Why did I choose these three? Because they are best known in the West and hateable in their own way.
1) Dostoyevsky is insanely moralizing and can't tell a good story. All of his characters are one-dimensional, have a "revealing" name and exist only as an excuse for a sermon...
1) Dostoyevsky is insanely moralizing and can't tell a good story. All of his characters are one-dimensional, have a "revealing" name and exist only as an excuse for a sermon...
2) Tolstoy can tell a good story, which would've been amazing for a 300-page novel. But he always needs to stop and go onto a 500-page expose of some philosophical bullshit all of a sudden. He is like a Soviet toilet that starts flushing by itself at 2AM and just won't stop...
3) And Chekhov is depressing to the point of being suicidal. Does anyone ever survive any of his "comedies"? And he was a doctor, too! No doubt, there was a well-dug-up patch of ground in his back yard nobody ever knew about.
His short stories, less known here, are good, though.
His short stories, less known here, are good, though.
Other strong candidates:
Turgenev: a writer who vehemently believed that women can never have sex, probably because he had such a good time having sex with birth trees, judging by his interminable and spectacularly dull descriptions of nature that we were tortured with in school.
Turgenev: a writer who vehemently believed that women can never have sex, probably because he had such a good time having sex with birth trees, judging by his interminable and spectacularly dull descriptions of nature that we were tortured with in school.
Also, Gogol. Actually, very witty and a talented story-teller, but have you ever read Taras Bulba? The dude was a Nazi-level anti-semite (so was Dostoyevsky, BTW) and damn proud of it.
He is greatly redeemed by the fact that he was tremendously insane and died a raving lunatic.
He is greatly redeemed by the fact that he was tremendously insane and died a raving lunatic.
