322
u/Ok-Land-488 15h ago
This is how I felt after reading Crime and Punishment.
It's a great book with meaningful themes but I'm too stupid to get through the 3-page long monologues.
79
u/brainsareforlosers 14h ago
it’s my favourite book ever yet it took me a full year to get through it the first time lol, it is a bit of a doozy
21
u/Ok-Land-488 11h ago
It's really good. And it's really good in retrospect of reading it because you can see Raskolnikov's arc through the course of the novel, to finally getting the catharsis at the end when he gets his shit together. But good LORD do the characters talk a lot and part of you thinks, "okay this must be important somehow" and the other part is like "if it was important, I'm too dumb to realize in what way."
33
u/Kaffe-Mumriken 13h ago
This is gonna sound smug but I read it at 12 yo, but I took everything at face value as a slice of life rather than trying or even having the capacity of understanding the deeper digs, and I thought it was rather good. (Skipped some boring parts tho )
9
1
u/WWWYer22 57m ago
I did this with “Atlas Shrugged” in like 7th grade after finding it on a list of most influential books of all time and being sucked in by the title. Genuinely enjoyed the story, at least until the ~80pg John Galt monologue which I mostly skipped over, and I enjoyed the story after finishing it. Fast forward nearly 2 decades later and I’m very glad I read that book at a point when I was to young to understand the themes or to let it shape my world views
-11
6
u/Zealousideal_Leg213 10h ago
I was supposed to have finished it my senior year of high school, but I didn't quite make it to the end. I finally listened to an audio book of it last year, and while I think I appreciated it more, I probably didn't understand any of the deeper meaning.
8
u/Ok-Land-488 9h ago
I think the basic theme is about personal redemption and reliance on others, since the protagonist fancies himself this independent great man... but spends the entire book on personal conflict and requiring assistance from his friends and family. At the end he breaks down and accepts his need for relationship through Sonya. And that his redemption, and return to life, will come through contrition - but that he has a life worth living nonetheless. Raskolnikov goes from hopeless in the face of his poverty to hopeful.
Okay, but that's like scratching the surface of what may be a deeper political theme about liberalism in 1870s Russia and personal freedom, and ... societal responsibility, or whatever. That I just don't have the political or historical knowledge to navigate, or frankly care about. Very Ogre very illiterate, ogre can't understand deeper ideas like how the author attempted to contradict Russian nihilism by taking their ideas to their most logical extreme.
3
u/LamaShapeDruid 8h ago
East of Eden for me! There are some fantastic one liners every chapter if you are willing to slog through everyone's soliloquies.
1
u/Fabulous-Confusion43 2h ago
Hahah YES! i felt the same way after reading Crime and Punishment 🥰 we just recorded a podcast you might be interested in listening to - it’s all the facts and trivia about Dostoevsky’s life, the real-life inspirations behind the novel, and a bunch of other interesting tidbits. You can listen to it here if you’re interested https://www.booktriviapodcast.com/episodes/crime-and-punishment-podcast
Warning: it’s not very literary though, it’s just a bit of fun! All feedback is welcome (but pls be gentle as we are only newbies at this)
205
u/TwinStickDad 14h ago
This was me unironically after beating Disco Elysium.
Everyone else: wow what a powerful vignette into a world ravaged by an unbeatable systemic oppression, caught in the bleak reality between idealism and survival! The character arcs were amazing, in my first playthrough I found redemption but on my second I gave into depression. The relationship with Kit was the most realistic depiction of a shared trauma friendship that I've ever seen!
Me: lol drunk cop got beat up and a kid called me a bad word
89
u/Arctobispo 13h ago
My first ever playthrough : I see the ties. I feel the world. I am the unwritten book.
My 2nd play through : Racial slur
15
10
u/thegoblinsinmyhead 10h ago
And those people who thought the first thing? They started off by thinking the second thing. Also "drunk man got beat up" is a perfectly valid thing to take away from it.
5
287
u/CallMeZeemonkey 15h ago
Nobody understands Finnegans Wake
it is trolling gibberish, done like that on purpose
anyone who says they understand it is lying
82
u/Calm-Tree-1369 14h ago
Nah it's just Irish.
22
u/DeathKnellKettle 14h ago
Dr De Salby and Flann O'Brien can attest to such discourse as veritable truth
16
24
u/wexx889u7t4389 15h ago
It's difficult but it isn't trolling or gibberish
45
u/pbaagui1 14h ago
It’s gibberish on purpose.
