Re: WAR AND PEACE by Tolstoy

On Fri, 31 Jan 2025 23:51:26 +0100, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

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On Thu, 30 Jan 2025, Don wrote:
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It's not really Science Fiction, but it's been mentioned lately.
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The parts pertaining to peaceful romance appeal to me much more than
the warfare. Ironically, Tolstoy's tome helps me cope with armed

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Too long and boring for me. I prefer Dostoyesky any day of the week. Crime and
punishment is excellent! Borther Karamazov also good. The idiot I found so-so.

I enjoy Bondarchuck's /War and Peace/ every time I see it. I just wish
it were complete. The novel was not memorable.

/The Idiot/ was interesting, but ultimately pointless. If an actual
idiot had been involved, that might have helped.

I've experienced /Crime and Punishment/ both in novel and Classics
Illustrated form. Somewhere, probably in a class, I was fed the
factoid that the protagonist turns himself in because the detective
wears him down. Imagine my surprise when I last read it to realize the
true reason.

/The Brothers Karamazov/ was read as part of the collection called The
Great Books of the Western World. I didn't much like it. Perhaps if he
had finished the projected follow-ups it would have made more sense.
The /only/ character I had any concern about (any empathy with) was a
small boy who dies. None of the brothers was worth reading about,
IMHO.

I also read other Dostoyevsky novels, notably /The Devils/ which, like
/The Secret Agent/ (which Hitchcock filmed under the title /Saboteur/,
having used /The Secret Agent/ for a completely different spy story
earlier), is about The Revolution. One thing I noticed in a few of
them were references to Jesuits trying to convert Orthodox believers
to Roman Catholicism. This makes me wonder if the famous
"anti-Christian" essay in /The Brothers Karamazov/ is not actually an
"anti-Roman-Catholicism" essay, since it is clearly about a Roman
Catholic institution. But I have no idea if this is the case or not.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"