ts big dogs 2014 edition #1: dostoyevsky vs austen

His characters mostly seemed to just be a certain type. A certain type that just really, really strongly appealed to, or was related to by certain kinds of bookish dudes that congregated in liberal arts universities or bookish dude congregating places

The only Dostoevsky I've read is The Idiot but I'm struggling to relate this to Prince Mishkin or Lizaveta Prokofyevna fwiw.

Hippolyte maybe, admittedly.

i think a lot of people read notes from underground and see themselves in the protagonist. usually, i hope, the reaction is "oh shit! my misanthropic superiority complex is ridiculous and promises to bring nothing but misery to myself and those around me."

in this sense, the book is an enormous boon to the world.

Except it's not a conversation. It's a bunch of college-educated witedudes FOR WHOM THE WHOLE LITERARY WORLD IS A MIRROR, congratulating themselves all "ooh, I wouldn't want a conversation that was just like a mirror!" in a room full of college-educated witedudes.

Yes, because a 19th century Russian Christian fundamentalist is obviously just like all of us...

tell us again how yr objections aren't about gender

is it a conversation yet

silly to deny that more boys are crazy about dusty and more girls about jane i guess (i guess?) and that these results do in part reflect ILB demographics but acting like this poll was "ts: hot wheels vs polly pocket" and consisted of nothing but smugly unchallenged paeans to hot wheels is idk it's just not v accurate

returning from a wedding last Memorial Day weekend I read P&P for the first time on the plane, laughing every few pages. At one point the dude in the aisle sea one row and left of me turned around, saw what I was reading, and looked at me as if I were Karl Marx in business class.

lol. i remember a conversation i had about austen with a dude in college. he was a friend; i got the impression he had always admired my taste *up to this point.* when he found out i liked austen he was so crestfallen like he had really thought i was the one smart girl and i had let him down. i remember him wrinkling his nose and mentioning that a girl he had known had really liked austen and that she was Mormon. he said Mormon like it was a species of insect. i remember thinking it would have been nice if he had considered why austen might appeal to a girl with a Mormon upbringing instead of just reacting with disgust.

i realize everything i've posted in this thread has been about the politics of taste but i love both of these writers a lot and don't know what to say about their work really.

The guys who condescend to women who only read Austen don't understand the women are making fun of them for sticking with Kerouac and sci-fi.

big dogs number three will be Kerouac vs sci fi

horseshoe i am enjoying and appreciating yr posts, i also wd find it pretty hard to say anything about the work of these two and the politics of taste stuff is part of why I picked them

i used to be v contemptuous of dostoevsky before being brought round by a devotee girlfriend, whom i never did succeed in getting into austen :(

Except it's not a conversation. It's a bunch of college-educated witedudes FOR WHOM THE WHOLE LITERARY WORLD IS A MIRROR, congratulating themselves all "ooh, I wouldn't want a conversation that was just like a mirror!" in a room full of college-educated witedudes.

If this truly reflects your opinion of ILB, then you might prefer a nice slice of pie instead.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OoWMMZAM6ds/Tw7wAPaTTbI/AAAAAAAAB-k/WVGNeMdiA8s/s1600/Eating+Crow+2.jpeg

returning from a wedding last Memorial Day weekend I read P&P for the first time on the plane, laughing every few pages. At one point the dude in the aisle sea one row and left of me turned around, saw what I was reading, and looked at me as if I were Karl Marx in business class.

Yeah, anybody holding up a copy of P&P on a plane and loudly LOLing every few minutes probably deserves a "look", let's be real.

...

lol policing

plane journeys with ppl laughing at their reading material is yr idea of heaven no doubt

this thread makes me feel bad for not really liking austen, tho i understand why ppl do. i've given her a try several times, and i always come away feeling the way i do after a long, tedious meeting at work. there are bits i remember fondly (the dad in 'pride and prejudice' is pretty funny) but i've never really found any of her characters that engaging or memorable. prob my fault, not hers.

frederik b is otm that dostoevsky comes from a world that's completely alien to ours in most ways, so much so that i don't think he can be blamed if pretentious college kids or whoever pretend to see themselves in his characters. anyway, the truly insufferable kids are the ones insisting they will never read dostoevsky because st. nabokov disapproved of him.

demons is my second favorite novel ever at this point but still feeling v good about my austen vote (beyond the natural pleasure of minority selfrighteousness) (i think)

halfway thru my first read of emma cuz of this thread, not embarassed to admit i keep track of characters like "oh right breckin meyer". maybe i'll try the gambler again next. found it too upsetting the first time tbh lol.

voted autism

hah clueless is the best. heckerling gets austen.

what's the best austen to start with? i actually remember liking 'emma' more than the others i tried, but ended up misplacing my copy during a move.

P&P is as good a place. Also Persuasion because it's short and so unlike the others.

persuasion is long as fuck

idk Emma or nothing sorta. Mansfield park is sort of brilliant qua minor work and has one of the most fuckable male leads in lit but you should probably read fanny burney &/or ms Radcliffe first really /:

My Penguin copy of Persuasion is just over 250 pages!

S&S is more minor than MP, I think. It lacks the tensions that make the latter so frustrating in places.

'long' has this british vernacular sense im sort of addicted to

in my head Persuasion is definitely "the long one"

felt v much ambushed by emotion at one line of wentworth's. "am I not yet so much changed?". something like that, anyway.

P&P should be your first, I think. Persuasion is really short, though; you guys are weird.

Best introduction tbh is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009 parody)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Pirates and Ninjas and Bacon

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41u0oA1ReQL._SY300_.jpg

has anyone read this? is it good?

Pride Prejudice and Poops

persuasion def the short one to me. mansfield park the long one.

Never given these two a proper go.

http://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/norte-end-history

^ However I am watching this film -- 'based' on C&P -- so that might inspire me.

In regards to Austen boyz who are into ECONOMICS are reading her: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p020wmkt

I liked this talk by the climate ethicist, Stephen Gardiner. He uses the opening chapter of S&S - where a husband and wife incrementally talk themselves out of their obligation to support the husband's mother and sisters - to analyze moral corruption around climate change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChgJIhWXXbE

giving p&p another try. it's pretty funny!

Mr. Bennett!

Yeah, the relationship between Lizzie and her father is one of the great joys of that book--he's retreated from the foolishness of his family to the point where he's actually letting them all down, but the vibe of intellectual equality and pride he has in his one really clever (not just "book clever") daughter... It's just lovely.

making Donald Sutherland perfect casting in the otherwise meh 2005 adaptation.

"Harriet Smith was the natural daughter of somebody."

^^^

good thread let's do again

I'd probably go for Austen this time. there was what Kevin Blackwell once memorably called on some TV punditry "the width of a gnat's cock" in it the first time round.

twoagc *in it* the first time round.

it's not a particularly Janeite phrase I feel, but a buffoon in Dostoevsky certainly.

darragh do you mean a new matchup or, let's just argue about austen some more