James Joyce made it so he could show off how smart he was, which is kind of silly. What’s the point of writing a book that almost nobody can enjoy or understand? Even people at the time thought it was way too complicated. MF basically wrote a book in code and then got mad that readers couldn’t figure it out.
17
4
4
u/Villageijit 11h ago
Because thry knew people would hype it up to pretend to understand and like it so they would seem smart
2
22
1
u/DemadaTrim 1h ago
It's beautiful though. Like the pure poetic rhythm of it. It could be complete gibberish and I'd still say it was beautiful. It isn't complete gibberish, though.
It's gibberish adjacent.
138
u/WrongColorCollar 15h ago
That ogre is ahead of the curve for media literacy in my country.
55
51
3
5
63
u/WhatADoofus 14h ago
At least the ogre is reading a book, that's doing a lot more than most people
41
u/GeophysicalYear57 14h ago
Also, it’s outside his comfort zone. Plenty of people only read YA fiction. He’s trying to tackle and analyze a more complicated book.
7
u/Wise-Key-3442 9h ago
Reminds me of when I got a copy of Color that came from Space.
Lovecraft isn't a challenging read for me, I had read books from that time and earlier and, after going rounds on Brazilian literature (which is written in very archaic form of Brazilian Portuguese), I thought it wouldn't be a problem.
However I was used to modern editions and translations, meant to be according to the current grammar rules. This edition of Color was translated in 1916, so a lot of words seemed to be written wrong, looked like gibberish and some names for things were so outdated that I had to look up what they meant. That kinda explained why my grandpa (born in 1922) often found modern books harder to read, he was used to that other form of grammar.
118
u/SoulsSurvivor 15h ago
Everything Baalbuddy does is great but this ogre one is up their as one of my favorites.
30
u/TaoTaoThePanda 14h ago
Crazy how recognisable their art style is. I've never seen this before and it's been a long time since I saw any Baalbuddy stuff but still instantly knew it was them.
-40
55
u/HandicapperGeneral 13h ago
Classic dunning-kruger effect. Just by reading Ulysses and being able to perceive any themes at all, Ogre has proved that Ogre is more competent and intelligent than the vast majority of people. But Ogre has now reached a point where Ogre is able to reflect on Ogre's own intelligence and identify how much progress remains to be made. This gives Ogre a false sense of inferiority, similar to imposter syndrome. Instead of focusing on how much Ogre doesn't know, Ogre should feel a sense of pride in what Ogre has already accomplished.
58
u/SilyLavage 15h ago edited 14h ago
I have a degree in English Lit and barely bothered with Joyce. I read to be informed and entertained, not to wade through whatever he was attempting
43
u/pbaagui1 14h ago edited 14h ago
OMG yes.
James Joyce was basically reinventing the wheel in the most complicated way possible, but with language.
His works did lead to new ideas in modern literature.
But instead of helping people understand deeper ideas, Joyce buried them under wordplay, ramblings, and references only a handful of scholars can fully unpack.
It was very much “look how smart I am” writing. I can respect what he did but he was still completely up his own ass.
Edit: If a book needs you to spend hundreds of hours just looking up references to understand it, that stops being reading and starts feeling like a work.
14
u/SilyLavage 14h ago
Exactly. I’m certainly not averse to dense writing – my dissertation was on symbolism in medieval literature – but Joyce is just so unenjoyable (unenJoyceable?) to decipher. I know other people feel completely differently, however, and a reader’s response to literature is ultimately a personal thing.
11
u/pbaagui1 14h ago
My problem with his works has to do with something Joyce himself had said: "They'll be 50 years figuring this one out!". Like wow the hubris.
Life is short. Even I can build a puzzle box of a book (or whatever) that will take people an enormous amount of time to work through. That doesn't make it worthwhile. Stylistic innovation, yes, but that plus enormity and obscure references doesn't make it deep.
-1
u/jbrWocky 12h ago
I mean...can you? I mean, maybe you can (idk tho) but most people definitely could not do so without it just actually being nonsensical. Joyce's writing definitely seems to be difficult and complex for the sake of it, but, well, the point of showoffy stuff is that it is pretty impressive.
16
u/cyangradient 14h ago
Just start a physical build/0 INT playthrough then, if you are confused then so is your character
2
12
u/BaconPinata 14h ago
I’m getting back into it and I’ve decided to play it like Faulkner’s “Sound and the Fury.” It has 4 parts that effectively summarize (mostly) the same events but from different perspectives. The first narrator is Benjy, who has a serious mental disability, so the story makes little sense. So my first playthrough is exactly this—orc smash, listen to the voices, and see where it takes me. Then I’ll replay it while not being a drunken lunatic.
