Customer Reviews

The Idiot (Penguin Classics)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" is a work with which the author himself was never truly satisfied, but even in its 'unrefined state' it is complete, masterful, and deeply moving. It vies with "The Brothers Karamazov" in my mind for the title of greatest novel ever written, and is in my mind a must-read. The depth and insight into the human soul is a fascinating product genius.

The pace of classics is different from contemporary novels and takes some getting used to, and Dostoevsky is no exception. For people who wonder whether they will find the work tedious, Dostoevsky's works are long, but very rewarding.

The Penguin Classics edition has a helpful introduction and is less expensive than most other editions.

I love this book, love it. Overall it's not as good as Crime and Punishment or Brothers Karamazov, but I think it offers something a little different, and worthwhile in it's own right.

C&P and Brothers, while dreary, have some sort of resolution to them, which leaves you feeling not cheerful, but if nothing else, a little satisfied. The Idiot on the other hand is straight up, unadulterated, depressing, tragedy. Prince Myshkin is so good, the women are so beautiful, and their lives are utterly twisted, ravaged, and destroyed. The end. I don't think another author has ever been so brutally cruel and merciless to his characters.

Only a God could save a world as terrible as the one that destroys Myshkin, and I think that's sort of the point of the book. This book is incredibly sad, and completely beautiful.

the four star rating is in comparison to other Dostoyevsky, but by other standards, this book would certainly be a five.

This book is a delightful read if you can last through it. Similar to a work out you must put a lot of effort to get results. The characters are delightful, and delightfully terrible depending on the character. The social interaction of 19th century Russia is exposed wonderfully in this book. The way people act, their cold secret desires, their quest for wealth and respect are all illustrated vividly.

Myshkin is a great man who is thrown into what we could today call "the real world". His kindness and polite behavior makes others think he is an idiot. I find this situation to be analogous to today's world. How often are we suspicious of people who are kind? How often are we conniving like Nastasya? I'm sure people have changed since the 19th century; however I am also sure they stayed the same. "The Idiot" is a vivid almost intoxicating portrayal of humanity with both its flaws and virtues. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who can last through the entire text. Also you may consider the Barnes and Noble classics edition which offers content that analyzes Dostoevsky's state of mind and motivations for writing certain passages in the novel.

If you love to read and you haven't read this yet, I don't know what the heck you're waiting for. This is one of my favorite books. Yes there are a lot of subplots and long monologs, but that is part of the beauty of it. At one point in the book he talks about a man who was sentenced to death and then pardoned at the last minute and what went through his head, which actually happened to Dostoevsky. Things like this may not really advance the plot, but they are interesting in and of themselves and help develope the charectors.

I'm a couple chapters in to "The Idiot" and am enjoying the David McDuff translation. I spent some time comparing it to the Eva Martin (1915) translation, which is freely available (and which I read years ago), and I'm finding McDuff's prose much smoother and more elegant, and the footnotes are informative.

However, I'm having issues with reading this on my Kindle 3 (Kindle Keyboard). When I first opened the book the font was much bigger than my other books, so I had to reduce the size... but the font size keeps changing. If I follow a footnote and then come back, I'm likely to find a different font size in the main text when I come back. Likewise if I get out of the book and then return.

And, when I'm reading at my preferred font size, there's a lot of wasted space on the page - huge spaces between paragraphs, for example.

I've had my Kindle over a year and read dozens of books on it, so I'm not new at this. I have had font issues on a couple other books where the font itself seemed to be non-standard, but that's not the case here - here, there's something structural going on.

The Kindle Cloud Reader interface seems to be perfect.

The problems are not enough to stop me reading the book, but they are enough to annoy.

Dostoyevsky is one of my very favourite writers, but I must admit this novel was a bit disappointing to me. And this, despite some really interesting moments. I wouldn't say it's a bad novel at all, I'll just point out a few things that may make one rather reluctant to compare this novel to other novels of the same author.

For instance, the plot takes hundreds of pages, often to go nowhere at all. My edition, a new translation dating from 2004, is 720 pages long. And often, there are elements, subplots, and other things that just lead to nothing; which can be interesting in itself; Dostoyevsky, a post modern writer from the 19th Century? Not exactly.

In fact, poor Dostoyevsky had to write very quickly and publish as he went, in order to survive and have food... So the plot's many weirdities totally make sense in the light of this. Yet, 720 pages of intricate plotting that seem to go nowhere and for unknown reasons is rather.... post-modern, and not necessarily in the best meaning.

I like the characeter of the "idiot", even though I thought this was going to be pushed somewhat more, and somewhat differently. I think the main weakness of this novel is that it's not "tight". I mean, there are many subplots, not necessarily connected, and no big plot; which again is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but it makes one feel a bit lost in space as to what goes on. Things go on, yes, but why? That's what I mean by "there is no real plot".

The story of Myshkin's innocence and trust being confronted with the evil of Rogozhin as they pursue the beautiful Natassa is one of Dostoevsky's major novels. It has the usual Dostoevskyan mix of fascinating strange characters who endlessly dialogue about the meaning of their own lives. I have found it be a far weaker and less interesting book than either 'Crime and Punishment' or 'The Brothers Karamazov'.
What disturbed me however in reading it was the anti- Semitic passages. Dostoevsky was a true xenophobic who had words of hatred for all those who were not Russian.
This hatred is not however at the center of his work.
It is an unfortunate insertion.