Take the top ten most popular books at each college according to Facebook, then look at the average SAT/ACT score for students at each college, and bam a list of which books are smart and which are dumb. Given the dubious methodology, there's not much here of interest, but I was intrigued by the gap between Crime and Punishment (super-smart) and Anna Karenina (kinda middlebrow) which would seem to me to appeal to more-or-less the same audience.
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The Dostoevsky / Tolstoy Gap
26 Jan 2008 01:32 pm
Comments (72)
I would bet that, by many who rate it highly, Anna Karennina is seen as a high-toned romance novel, upscale from the Harlequin variety.
Look at some of the actresses playing the title character in Anna K:
Vivien Leigh
Nicoal Padgett
Sophie Marceau
Jenny Lind
Jacqueline Bisset
Needless to say, the film versions of Crime and Punishment don't have the glamorous babe-power.
That's a hint to me about the popularity.
Please, what could be more statistically inept than Freakonomics, or more lacking in rigour than Atlas Shrugged?
Dostoevsky is also a more urban author (and gritty urban, more The Wire than Sex and the City), at least from what I've read of him, which probably is more appealing to students at higher-ranked schools.
Kinda fitting that "I don't read" is under 1,000.
Crime and Punishment is good for the ax murder.
Not to be a Jonathan Franzen-style hater, but Anna Anna Karenina was an Oprah's book club selection. I believe it popped up on the bestseller lists as a result. Even if college students are not the primary audience for book clubs, readership is strongly influenced by network effects. In other words, if my Mom really likes the book she might give it to me when she's done. For Crime and Punishment, since it didn't have a similar Oprah bump, the readership is going to be more tightly concentrated in people who seek out long Russian novels.
Lolita is easier to explain because you would expect people attracted to wordplay and psychological and narrative gamesmanship to do well on at least the verbal sections of the SAT.
DJ Superflat: Dostoevsky, by the time he wrote Crime and Punishment, was pretty reactionary.
I think the Oprah book club is the best explanation.
There's a huge difference in style and substance between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky that probably accounts for the difference. Dostoyevsky's novels have far more psychological and philosophical depth than Tolstoy's, which probably accounts for some of the difference there. Plus, Anna Karenina is just an easier read than Crime and Punishment.
Anna K was one of Oprah's book choices. That probably brought it down to the masses. I feel comfortable recommending that book to anyone. The same is not true of Dostoevsky; you have got to be hard to deal with his characters, and wretched to understand them. I love them both.
speaking as a certified old person, the most striking thing to me is catch-22's presence: i had no idea that college kids still read it.
DJ,
'Anna Karenina" is _arguably_ the greatest novel ever written. It's hard to classify as simply a 'romance'- it includes long discussions of religion, economics, war, and man's reaction in the face of death.
I would disagree with your political characterization. While neither Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky can be pigeonholed, and both had some 'right wing' as well as 'left wing' views, Dostoevsky certainly considered himself a reactionary in the sense of being fiercely attached to the monarchy, the established church, the social order, and fiercely hostile to socialist and anarchist movements.
Tolstoy is even harder to categorized- what do you say about someone who was simultaneously opposed to private property, sexual intercourse, war, criminal justice, and the established Church. In the end however, I would think he was more on the Left than on the Right in terms of being a fierce critic of established society, and particularly of capitalism. The Soviets saw him as a sympathetic writer because of his 'communistic ' beliefs about property and economics.
Given that Hamlet is only slightly above "Dan Brown" -- and Wuthering Heights is way below Life of Pi -- I'd say the methodology is suspect.
I think the most surprising thing in that entire page was that they somehow classified Lolita as "Chick-Lit".
anonymous internet bragging time: while some of my favorite books are on that chart, my SAT score isnt.
More mysterious is the gap between "the bible" (middlebrow) and "the holy bible" (lowbrow). Yeah, methinks this doesn't prove anything.
Both are truly great novels, but Anna Karenina is probably a lot easier to get into for people without super high-brow tastes in literature in terms of subject matter, narrative structure, and prose style. Anna Karenina is pretty engaging right from the start whereas Crime and Punishment spends a lot of time near the beginning introducing characters who will become important later and various fairly abstract intellectual themes. Anna Karenina, if memory serves, is fairly entertaining right from the beginning. That doesn't mean that Crime and Punishment is in some objective sense deeper, just that it is a bit less accessible. Also, Tolstoy's prose style is much, much easier to read, though some English language translations flatten out the differences, which is a real shame.
