hey /lit/eralfaggots what do you think about kreutzer sonata?

it's great
>I've heard some pretty bad things about it
What? Literally a lot of the best novels ever.

>>8756793
>i've heard some pretty bad things about it
I've never heard anything bad about Russian lit

Do you know what? The Russians, they'd only be an eight o'clock breakfast for the Japanese.

>>8756793
The only thing I've heard about it that could be considered bad is that a lot of it is pretty dark. But I really enjoy it. Continue with Tolstoy and try Gogol as well. I like his book Dead Souls.

Named after this, so thats cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9YowLzeC0c

>>8757100
I tried to read Dead Souls this summer, but couldn't get into it. The predictability of the plot - the protagonist meeting one weird land-owner after the next - just made it a slog, even if I appreciated the characterization and tonal experimentation in it.
I will say though that it became more interesting once I realized that there was a psychological component to the novel. At first, I thought that Gogol was parodying his fellow-countrymen, but when the protagonists meets a curmudgeonly landowner with a stingy property and an empty house, and the narrator warns us of that we too could end up that bitter and lonely, I realized that the characters were partly reflections of Gogol himself, which Gogol used to explore his own insecurities and fears. It was especially obvious since the narrator complains at the beginning of the chapter that he used to be way more observant of the quirks of Russian life, something that Gogol clearly cares a lot about, than he is now.

It was also interesting to see the clear influence of Gogol's style of characterization and description of upper-class social life on basically every Russian author that came after. But for people who aren't already interested in Russian Lit, like OP, I'd recommend novels like Crime and Punishment and War and Peace over Dead Souls.

In short, I'd say Dead Souls is the plot structure of Mark Twain plus the dream world of Kafka.