Let's get straight to the point. Well, it's started. I'm not liking it. I don't like not being a part of it. It's bad to see others from home. There is no pathos. When a child asks me "who are we going with?", I try to mentally recall some lessons learned from "the man in search of meaning" by Viktor Frankl.
Sad but it could not be otherwise.
Let's move on. I really wanted to like it. I've done everything and I'd say that going on for more than thousand pages without giving up proves it.
I have to say that I approached it with very high expectations. Perhaps it could not have been otherwise having heard him described not only as an unmissable author but as one of the novels that have turned literature upside down. Indeed, I have even heard some say that the author had ruined literature with his depth. That after him there was very little that was worth reading (ok ok, who said these sentences was a North American... but even setting his degree of exaltation to 0.5... in short, the expectations remain quite high, I think).
And yet, how can I put it. I didn't like the Karamazov Brothers. The gap between what I heard about this book and what I found in it is such that it raises questions (more than legitimate) about my ability to understand how much good there is in a book.
And everyone here to reassure "but darling, it's also a matter of taste".
I don't know if that completely convinces me. In short, you may not like the Sistine Chapel (just to give the example of the first graffiti that crossed my mind) it may not be your style, maybe you wouldn't buy it to put it on the ceiling in the living room but it certainly has an impact. Or so it seems to me. In short, I don't know if the example fits but it seems to me that, although we don't like some things, we can still be able to recognize their greatness.
In Fedor's book (and here I say it without being able to hide a certain embarrassment) I didn't find anything great, profound. Wherever you turn you will find references to the fact that he knows how to describe the human soul with an incomparable depth…nothing. I have found nothing incomparable except the obstinacy he shows in prolonging his work.
I have a great desire to face it together with someone who liked it, book in hand. To scroll through the salient parts, to be guided in its depth and greatness in order to grow as a reader.
If you are among those who like Dostoevsky and you have also read one of his books (yes, because I discovered that it is full of…”ah, are you reading the Karamazovs? Fantastic, bravo” and I “did you like it?” and they “ I haven't read it yet but it's a great classic”), I'd like to have a chat together.
After our Russian friends and their whole family, I read "the letter"by Maugham. And I didn't do it just to balance the average number of pages of the books I read. Yes, this is short. If I have to tell the truth, and evidently what follows is influenced by too many pages of Dostoevsky, I find virtue in brevity. Better said, not that a book should necessarily be short but should, in my opinion, be limited to what is needed. Without opening chapters of parentheses of dubious necessity on non-essential characters for the narrative.
In short, this is a story, from beginning to end, without too many frills but well written (Roberto told me this). However, I believe that the narration offered the author the possibility of closing it in a more special way.
In short, if I were a type who has passed middle age at the registry office but who is dying inside, with hair dyed a dubious brown with reddish reflections, if I were convinced that as a young man I was attractive and destined for greatness for knowing some dead language and now I absolutely need to make future generations pay for my personal degradation by trying to ruin the best that is in our culture…well, in short, if I were my high school teacher, to Maugham's parents I would say: “William Somerset will never be a writer. This is clear. And yet, if he only committed himself, he could easily reach a decent grade”.
Finally, to be honest, there was little more. And it is not heavy enought to watch the World Cup from the sofa? Fedor would write a 100 pages chapter on my state of mind when I turn on the tv to wath Netherlands-Brazil.
I will survive.
-1299 days
