Why Nabokov didn't like Dostoyevsky?

Nabokov was a big prose guy, and style is one of Dostoevsky's weaker areas, to put it nicely.

Also nabokov was always kind of cranky. He didn't like a lot of authors, some of whom were arguably or clearly great, or even greater than him. Aside from dosto, he hated, with direct quotes:

Faulkner ("To consider them masterpieces is an absurd delusion")

Eliot ("Not quite first-rate.")

Pound (" A total fake. A venerable fraud.)

Plato (" Not particularly fond of him.")

Tagore ("A formidable mediocrity.")

Mann ("Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up.")

Gorky ("A formidable mediocrity.")

Celine ("Second-rate. A tense-looking but really very loose type of writing.")

Wilde ("Rank moralist and didacticist")

So yeah, bit of a contrarian lol

I can definitely see Nabokov's arguments and would agree that Dostoevsky is in some sense less artful than other great writers, but I also think it's hard to ignore the stylistic clash that is likely at the root of his distaste.

What it boils down to, in my opinion, is that Dostoevsky wrote in a time when modernism was emerging, but his work is decidedly anti-modern, really kind of romantic in nature. This fact, combined with his lack of attention to style compared to Nabokov, a notoriously fussy stylist, earns him very little goodwill compared to his contemporaries who present similar problems, but in a modern and stylistically palatable way.

Tolstoy, for example, is at least partially guilty of several of the sins Nabokov named. You can't tell me characters like Levin in Anna Karenina, or Pierre in War and Peace aren't at times ridiculous, mouth pieces for Tolstoy's big religious and political ideas. The key difference is that Tolstoy restrains himself and presents more varied characters in a realistic setting. And yes I agree that makes him more artful, but this is also a difference of romantic idealism vs. modern literary realism and not just an issue of quality.

People won't admit it but Dostoevsky is for undergraduate teenage boys wanting to feel deep and edgy. You read him then and think he's the best shit ever, then you go back as an adult and see him as emotionally pretentious. A bottle of vodka gets spilled and the narrator goes on a 5 page monologue about Russia's religious destiny, an emotionally unavailable woman teases a character and the character goes goombling for ten pages. The characters being all being emotionally unstable or having epilepsy gets old after a while.

I mean he's actually a great author but very overrated.

He considered him a failed reactionary journ*list. My guess was he viewed his books as too politically charged and trying to hard to be realistic.

Glory to Russia!

My biggest gripe with dostoevski is his dialogue. Unless there's some insane cultural barrier between us and 19th century ruskies it's impossible to believe in any of his dialogues.

Did this man ever talk with anyone in his life?

>sonya, a prostitute, is a trad wojak

lol