emoji-award-marseygiggle

Why Nabokov didn't like Dostoyevsky? :marseysaluteussr: :marseyrussian: :marseyrussiadolls:

!bookworms thoughts?

Here is Vladimir Nabokov's :#marseylongpost: :#marseylongpost: :#marseylongpost: on why Dostoyevsky was a :#marseymid: writer

https://old.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/17n8lrt/why_did_nabakov_dislike_dostoyevsky_so_much/

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/magazine/nabokov-on-dostoyevsky.html

@TR

One of the key facts about Nabokov is that he was a cranky old man his whole life.

Lmao

Hemingway talks about Dostoyevsky's unique style quite a lot in A Moveable Feast.

One famous quote is: “I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and yet make you feel so deeply.”

:#marseyxd:

51
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Link copied to clipboard
Action successful!
Error, please refresh the page and try again.