[evollove]

I finished it in about a month by reading forty pages or so a day, mostly skipping the chapters which are really essays and keeping a character list handy. This was a decade ago so I don't remember much, except I felt satisfied at the end and thought the effort was worth it, although Anna is ultimately more loveable. It's not a "difficult" book, just super fucking long.

[!@#$%!]

today i’m hating that you guys are putting up pictures of book covers instead of titles because my internet (the whole internet?) seems to be having some sort of DNS problem and nothing is loading.

what beast is this? gonna guess anna karenina.

i second the recommendation to consume it as a soap opera. which is what it is—a long, overpopulated, meandering entertainment. slow & steady is the way to do it. and more enjoyable really. i dd a chapter or two a day and it went by so fast.

wait wait no— it’s “war and peace”, is it? that i have not tackled yet.

but i enjoy tolstoi’s essays! maybe even more so than the narratives. his novels and tales are actually moral essays, i mean—they really all try to address the question of “how to live.” they aren’t just pointless yarns.

[!@#$%!]

oh yeah it wasn't the intertubes but just my wifi router or a connection somewhere. whoohoo!! FIXED. i can see now.

[evollove]

His fiction certainly got moralistic, but the power of war and especially Anna is the neutral realism, at least for my tastes. The way he describes a wheat harvest or a dog hunt is the major reason I read at all in the first place. He loved life, at least at one point he did, and he got that love on page, which I can't say for too many other writers.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by evollove

His fiction certainly got moralistic, but the power of war and especially Anna is the neutral realism, at least for my tastes. The way he describes a wheat harvest or a dog hunt is the major reason I read at all in the first place. He loved life, at least at one point he did, and he got that love on page, which I can't say for too many other writers.

his fiction was *always* moralistic (at least everything i’ve read by him has always had a strong moral core), but in a good way. he wasn’t like angry jezebel commenters calling garbage everyone they disagree with. instead he explored the potentialities of the actions and choices we make and took them to their final consequences.

everyone in anna karenina— levin, kitty, anna, vronsky— follows certain trajectories according to their choices, but they aren’t branded as “good” and “evil” the way the american populace does with its victims. they come to you fresh and neutral and under pressure (from their desires, from their circumstances, from society) and blind to the path ahead of them.

tolstoi sees them think and vacillate and attempt and fail and commit to certain actions, but he doesn’t hate or blame or fingerpoint them— he sees and shows their humanity. he was a moralist, but he wasn’t a fucking puritan.

and you’re right that he was great at realism, but his theory of realism was expounded in a book-length essay, “what is art?”. boils down to this: the job of the artist is to make the familiar unfamiliar. to shine a new light to it. to make it strange. “otstranenie” or something. and yeah, that also explains why crazy people are good artists and squares aren’t— the squares already have fixed concepts of the world. boring fucks.

anyway, to me he was a profound thinker. and his creatures illustrate his depth of thought about vital matters. just a brilliant fucking writer, more important than most. i guess what i’m trying to say is— don’t skip his essays!

oh speaking of angry jezebel commenters, in the kreutzer sonata he does have a character that embodies moralistic rage— the prisoner who killed his wife, which the narrator interviews. but that’s just a character, not the whole work. and still— his condemnation of romanticism, while old-timey and stuck in outdated gender roles, still contains a core of truth that one can relate to today, especially in the aftermath of the sexual revolution of the 60s/70s (it’s just that XIX century aristocrats got there much earlier than the rest of the world).

oh, speaking of which— you ever read “dangerous liaisons”? fanfuckingtastic.

[evollove]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

he doesn’t hate or blame or fingerpoint them— he sees and shows their humanity. he was a moralist, but he wasn’t a fucking puritan.

I tend to divide Tolstoy into pre and post "Christian" conversion.

I mean, he came to renounce his earlier work and wrote stories with titles like "God Sees the Truth but Waits." I insist there are two Tolstoys, although I guess I never really thought through what the similarities might be.

Have you read War and Peace? He'll completely stop the action for twenty pages to give his theory on history. I have nothing against his essays, but it's annoying when they are crammed into a novel. That was my only criticism of his non-fiction.

