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Comment by Vt71fcAqt7 | Hacker News Reader

Anyone who thinks reading Dostoyevski is an acomplishment must be borderline illiterate*. None of his works are a hard read. Dostoyevski is the acomplishment, not the reader. Almost all fiction is a passive medium, the "work" has already been done by the auhtor. Tens (hundreds?) of millions of copies have been sold, and his works are required reading in many high schools.

>I am glad to see "the kids" continuing to question & challenge

They are the children of (rich?) Brooklyn hipster parents at a Performance arts school[0]. Who exactly are they challenging? If anything, they are being congradulated and pushed along on the hipster path. There are Brooklyn hipsters who unironically use 1980's antenta phones. If anything this is a worn out trope.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_R._Murrow_High_School

*I don't mean to imply that you are illiterate, just that you haven't thought this through.

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>Anyone who thinks reading Dostoyevski is an acomplishment must be borderline illiterate

It's not an accomplishment, but it's definitely more, as parent commenter said, "performative" than saying they read any popular author of today.

As you yourself pointed, Dostoyevski is a required reading in high school and as anybody who had the "pleasure" of attending school, knows required reading usually isn't something what appeals to the youth (killing joy from this activity is another problem).

> As you yourself pointed, Dostoyevski is a required reading in high school and as anybody who had the "pleasure" of attending school, knows required reading usually isn't something what appeals to the youth (killing joy from this activity is another problem).

That's true of a lot of students, but not everyone! A couple of classmates in particular come to mind who definitely, genuinely loved the books we were assigned.

Heck, while I didn't like most of the books we read, there were a handful I loved! Montana, 1948, for example, was amazing.

"they're not authentic they're just performing" is also a trope. I assume someone is being genuine until proven otherwise

What I think many people would argue about Dostoyevsky is that it is easy to read at a surface level, but invites critical thinking to reveal layers of subtext and deeper meaning. Maybe you don't agree, which is fine, but I'd suggest this is why some people may associate it with high reading comprehension.

I loved Crime and Punishment, but I struggled to grasp some of the long monologues in The Brothers Karamazov. It’s not hard to follow the plot, but because it deals with challenging ideas through monologues which completely stop the plot, I found it challenging to fully engage with. Hardly a very difficult read but not always an easy page-turner either. Maybe I just needed a better translation.

Not disagreeing, but I just want to point out Pynchon and Foster-Wallace as authors that require effort on behalf of the reader.

Admittedly, the reader effort is still ridiculously far below that of the author.

Quoting Fry: "It took an hour to write, I thought it would take an hour to read"

> They are the children of (rich?) Brooklyn hipster parents at a Performance arts school

Murrow isn't strictly a performance arts school, and it's not located in a particularly hip or excessively wealthy part of Brooklyn.

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