Quote:
Originally Posted by mr.loverman 
i read cormac's "The Road" and I found it to be entirely lacking in humor. very unlike melville. read heller and loved it. i've read some dostoevksy but he seems overly moralistic and too influenced by his dark surroundings to be taken seriously.
Both of your criticisms of Dostoevsky are difficult to understand. If you can figure out a common morality in Dostoevsky's novels, you need to write about it--no critic has ever convincingly demonstrated this. His characters are embodiments of ideas that may sometimes relate to morality, but it would be hard to make the case that Dostoevsky advocates for any particular moral outlook.
And the idea that he was influenced by his dark surroundings is putting the cart before the horse. It would be understandable to read "The Possessed" and see it as heavily shaped by the Russian Revolution if it weren't for the fact that the novel was written 40+ years before the revolution.