So I'm not sure why you are surprised. Have you actually read both of these, Matt?
Kraz,
'The Bible' should probably be sorted out by edition. I would suspect that some translations are more popular at some colleges, and others at other ones. I would imagine that East Coast Ivy League students would probably prefer the Oxford Annotated version, and maybe less educated people might prefer one of the 'contemporary language' translations.
Matt, were those parentheticals referring to the readers or to the books themselves? Because "middlebrow" is a word that seems more likely to be applied to books than people, but I'm not sure that's how you meant it. Clarify.
Second Hector, and I'll add that in Anna Karenina Tolstoy was deeply concerned with aspects of the psychological realism that he obsessed over in his work. For instance, the relationship between body posture/positioning and thoughts. **SPOILER** Anna, as it turns out, is not the world's most sympathetic character, but the psychological narration still makes a moving and engaging moment of her death scene. And the evolution/devolution of her relationship with Vronsky, wherein she sees his transition from moon-eyed love to forward-looking, livelihood-building love as in fact a loss of love, is a tragedy of the way people don't comprehend each other's perceptions. **SPOILER OVER**
But Tolstoy didn't just talk about these things; he told a beautiful story that laid them out in the finer details of the plot. And the genius of it is that in so doing, he made a book that people who want to read a romance novel can read and a book that people who want to explore social criticism, psychology, and death can read.
I would also say that, while I kind of liked Crime & Punishment, I've always thought The Brothers Karamazov was the better of Dostoevsky's best known books, both as a piece of prose and as an object of study. C&P delves deeper into one particular psychological area, but BK just takes on so many different things and turns your head upside down in so many different ways while using a plot that moved with much more urgency.
I think the most surprising thing in that entire page was that they somehow classified Lolita as "Chick-Lit".
Acctually, I think it's color-coded as "Erotica." No more accurate, but interesting that it isn't a "Classic." Maybe "Dystopian?"
Does it make anyone else uncomfortable that all of the books on the list that are classified as African-American literature can be found among the "top 12 books that make you dumb." I know that the list is suppose to be silly fun, but it seems to indicate some really ugly elitism.
-jk
While the list is strange (Mere Christianity is better for the brain than "C S :ewis?"), to me the strangest thing of all is the list of actresses who've played Anna in comments above omitting Garbo. Just showing my age, I guess.
jk, I noticed that. I think it says less about the elitism of those making the graph and more about the structures of society and of the test itself that lead to such test score disparities.
Statistically speaking, it's (obviously) misleading to say these books make you smart. These books are simply read by smart people. The favorite publication of someone who scores a 1600 could be "Busty Blonds Gone Wild." This doesn't mean Busty Blonds will make you any smarter.
I think "Busty Blonds Gone Wild" is more fairly characterized as a anthropological field study than a work of fiction, which this list seems to focus on.
And it certainly does educate readers about the behaviors of the BB in her natural, wild, state.
This doesn't mean Busty Blonds will make you any smarter.
I beg to differ.
So, SAT scores are a measure of intelligence now? That's even shakier than using IQ tests.
I figured that it measured how well you took standardized tests.
jk -
that was one of the first things i noticed. there is nothing dumb about their eyes were watching god!
to be fair, i doubt that this list's intention is to single out african americans for their poor test-taking skills. it's just a depressing side effect.
Not being a religious fella myself, I still like the fact that the Book of Mormon trounced the Holy Bible.
Not being a religious fella myself, I still like the fact that the Book of Mormon trounced the Holy Bible.
Wait a minute: Matt thinks that a 1300 puts you into the category of "super-smart"? I mean, it sure doesn't mean "dumb", but "super-smart"? No.
Is this how Gore got "brilliant" with his 1355?
If someone's reading the troika of Melville, Hardy, and Dawn Powell - they're usually pretty smart.
On the other hand, if they're knee-deep in Proust, Cather, and Barthelme - they're suspect.
Only neurotic dorks cling to Ayn Rand. You can get a much better indication of someone's intelligence from the poets and philosophers they favor.
after anna k. got the oprah selection, i remember going to the beach on long island and seeing every woman aged 17 to 50 reading the same "O"-marked copy. kind of absurd.
Trevor: I think it's safe to say that no one actually reads Proust.
Ayn Rand's high placement is probably thanks to engineering types. Smart, libertarian types who wouldn't know a good book if it hit them in the face.