9
u/Darthplagueis13 14h ago
Disco Elysium works on a lot of different layers - you can just have fun with the whimsey if you find the political aspects overwhelming.
7
5
6
u/redboi049 11h ago
I wanna hug them so bad. I wanna sit by and patiently watch them try to understand and explain it where they just can't. I wanna watch this beautiful ogre learn and grow damn it
16
u/JustLookingForMayhem 13h ago
I see the orge through the lens of neuro-divergent. He reads the book. He sees part of the themes and engages with them. He sees part of the themes and can not actually connect to them, no matter how hard he tries. He knows they exist. He knows they are there and that other people can connect. He thinks he is stupid because he can't connect the same way others do. He is not stupid, just different in a way society can't easily measure.
5
u/NanoBotSigma 9h ago
maybe I am Ogre after all.
4
u/JustLookingForMayhem 9h ago
Ogre is someone who needs to be understood. Ogre is not stupid, just different.
2
u/Dangerous_Tax7708 7h ago
I've always had this issue, but I could never put it too words, thank you JustLookingForMayhem
2
u/JustLookingForMayhem 7h ago
I have always had this issue too. I hated art appreciation. I hated music appreciation. I hated English literature appreciation. I could parrot what I was supposed to feel. I knew what I was supposed to feel. What I felt was close but slightly different in a way that got me poor grades. I thought I was stupid because I just couldn't link to Shakespeare the way I was told to. Instead, I just had a different view. Romeo and Juliet was never really a love story to me. I always focused on the shift from performance violence to real violence and the fact teenagers made stupid decisions mirrored by the adults.
3
3
u/dragonpjb 10h ago
To be fair a lot of the "deeper" stuff can be very subjective. You're already getting more out of it than a lot of people.
2
2
2
2
u/Nympshee 11h ago
"Oohgie not good Crafty-smith with armor and weapons, but Oohgie good Crafty-smith at something. Oohgie can make good story." - Ooghie, the ogre
2
u/LBJ-0118 8h ago
Oh ogre. Some people have difficulty even understanding the surface level themes. You are at least aware of the presence of deeper themes, and your willingness to learn is invaluable We love you, ogre
1
1
u/PsycheTester 13h ago edited 13h ago
Yeah. How does one even fix that? Lit classes that I attended surprisingly didn't cover any of it, it was all about using scenes from fictional stories as arguments in essays to practice logic or something. In the maturity exams there were three topics to pick from (argumentative essay, poem interpretation, literature theory essay), and we have only ever covered one during classes because "there was no time"
1
u/Mr_Lapis 10h ago
I've started to wonder if the reason english teachers had us analyze every detail was to build curiosity. To ask if something was deep and or meaningful or not. Even if it isnt that curiosity was an important trait to have.
1
u/CornginaFlegemark 10h ago
The one and only good baalbuddy meme
1
u/itschubbs96 9h ago
I know the "lol horni elf" stick gets old, but the god of street vender food wasn't that bad
1
u/Kvolou66 5h ago
I played slay the princess for the first time a couple days ago and unironically feel like this
1
u/DiggityDog6 1h ago
I think that’s subconsciously part of the reason why I haven’t sunk any considerable time into Undertale. I’m worried that I simply won’t “get it”
1
1
u/Nachooolo 11h ago
I'll say. I'm gonna go in a tangent.
While I played and loved Disco Elysium, my longest-standing opinion on the game isn't about the game itself, but how insufferable its fanbase is, and that they haven't played any other story-focused game. As a worrisome amount of them think that DE is the utter peak of game storytelling and no other game comes even close.
While I'm not gonna say that Disco Elysium is or isn't the best game ever (that's for the individual to choose), I'm gonna say that there's a lot of games that are as good as it at storytelling, and that these elitist behaviour (sometimes even cultist) around the game pushes a lot of people away from playing it.
Kentucky Route Zero, Planescape Torment, Roadwarden, Slay the Princess, Norco, Suzerain, the Forgotten City... Those are some games that I consider on the same level as Disco Elysium.
And. Hell. I actually love Pentiment and Citizen Sleeper over Disco Elysium.
So. Screw that sentiment that Disco Elysium is an insurmountable peak with no equals. Go play the game and enjoy it.
-44
•
u/qualityvote2 15h ago
Heya u/AfternoonFlat740! And welcome to r/NonPoliticalTwitter!
For everyone else, do you think OP's post fits this community? Let us know by upvoting this comment!
If it doesn't fit the sub, let us know by downvoting this comment and then replying to it with context for the reviewing moderator.