There is something I cannot stand about Tolstoy's style

There is something I cannot stand about Tolstoy's style.

I think it has to do with it seeming like he is the patronising teachet telling the stupid student what to think

he was so much smarter than all of us that thats basically what hes doing

I disagree. It's more like a dialogue with the reader, trying to convince them of his side. He's not nearly so obvious and expressive of his way of thinking. I'd say he's really one of the more subtle writers I've read.

This. I wouldn't consider Tolstoy didactic, he maintains a fairly neutral tone.

Even if he does, consider his time. We was around to see the emancipation of the serfs, so you had a big class of uneducated Russians. He was in fact smarter than most.

>I think it has to do with it seeming like he is the patronising teachet telling the stupid student what to think

Oh, finally someone realizes that Tolstoy was just a moralist graphoman

>graphoman
wut

Someone with graphomania

I agree with this. He never came across to me as anything other than a wise friend telling you how he sees things.

>graphoman
haha what? graphomaniac?

>he's really one of the more subtle writers I've read.
especially when it comes to the differences between men and women. Feminists don't have much of a problem with him, even today, though he said some things which might be considered a little sexist now.

He was just so kind to all of his characters and wrote women so believably he gets a pass for pretty much everything. IMO he was a better psychologist than Dostoyevsky.

My father keeps praising Tolstoy but I've never read him.

What would be a good entry book?

I agree, OP.

Anna Karenina.

You think about how boring Tolstoy seems, with his twee religious mushiness. But I think you have to remember that Tolstoy only seems like the ur-dad because he had to make himself from scratch. That stupid handmedown societal armor against the inevitability of death—'Normal’—Tolstoy hammered it himself. The fact that he smithied up himself something very middle of the road, philosophically speaking, shouldn’t distract from how completely essential is his choice to be something.

I want to agree, and I do like him better than Dostoyevsky, but the idiot is the most prescient and insightful psychological exploration of all time, of ALL TIME!

The Short Story Reading Group is currently reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy

Even though it's known for not being his most polished work, I really enjoyed Resurrection. You should give it a try :)

Of course... he's Virgo after all, but a very smart and compassive one.

what the fuck? have you guys read ANYTHING post conversion? Confessions? Ivan Ilyich? Hadji Murad? Resurrection? Father Sergius? Kreutzer Sonata?
Did I just get baited really hard?

This board is fucking shit if you haven't noticed.

yes but this still triggered me

I love Tolstoy's style.

I just finished War and Peace and have started reading Anna Karenina.

Tolstoy is an infinitely better writer than Dostoevsky, though TBK was as equally as good as W&P.

No, he isn't. Tolstoy loves life too much to write like that consistently. I'm thinking of, for example, Kitty going to the ball near the start of Anna Karenina. No preachy schoolteacher could ever write a scene as sympathetic to a character as different from the author.

If you think Hadji Murat is "preachy" then it's you who is a fucking moron who hasn't read anything by Tolstoy.

>In this thread people that don't speak Russian

kek what
I'll give you that it's the most nuanced of any his post-conversion works, but that's not saying much