I still like the fact that the Book of Mormon trounced the Holy Bible.
True, but I thought that 'The Bible' trouncing 'The Holy Bible' was a bit more telling.
tolstoy's kinda reactionary, doestawhatever is a radical
Just the opposite. Dostoevsky, at least after his traumatic experience in a Siberian prison, was as reactionary as they come. He was a diehard monarchist and supporter of the Church. Just look at his portrayal of Western-influenced liberals like Miusov, in The Brothers Karamazov. Tolstoy, by contrast, was nothing if not radical. Sure you don't have them confused?
For what it's worth, Nabokov considered Anna Karenina "the supreme masterpiece of nineteenth-century literature," but detested Dostoevsky. IIRC one of his students walked out of his class after he gave his views on "the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigmarole."
if they're knee-deep in Proust, Cather, and Barthelme - they're suspect.
erm, having read some stuff from all of the above, I cannot for the life of me figure out what they're supposed to have in common
As far as I can tell, all this list shows is that being in the high-SAT crowd correlates with being a sociopathic, quasi-Nietzschean loser who is only interested in molesting underage girls, getting away with murder, laughing at the meaninglessness of human endeavor, and libertarianism.
Also, I second the opinion that The Brothers Karamazov is substantially better than Crime and Punishment. Crime and Punishment is really good, but The Brothers Karamazov has a lot more going on and is more carefully constructed (Dostoevsky was chronically in debt and wrote most of his stuff in installments in a fractic effort to pay the bills, but was able to spend the last decade or so of his life on The Brothers K without being under such time pressure). Crime and Punishment's only clear advantage is being shorter, I think. I suspect that is why it is somewhat better known, at least in the States.
Between War and Peace and Anna Karenina, it is hard for me to say. I'd have to reread them both.
Glad to see the defenders of Anna K. James Joyce was also a huge fan of Tolstoy, and Joyce derived, I think, his principle that "the extraordinary is for journalists" from Anna K.
As someone who has read all of Joyce, Mann, and yes, Proust Anna Karenina remains my favourite and most admired novel. Tolstoy made the quotidian transcendant, in a style accessible to anyone literate. It simply can't get any better than that.
awesome -- more confirmation that i'm really freaking smart.
A few of the comments seem confused about the methodology of the study. SAT scores are not here used as a measure of the intelligence of the individual, but of the quality of the school attended.
So it is not that an individual who scores 1300 is supersmart, but that a book that is rated at 1300 went to a school like Harvard and so is supersmart. (Actually the top score goes to people who went to Caltech which may explain some of the geeky libertarian stuff.)
But the important measure in the study of ones smartness is ones University rather than ones IQ.
For what it's worth, Nabokov considered Anna Karenina "the supreme masterpiece of nineteenth-century literature," but detested Dostoevsky.
In my view, that's worth a lot, but I'm not going to pretend to have read Anna Karenina. Nabokov often made a big deal out of how bad Crime and Punishment was. I've read it three times (although long ago) and I do agree that some of it is absurd. Nabokov was right to point out the facileness of Sonya the saintly whore and certain plot devices. Additionally, IIRC Dostoyevsky concludes the novel by advocating a kind of utopian, redemptive Russian Orthodox Christianity which undercuts its earlier psychological perspicacity. C&P compellingly portrays how radical thought and nihilism lay Raskolnikov low, but then assigns his deliverance to their religious, mystical mirror.
I can't remember if this is accurate, but I also got the sense that the pawnbroker lady was recognizably Jewish to a 19th Century, Russian reader, and if so, there's a whole raft of cliche and turpitude with that as well.
"Between War and Peace and Anna Karenina, it is hard for me to say. I'd have to reread them both."
Maybe it's a zen thing, but too much happens in W & P. As Tolstoy aged and gained in wisdom and craft, he more and more seemed to become lapidary and transparent, until we reach the mysteries of the late works like "How Much Land..."
All remember the threshing scene, but every one of the Levin chapters is an astonishment. Nothing "interesting" happens (which is the counterpoint to the Anna/Vronsky chapters) yet the reader is elevated.
Tolstoy could have written 20 pages on a man changing a lightbulb, change your life, and leave you wondering how it happened. Genius is an understatement.
But I would not expect a fan of the Wire to understand and appreciate Tolstoy. Doestoevsky is more your style, kid.
