Reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot.
I feel like one.
Like War and Peace, I can't keep track of all the characters and their motives. I keep waiting for a shark to attack or a hockey player to emerge and smash some communist or ballerina or something.
Jesus, what is it with Russian writers and their endless stream of characters, nicknames and excessively drawn out narratives? How can anyone make a movie of this? Oh, wait. The Japanese did. Was The Jerk a spoof of the novel? And if you're gonna make the guy an Idiot, make him a ranting, idiot then!
I keep thinking I need vodka while I read.
Alas, I jest somewhat.
Seriously, this is the 4th novel I read from Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Crime and Punishment was good.
I did enjoy some quotes about liberalism like this one:
"I can but thank you," he said, in a tone too respectful to be sincere, "for your kindness in letting me speak, for I have often noticed that our Liberals never allow other people to have an opinion of their own, and immediately answer their opponents with abuse, if they do not have recourse to arguments of a still more unpleasant nature."
The Idiot is a very important work that is not only literary but theological most importantly, and philosophical. There is at least one, quite long serialized, but very good Russian film made from this work.
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