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You should read some Russian literature. Here are my suggestions: You can read the real, full-on Russian Novel-style X and Y Russian novels. Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Grossman's Life and Fate. Those are great but they will take you a while. Maybe start with something a little shorter and easier to digest, and work your way up to the giant tomes. I highly recommend Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which is still fairly lengthy but goes by quick. If you want something even shorter, his novella Heart of a Dog is also excellent. But there's more to Russian literature than lengthy novels, the famous Russian writers are also famous for their great short stories. One easy place to start with Tolstoy is his Sevastopol Sketches, three short stories based on his experiences fighting in the Crimean War, where you see him trying out some of the literary techniques he would later use to great effect in War and Peace. Chekhov is most famous for his plays, but he was also a prolific writer of short stories. If you want some proper depressing late imperial stuff, read his short stories Peasants or In the Ravine. And for a left-field suggestion that I'm going to bet you've never heard of, Vsevolod Garshin's short story Four Days, based on the author's experiences fighting in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, is a powerful story about war. Garshin died young and never wrote any lengthy novels to shake the world, but he was a huge talent and his short stories are proper literature worth reading. e: oh and I can't believe I forgot this until now, another absolute classic short novel: Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter. vyelkin fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Oct 26, 2018 |
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Oct 26, 2018 16:37
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 21:18 |
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Hero of Our Time is good, though it's been years and years since I've read it. I would actually recommend avoiding any Garnett or Maude translations, I've found they tend to be horribly dated and hard to read for a 21st-century reader. There's a translation team, Pevear and Volokhonsky, who have made a career out of translating Russian literature over the last two decades or so and their work tends to be really good, so I would angle for their translations if you can.
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Oct 30, 2018 06:10
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^^ yeah, fair enough.A human heart posted:the dude above you is a russian translation expert smart man and he's going to come back in here and obliterate you with wrestling moves for recommending the p&v trans, fyi Yeah, some people who are really into translation don't like Pevear and Volokhonsky, and I get that. I've generally found them to be decently accessible for new readers, though, whereas older translations are often really thick with dated prose.
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Oct 30, 2018 08:38
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I'd again suggest something shorter before tackling Dostoevsky. Short stories would be a good choice, or I'll again recommend two short novels, Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter and Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog. Both are really excellent. Glad you liked Lermontov. I'll echo the comment about him being a superfluous man which means he's intended to be a piece of poo poo. I remember reading that book in my first year of undergrad and so most of us in the class didn't really know how to understand literature and we kept just coming back to the fact that he was a horrible person, which our prof used to pretty deftly explain the concept of the superfluous man in Russian fiction.
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Nov 7, 2018 05:57
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I don't know how this forum feels about Cormac McCarthy but basically every book he writes is considered both literature and genre fiction.
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Nov 15, 2018 05:48
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vandalism posted:So is this guy a rare non left literature professor? Is he critical of this... hermeneutic? I'm kinda lost here. He hates Foucault which is understandable.
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Nov 17, 2018 06:06
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OscarDiggs posted:I liked it, despite how depressive it was. It was satisfying in a way to have the bullshit of such a life fully examined and shown to be ludicrous in it's way. Buuuut... I don't know, it also felt a little... propaganda-y? Like the author was sitting on his high horse and lecturing me. Maybe that's unfair and cynical though. Yeah that's Tolstoy for you. Especially late-life Tolstoy.
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Nov 23, 2018 18:10
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I'll narrow my suggestions for Russian literature down to two short but excellent novels, so you can keep putting off the lengthy "and" books: The Captain's Daughter by Pushkin Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov
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Jan 4, 2019 23:37
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I'm a broken record and you need something a little less heavy so read Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, it's short and amazing and you won't regret it.
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Apr 3, 2019 18:54
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:One of my big regrets is that back in college I didn't take the semester-long course in Ulysses where all they did was read Ulysses together with a concordance and notes, day by day, collectively. I took a class like this on War and Peace once. It was good. It would have angered Sham bam bamina though because the famous Tolstoy scholar who taught the class used the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation 
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Apr 4, 2019 18:19
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Also dude I'm 100% a broken record but go read Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov because it is simultaneously: Good Literature; extremely fun and enjoyable to read; full of themes and stuff you can think about if you really want to; and very short.
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May 8, 2019 04:47
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 21:18 |
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OscarDiggs posted:
 you won't regret it
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May 8, 2019 13:29
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