The difference between Crime and Punishment & Anna K. totally makes sense -- Dostoevsky is a much harder read than the early (pre-religious nut) Tolstoy.
Nothing against Tolstoy -- I like him more than Dostoevsky. And really, being able to write in such an accessible style arguably takes more talent.
I'll take Dostoevsky any day over Tolstoy. Tolstoy is about as a deep as a rain puddle (OK, I'm exaggerating). And does it really say a whole lot that Nabokov and Joyce preferred Tolstoy? All brilliant stylists, but again, substantively I don't think any of them hold a candle to Dostoevsky.
I couldn't get over the position of 'Atlas Shrugged'. I can scarcely imagine a book that would make you dumber.
hey bob, if you like weighty tomes, I can recommend "The Man without Qualities" - unfortunately it never got finished and thus lacks a proper ending, which can be a bit of a letdown after that amount of pages
... substantively I don't think any of them hold a candle to Dostoevsky.
I'll comment here on Nabokov; I've never read Joyce. It depends on what you mean by "substantively". If by it you mean philosophical discussion of weighty "issues", then yes, Dostoyevsky clobbers you over the head, whereas Nabokov maintains several "deep thoughts" -- totalitarianism is bad, intellectual contrivance kills art, etc. -- but generally eschewed psychological polyphony and trendy treatment of politics and religion in favor of characterization, gamesmanship in language and plot, and a relentless search for beauty, the latter in which he was blessed to be a "great stylist", as you say.
This doesn't mean he was a shallow thinker, though. Intellectually, for instance, I'll take Nabokov's stance that creedal thinking destroys the mind over Dostoyevsky's advocacy of one creedal system over another in Crime and Punishment.
Bob - as I said, I'd have to reread them. For what it's worth, I loved both but was more taken with Dostoevsky when younger (16-22), but my tastes may very well have changed since then.
While Tolstoy is unquestionably a more beautiful stylist than Dostoevsky is even in his best moments, Dostoevsky's prose style is also quite interesting and more varied than Tolstoy - a lot of The Brothers K is purposefully written in a style that is a bit off from the point of view of literary Russian, but is supposed to convey something about the narrator (this is called Skaz, in Russian literary theory if I remember correctly). English language translations tend to flatten all of this out (Pevear and Volohonsky may be the best in this respect), so a lot of what makes Dostoevsky interesting is sometimes lost especially if you are reading Constance Garnett. Crime and Punishment is less interesting in this respect which is one reason that I consider The Brothers K to be better.
For those objecting to ideological nonsense in Crime and Punishment, I think that you'd have to acknowledge that some of the end of Anna Karenina is somewhat mared by the early signs of Tolstoy's religious conversion (or whatever you want to call it). One plus of War and Peace is that you don't really get any of that. I do agree that parts of War and Peace aren't quite up to the standards of Anna Karenina. On the other hand, the moralizing (especially with respect to female sexuality) isn't as bad (compare Anna to Natasha).
at least they got the color purple in the right place.
And Enders Game ???
Hilarious that the main criticism leveled at me is that I'm religious. Boo-fucking-hoo, whiny secularists. I'll see you in Hell.
Seems like the Anna Karenina/Crime & Punishment gap is probably pretty easy to explain: the middle-of-the-road books on this list also tend to be the ones that are most commonly assigned in high school English classes--that's how they get on the list of 100 most "popular" books on Facebook, since the typical person on the site is right out of high school. (Unlike, say, the typical reader of this blog.) But Lolita and Crime & Punishment are definitely not widely assigned books for high school English classes. Everybody reads Anna Karenina, 'cause they have to. Only people who read famous Russian novels for fun (or keep reading books once they get to college) read Crime & Punishment.
People who go to Harvard end up running the country, major corporations or blogging at the Atlantic.
And this means the college has smart people at it?
What's wrong with this picture?
The country is fucked, major corporations are practically organized crime, and the blogger here can't spell or practice normal grammar.
I've never read Dostoevsky or Tolstoy and I never will. I hated Shakespeare in high school, too. I read Ayn Rand forty years ago and went way past her by the mid-70's.
What matters are the non-fiction books you read that give you some clue as to what the hell is going on. A few fiction books can also give you some attitude adjustment, but that has to be backed up by some reality.
Lists like these demonstrate the reading habits of people who think reading habits demonstrate "superiority".
