Comments
__DraGooN_ t1_j5pb87f wrote
I can't believe how brainwashed or ignorant some of these westerners are!
The Americans, Brits, Australians and many other European countries have invaded multiple countries just in the last couple of decades. They routinely drop bombs on civilian areas using drones and the conflicts have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Asia and Africa.
Despite all this, it still would be plain stupidity to claim that American or British authors are somehow evil and need to be boycotted.
This might be a rant unrelated to the topic. But as an Asian it's hard not to notice the difference in the discourse when a fellow European country is now invaded. People act as if some never before heard of horror and barbarism has been unleashed, when their own nations were committing those same horrors on others.
bhbhbhhh t1_j5qdjs0 wrote
Have you read any postcolonial critique of American and British lit, just as it exists for Russian lit?
KINGGS t1_j5u3afj wrote
You wrote a lot for someone who couldn’t have possibly read the article.
mooimafish33 t1_j5ptljb wrote
When was the last time the west invaded and attempted to annex a democracy?
Gentlerwiserfree t1_j5r82tx wrote
So not living in a democracy means that you, as an ordinary person, aren’t worth protecting?
Gentlerwiserfree t1_j5r8dii wrote
So Americans weren’t disturbed by the nationalism in War and Peace before this war, they were just bothered by that one throwaway racist comment?
Wow, people are shallow.
(War and Peace is one of my favorite books even though I disagree with Tolstoy about practically everything. There hasn’t been a book written in any language without beliefs I find disturbing, so I’m just used to it, and writing my own.)
Brizoot t1_j5m1e1x wrote
This is a moron level concern.
E. This is like being afraid to read Brandon Sanderson novels because of 'let's go brandon'
bhbhbhhh t1_j5m2i1v wrote
And yet it's a part of how humans process art and war, just as people became critical of the art of enemy nations in the world wars. Why shouldn't it be written about?
KINGGS t1_j5n917v wrote
Maybe you should read the article instead of leaving such a pointless shallow comment
SteakMedium4871 t1_j5m20o2 wrote
The author could also write an autobiographical novel called "The Idiot".
KINGGS t1_j5mgudq wrote
This joke didn’t go over well at all did it?
SteakMedium4871 t1_j5mhc8v wrote
U win some, you lose some.
Handyandy58 t1_j5m5jej wrote
If you'd read the story, you'd know that they did.
SteakMedium4871 t1_j5m6zng wrote
The author of the article.
Handyandy58 t1_j5m7igx wrote
The article literally opens with the following lines:
>The first and only time I visited Ukraine was in 2019. My book “The Possessed”—a memoir I had published in 2010, about studying Russian literature—had recently been translated into Russian, along with “The Idiot,” an autobiographical novel, and I was headed to Russia as a cultural emissary, through an initiative of pen America and the U.S. Department of State.
The author of the article did write an autobiographical novel called "The Idiot" and yes it is a reference to Dostoevsky's novel of the same name, as alluded to in the following paragraph.
LeviathanGank t1_j5p12o4 wrote
Russian literature is overrated
laurpr2 t1_j5myswk wrote
Guess the author isn't Ukrainian themselves since Ukraine has banned Russian lit.
(Also, I've exhausted my monthly free article quota so can't read the link.)
Handyandy58 t1_j5m6xsq wrote
I think this is easy to dismiss based on the headline, but I thought it was actually an interesting presentation of thoughts and opinions on the matter that actually originate in Ukraine and other countries nearby. I think this stands in contrast to a lot of the quick, vapid reactions we saw around boycotting everything "Russian" last year as shows of bullshit solidarity. I think this actually does a decent job of at least presenting some explanation of people who do truly believe that (e.g. Ukrainians, Georgians), even if you might not find their reasoning convincing. And the author does attempt to address their own perception of those arguments in good faith, performing a literary and historical analysis of the prominence of Russian novels in our culture and with respect to what relationship if any they have to the current politics in the region.