters to a literary periodical over the span of a couple years. It certainly would've been nice to trim away some of the side characters and ecclesiastical debates for a more focused read, but we got what we got.

Karamazov is amazing.

But if you're 600 pages in and it's a slog you might have lost the train of thought of the novel.

It is a lot to keep in your head!

Try the Ignat Avsey translation, it’s great

To give you one idea of the approach - the accurately translated title is The Karamazov Brothers. Every other translator chooses the usual way because it sounds grander or eccentric or just because that’s how others did it before them, even though it’s simply incorrect as a translation.

P&V - one of them edits without even knowing Russian, a polar opposite

Karamazov is basically YA fiction though. Find other works if you’re not into it as an older adult, it’s fine

Nabokov didnt like Dostoyevsky either, especially Karamazov https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/magazine/nabokov-on-dosto...

Read those first 200 pages 10x could never get past it. 300 characters with names that I’ll never remember, some woman and her son, a general or something. A guy that keeps saying “Capital!”, standing around at parties.

I’m sure it’s good but I don’t think I have it in me to try again.

I did the same for a long time, but the diminuitives and nicknames for characters made that too hard to do, so I just ate the acorn and learned a bit about patronyms, pronunciation, etc...

What disginguishes Dostoevsky is his attention to detail and this unusual ability to describe someone inside and out with a voice that finds some sort of intrinsic fascination with the person no matter how dark, dingy, flawed, or just plain strange they are. It's like he withholds judgement without being clinical. His writing is peppered with these sketches, filled with insight, and it's not just a still-life - he manages to weave in these character studies with action and interaction. Most of us look out and see a lawn, boring and inert. He looks out and sees a lawn comprised of individual blades of grass, growing in soil of a specific kind, some weeds, cut some time ago, insects striving and fighting and dying and reproducing, the effects of weather and sun and shade making microclimates from which whole communities of life escape from or to....if there is anything to learn from him it is his gorgeous attention to details that we know are there but have long since ceased bothering to note.

Crime and Punishment is a bona fide detective story / crime novel, and can be enjoyed as such.

That is fine. You may not do well in the UK's The Office trivia quiz* (next question is about Suez Canal!) but apart from that who cares.

* The joke being they do a huge running one upmanship sketch on how much they know about Dostoyevsky before the quiz.

Oh, yes, he was doing a "book club" on twitter for a little while. I remember him doing an interesting thread on an Updike book where he was making a point that the author was a great writer because he could make a character that was simply a good writer, with the larger point that people can't write convincing characters that are smarter than they are.

You're doing it wrong. I bumped into this 'Short Guide to Russian literature':

"Russian literature consists of suffering. Either writer suffers, or protagonist, or reader. If all three suffer simultaneously--then it is a masterpiece. In every difficult situation always read Russian classic literature--it is even worse in there."

You and Nabokov.

Edit: except for The Double.

> The Possessed (2010), The Idiot (2017), and Either/Or (2022)

That's like publishing Hamlet (2010), King Lear (2017), and Thus Spake Zarathustra (2022). I wonder what her thought process is in choosing these titles? And what will her next work be?

Are there any pages of French in “Crime and Punishment”?

Wonderful to see Durak mentioned. I learned it in its Vietnamese form (Tấn) and introduced it to friends in Australia where it was a big hit. We eventually settled on calling it "Dickhead" or "Dumbarse" which seems like an appropriately Australian interpretation of the source material :thinking:

Doesn't surprise me at all. He's really a character actor who happens to look like he does. Similar to Dan Stevens, who coincidentally, has some great Agatha Christie audiobooks. He does all the voices.

As a matter of tangent-(ial relation), have you ever come across or read any of Silverman's translations of mathematics or science from Russian? Supposedly they were slanted by opinion, a mis-informed Westerner's perspectives, and had a number of liberties such as re-arrangement (in a mathematics text!). I wanted to read the (more recent) original and asked a classmate to buy it on an exchange but have not met up afterward.

Which translations would you recommend for Crime and Punishment or Dostoyevsky in general?

When I'm starting to read a non-English novel, the process of deciding which translation to use is half the fun. The Kent and Berbera (revised Garnett) version of Anna Karenina was mesmerizing.

If you still want to give the Russian literature a try, maybe Bulgakov? A little bit more modern (early 20th century); "A Young Doctor's Notebook" is probably what you are looking for in terms of engagement, clarity, suspense, and size as well (those are short stories). English translations I looked at are good enough to my taste.

I agree with all your points on why you should read... in fact I loved Crime & Punishment exactly for those reasons

I think its ok not to like Dostoyevsky, de gustibus - but you are implying that people read him to feel smart or that they need to put a great amount of effort in reading... great books have an healing effect even when tired and at the end of the day...

Many of the subplots have been reused for entire romance movies, and lots of the mini adventures would not be out of place in something like Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, as odd as that sounds.

A read I enjoyed in college was Ada, or Ardor by Nabokov.

No, too much emotion.

I think Nabokov definitely has a point with brothers. Ivan's portrayal and brain fever always struck me as a cop out because Dostoyevsky couldnt actually articulate what was wrong with his ideology. Of course thats kind of the point, but still it always felt cheap and clumsy to me

I watched it before I read the book and I wasn't aware it's an adaptation (not obvious at all). Imagine how perplexed and confused I was when I finally got around the book :D

The film is hilarious but probably hard to enjoy for someone who's not deep into the cultural context, it's not just the language.

I recently worked my way through (in order) Anna Karenina, Crime & Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. Each time seeking Garnett translations as I found the usual recommendations just not hitting the spot. That said, and for context I'm English, and new to the classics- so not sure if the writing style just clicked more. I did switch half way to McDuff for The Idiot and wasn't too far from Garnett.

Don't really know what point you're trying to make here. Maybe Garnett is more westernized, but that doesn't make it more readable. IMO Garnett's not great (at least for Anna Karenina, which is all I've read by her); from what I've read P&V is more readable than Garnett.

I avoid Pevear and Volokhonsky translations. I've tried reading a few of them but I really can't stand their English style. I've been caught out more than once when reading a Russian book and wondering why I didn't like it, and finding their names on the cover.

They are prolific and have cornered the market, which is part of the problem.

I fell into War and Peace and couldn't stop. The opposite was true with crime and punishment for me.. I just couldn't get into it. There are such fundamentally different works

> 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.