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Comment by atomic77 | Hacker News Reader

Interesting, so you would tend to agree with the parent comment, especially if you hadn't known anything about the author beforehand? It's a great illustration of the range of interpretations possible of any artistic work.

I've also read that Demons expands upon many of the ideas in C&P though I had a bit more trouble getting into it. After hearing about these newer translations though I might have to give one a try.

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I do, although [spoiler alert] Raskolnivok’s ultimate spiritual transformation and acceptance of Christianity as his morality, without a rational argument behind it, gives away the author’s prejudice. I see Dostoevsky’s characters as analogous to set theories without the axiom of choice: self-consistent yet incomplete. I even felt empathy for the characters I didn’t like because they still felt human to me.

The most unrealistic thing about his writings is that normal conversations don’t have alternating monologues which each go on for pages. Clearly he’s effectively writing inline dueling essays.

Demons is a little more work to get into, as it takes longer to get going than C&P, but the payoff is well worth the setup.

"The most unrealistic thing about his writings is that normal conversations don’t have alternating monologues which each go on for pages."

Unfortunately, there are way too many people in real life who do talk in monologues and rarely let others get a word in edgewise -- especially if they're drunk, but sometimes even when they're perfectly sober.

At least Dostoyevsky's characters have something interesting to say.

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