In other words, this is all bullshit elitism. Standard chimp behavior.
you missed my point -- i was talking about how D and T are perceived, how AK and CP are perceived, not about what they really reflect or are (perception is more likely the driver of readership). and CP is not a particularly long russian novel, at least compared to AK, WP, and/or BK.
it's like lefty college kids idolizing che. they generally know little about what he actually did and/or stood for, are more often just responding to the romantic image (and even more often just the image on the t-shirt).
oh, forgot to weigh in on the merits:
i go with BK above both AK and CP. i know it's heresy, but CP actually seemed somewhat simplistic to me, not particularly gripping. AK was great, but i thought it dragged towards the end, didn't care too much after about half. BK, by contrast, i loved, think the inquisitor stuff is some of the greatest ever (i know that's not a novel (hah!) position), one of the few book i can imagine reading again. some mentioned joyce, i have a tough time ranking BK against ulysses, because the books are so different, i'm not sure i don't love ulysses for the same reasons you love anything difficult to get through that you survive (to justify the effort) or just because i was/am a complete poseur.
and what, no shout outs for the wake? i mean, significant chunks of ulysses are straightforward, not so the wake.
as long as we're talking books, for those who mentioned nabokov, a question: i know pale fire's supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread, but i couldn't get into it. worth another shot?
and anyone have anything else they think ranks up there with tolstoy, D, joyce, melville, etc.? for those who haven't read it, i think independent people by laxness does, but can't think of much else.
oh, and rich? you're so right, people read all this stuff just cause they're elitist, it's not that (e.g) shakespeare is way entertaining, some of the most entertaining language use ever, gives insight into life's deepest problems, etc., just about the whole world venerates things like shakespeare, tolstoy, etc., just so they can feel at home at cocktail parties with the snooty folk at ivy league schools and somesuch. so glad you were around to keep it real, cause i hadn't realized you could read both fiction and non-fiction, that we live in a golden age of non-fiction, etc. you the man dog!
Odd that Tolstoy should be called an 'elitist'- he spent the later part of his life idoloizing the Russian peasant and advocating that everyone get back to the land.
'Anna Karenina' is every bit as ideological as 'Crime and Punishment', or 'The Brothers Karamazov'. The difference is that Tolstoy's style is lyrical and beautiful enough so that you don't necessarily realize you're reading a work that was intended to convey a specific message. But if you know anything about Tolstoy's Christian conversion and his views on economics, war, and modernity in general, _Anna Karenina_ has a lot to say about them. I suppose part of the difference is that unlike Dostoyevsky, who essentially supported the Right and opposed the Left of his time, Tolstoy hates them both equally, which allows his writing to be a bit less narrowly polemical.
"people read all this stuff just cause they're elitist,"
I didn't say that. Someone who appreciates literature as literature can certainly read whatever they want. I don't happen to do that because I really don't care about literature as literature. I read fiction that interests me, for reasons which frequently entail explorations of meaning.
I don't for the most part find period fiction, no matter how "classical", to be useful in that regard. High school taught me that deciphering Shakepeare's period English was not worth the effort for whatever insight I might get from it. I also hated poetry in high school for the same reason.
What I said was that lists like these are intended to establish superiority for some people over others. Which is why Matt posted it.
"just about the whole world venerates things like shakespeare, tolstoy, etc."
Thank you for proving my point.
um, slugger, if you're really think that people love will and (e.g.) the beatles just cause of the hype, you're a fool (no offensive, it's just sorta objectively true that certain things really are that great).
and i didn't read the posting of the list to establish superiority for anyone (a little insecure, dick?), rather just an insight into what people at various schools read. e.g., the folk at caltech have the highest scores on any objective intelligence test, but (to visciously stereotype) they're more likely reading ender's game (great book, by the way, but rest of the series sucks) than great lit. doesn't mean they're less "smart" than the folk at harvard (in fact, they're likely smarter on average, particularly in certain fields), just have different interests.
get over your insecurities, it's not pretty.
Hack, if you'll never read Dostoevsky or Tolstoy (or Joyce or Nabokov for that matter) you are seriously, seriously missing out, my friend. Something does not have to be "nonfiction" in order to illuminate truths about the world. The Brothers Karamazov is without a doubt Dostoevsky's best, and to Pagano, who thinks his treatment of creeds of his day are "trendy," well, that's just ridiculous. There's nothing in Karamazov that's trendy, and as a poster above stated, the Grand Inquisitor is about as brilliant a piece of prose I've ever read. I'd also suggest you check out his short stories. Notes from Underground is simply magestic. I'll stop with the hyperbole, but man oh man, Dostoevsky is the cat's pajamas.
