How To Fake Like You’ve Read Dostoevsky

Reading books is hard, yo! Fake your favorite author.

If you’re trying to present yourself as someone who is a brooding intellectual, let’s do a quick review of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

1. Knowing Dostoevsky’s first name is not important. Knowing how to pronounce his name is important. Say it like this: DOS [like the “dos” in “Dos Equis,” you drunk] –  TOY [the dirty kind]- EV [the nickname for that Russian guy you slept with] – SKI [the sport I cannot do]. Also, Dostoevsky is spelled various ways, but since you’re already too dumb and lazy to read, let’s only focus on this spelling. It’s how most Americans spell it and  America – fuck yeah!

2. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are not the same thing. Just because they are both Russian authors does not mean that you should put them in the same camp. Tolstoy will be covered in another post.

3. Crime and Punishment is like the Tell Tale Heart (you know the story by the first major Goth guy, right?). A man kills and the guilt eats away at him psychologically (very barebones of the plot, try not to talk specifics). No one who is a fan of Dostoevsky would only read Crime and Punishment. Name drop The Brothers Karamazov, say that you still read over Zosima’s passages when you need to feel inspired about your worldview.

4. Dostoevsky got exiled to Siberia because he’s a badass motherfucker.

5. Dostoevsky focused on ethical questions such as the role of free will and God in a man’s life. He wanted people to understand that depravity breeds depravity. Hopelessness will lead to hopelessness. Basically, if you act like an antisocial asshole, you’ll be an antisocial asshole (see: The Underground Man). This is because Dostoevsky was against nihilism and rationalism – he wanted to show how thinking without emotions leads to actions without emotions. But I’m probably getting too philosophical for you.

Good luck.

Salinger here.