Fyodor Dostoevsky

Is he our guy, Veeky Forums?

Yes he is.

Why is he our guy? I'm reading Demons and can't get through all the fuckin piles of dialogue from whatsoeversky and whoshisfacevich

Damn, dude.

Why "damn, dude"?

Did you start reading him with Demons?

Yep. Is it a particularly hard one or is it scrub-tier?

It's probably his least accessible book

Like the other user said, it's probably his least accessible book. If you're not too far in you should seriously reconsider continuing, and if you want to get into Dostoevsky you should start with Notes From the Underground or Crime and Punishment.

Well, goddamn. At least I'm plowing through it. 430 pages and counting. I have a whole backlog of books to get through so it may be a while until I start reading his other book I have, Brothers Karamazov. That is easier to read, yes?

The Brothers K. is much easier to read, correct. If you want to enjoy it more than just going into it with only Demons behind you, you should seriously read his other works though. They all lead up to The Brothers.

>Memetoevsky

So I am a noob with Dostoevsky, that is already clear. Do all his books link together in one giant series or are you simply saying that it is recommended to read all of Dostoevsky one after the other?

They don't link together in one giant series, but many of them inform you about what he was after in The Brothers Karamazov. For example, one of the major characters in The Brothers K. is Dostoevsky's reworking of a character from an earlier novel (Prince Myshkin from The Idiot). Reading through them in order like that will provide greater context and understanding of Dostoevsky's point of view (and how that point of view has changed over time) in The Brothers Karamazov. My recommended reading order is:
Notes From the Underground -> Crime and Punishment -> The Idiot -> The Brothers Karamazov -> Demons.

Reading C&P before Notes is fine as long as you read the one you didn't read after. Demons is at the end because it's far more political than the other novels here, and doesn't figure much into the grand scheme of things, though in itself it is a fine book.

Notes should provide the reader with one of Dostoevsky's most basic themes, which is a sort of anti-rationalism. He was a profoundly passionate man and despised the European rationality that was in vogue at the time. Crime and Punishment provides the reader with an understanding of Dostoevsky's view of Christianity being regenerative, as well as introduces you to the style that is used throughout his longer novels. The Idiot is read because it informs the reader about more of his theology, and provides the basic framework that would be used to create Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov. It also provides some polemics against Catholicism and his slavophilia, both of which figure a little bit in The Brothers Karamazov. Of course there are other things to read before Dostoevsky if you really want the most out of him, but if you're just going after the man himself this is the best order, in my opinion. Even if you don't do any background reading you should still be able to understand a lot of, or most of, what he's saying if you are a critical reader.

Thank you for this post.

I've just read NFU and I want to get into Dostoevsky. I'll take your advice on the order. thanks

Glad to hear it. I hope you guys enjoy his works, he was a truly brilliant man.

Tao Lin is the only published author to eve browse Veeky Forums. So I suspect, for better or worse, we're stuck with him being /ourguy/.

You should probably start with Notes from the Underground or Brothers Karamazov

What makes Demons so inaccessible?