What? No love for George Eliot's Middlemarch? That is one seriously great novel that apparently no one has read. Yeah, it's really long and it's not even written by a Russian, but talk about deep...I really do think it has the ability to make you smarter if you read it.
"But the important measure in the study of ones smartness is ones University rather than ones IQ."
Yes, so a man who did his undergrad at Yale and got a MBA at Harvard would have to be pretty brilliant.
Wow, lots of people ragging on Tolstoy, but nobody willing to take a poke at Dostoevsky? D was a brilliant and profound writer, but the novels of his I've read (BK, C&P, and the Idiot) are often jumbled messes.
Maybe because of the time pressures mentioned above, or maybe because it's easier to frame problems than resolve them, but I found the endings pretty bad (especially the Idiot, which starts out great and just collapses about halfway through.)
Plus most of his characters come across as near caricatures, probably another effect of elevating the importance of theme so far above plot. The characters primary role is as archetypes or vessels for thematic concerns, rather than as characters per se.
Tolstoy, in contrast, crafted novels with fully human characters and with themes that developed organically from the plot and characters.
Having said all that, the Grand Inquisitor is the greatest piece of writing in Western Lit.
Wow, lots of people ragging on Tolstoy, but nobody willing to take a poke at Dostoevsky? D was a brilliant and profound writer, but the novels of his I've read (BK, C&P, and the Idiot) are often jumbled messes.
Maybe because of the time pressures mentioned above, or maybe because it's easier to frame problems than resolve them, but I found the endings pretty bad (especially the Idiot, which starts out great and just collapses about halfway through.)
Plus most of his characters come across as near caricatures, probably another effect of elevating the importance of theme so far above plot. The characters primary role is as archetypes or vessels for thematic concerns, rather than as characters per se.
Tolstoy, in contrast, crafted novels with fully human characters and with themes that developed organically from the plot and characters.
Having said all that, the Grand Inquisitor is the greatest piece of writing in Western Lit.
Tolstoy, in contrast, crafted novels with fully human characters and with themes that developed organically from the plot and characters, et al.
These culture threads would be a lot more fun to read if they didn't always degenerate into AP-English versions of What The Commenter Likes: "Chocolate's brown sweetness is simplistic and juvenile! I prefer the mature stylistic diversity and fully developed themes of strawberry!"
If we're gonna post our opinions here, people, could we at least try to offer some kind of supporting material?
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are both great. I prefer Dostoevsky as a thinker and Tolstoy as a writer, if that makes sense.
If we stipulate that this list is basically accurate-- kind of a stretch, especially with Oprah in mind, but what the hell, just for fun-- I'd second riffle's post upthread:
"I would bet that, by many who rate it highly, Anna Karenina is seen as a high-toned romance novel."
It's more likely to be misunderstood and enjoyed at a superficial level (a superficial level-- romance!-- that it is actually mocking). Crime and Punishment, on the other hand, doesn't offer such easy misinterpretation-- it's pretty heady stuff even on a superficial level.
I wonder if people's preference for Tolstoy vs. Dostoevsky correlates with their political preference? I certainly do think that Tolstoy's political/social point of view was closer to the truth than Dostoevsky's, and perhaps that informs my
artistic taste as well. (Although the Brothers Karamazov is a superlatively great book as well).
Anna Karenina has too many signs of Tolstoys emerging religous/sexual 'issues'. Tolstoy loves and lusts after Anna - and because of this he must punish her. Anna didn't commit suicide - she was pushed.
Hector - we disagree with your earlier remark . Experience suggests that upscale folks like modern translations of the Bible - while the masses like the adorned language of the KJV even at the expense of accuracy.
If we want to blame Oprah for the popularity of Anna Karenina among college students, remember that 100 Years of Solitude, a book associated with a higher SAT score, was also in her book club a while back.Let the Tolstoy vs. Dostoevsky debate rage on
Comments closed February 09, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
are you kidding? anna is (somewhat incorrectly) considered a romance; crime is a thought piece on justice, etc. the latter appeals to intellectual poseurs far more than the former (tolstoy's kinda reactionary, doestawhatever is a radical).
Posted by dj superflat | January 26, 2008 1:53 PM