I still read Anna and think, "Yeah, that's how the world works" rather than "What a good point" or "I see where he's coming from" or "Geez, he was tough on that character." Maybe I just ignored the moralism in favor of the realism.

[evollove]

Les Dangeraux Liasons has been on my to-read list for awhile. I'll get to it.

The movie showed Uma's tits, so I'm not sure how the book will compare, but I might give it a go.

[!@#$%!]

ha ha ha

“cruel intentions” is that too, but it has buffy in it, and neve campbell i think? and no tits. they were just kids.

the novel though is one of the best ever. it’s just told in letters—a brilliant device. the guy who wrote it was a general of napoleon who specialized in building fortresses—and maybe you can see that in the construction of his novel. just fantastic. one of the best things i’ve ever read, and i read it translated, and it’s just genius.

[tw2113]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

ha ha ha

“cruel intentions” is that too, but it has buffy in it, and neve campbell i think? and no tits. they were just kids.

the novel though is one of the best ever. it’s just told in letters—a brilliant device. the guy who wrote it was a general of napoleon who specialized in building fortresses—and maybe you can see that in the construction of his novel. just fantastic. one of the best things i’ve ever read, and i read it translated, and it’s just genius.

No Neve in it.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by tw2113

No Neve in it.

oh, right, in my head i got it mixed up with the poster for “wild things” (not sure why— i’ve never seen that).

and i had forgotten, buffy is the asshole in this one. reese witherspoon plays madame the tourvel or the volanges virgin or both (i barely remember her in it which is probably why i injected nieves into the cast).

[tw2113]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

oh, right, in my head i got it mixed up with the poster for “wild things” (not sure why— i’ve never seen that).

and i had forgotten, buffy is the asshole in this one. reese witherspoon plays madame the tourvel or the volanges virgin or both (i barely remember her in it which is probably why i injected nieves into the cast).

I could see mixing Neve up with Selma Blair who is in it.

[Rob Instigator]

Finished Beastly Inventions by Jean Craighead George. awesome stuff. animals got the weirdest skillz! https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2017/...skillz-of.html

[noisereductions]

Originally Posted by tw2113

I could see mixing Neve up with Selma Blair who is in it.

yeah Selma Blair. I like her more than Neve.

Buffy rules though. Buffy wins the internet.

[ilduclo]

Russia in Revolution, S.A. Smith,

https://global.oup.com/academic/prod...cc=us&lang=en&

damn I love college press

[tesla69]

Returning from a "Master Writers Class with Caleb Carr" at the Center for Fiction on 47th Street-

* said more 4 hours a day a writer is producing gibberish
* talked about a number of different writers he appreciated (he's read War and Peace 3x) which seemed to be a lot of 19th century writers - but did regard both Graham Greene and William Gibson highly
* said that much of a mystery book is composed of dialogue so the dialogue has to be good
* a mystery always starts with its ending
* he compared certain successful parts of a novel to a music improvisor, who is playing a riff and then goes off and then has to figure out a way to get back into the riff
* writing is hard work

the The Alienist is an excellent NYC novel as well as disturbing mystery

[Rob Instigator]

Finished AGUIRRE: A recreation of a Sixteenth Century Journey https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2017/...teps-into.html

[Severian]

I read “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline. It was ... clever? And fun? But... honestly, not great. I mean I totally enjoyed it, but people treat it like a modern classic just because it addresses out society’s obsession with virtual opium, but as a story, it doesn’t have much meat to it, and it ended like every hero’s journey fuckaround ever.

Now I need a new book. Plowing through “Love and Other Demons” by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and a bunch of Lovecraft stories I’ve already read. I need something new that isn’t something I usually read. Like a boxing biography or something.

[!@#$%!]

i just got my brand-new reading glasses!

NICE

[Severian]

God, Gabriel García Márquez was fucking amazing.

How often does a writer come around who can master newswriting, and then go on to basically rewrite the rules of creative fiction, creating a sub-genre or two while he’s at it?

Goddamn motherfucking Dickens is what he is. Only, sweet Jesus, maybe even better?

[!@#$%!]

he’s better.