Less the wrong horses, more the wrong horseshoes.

<Solzhenitsy focuses on the incompetence and corruption among the ruling class and the military leaders, which leads from one disaster to another.>

Not having horses also make Napoleon impotent against the Russians cavalry. In this, Tolstoy is correct, the horsement of the steppes are great riders and fighters.

The Russian army simply shadowed the French group, as they slowly disintegrated by starvation and disease. Contrary to myth, there are no decisive battles between Napoleon and his Russian counterparts on the march back from Moscow, just skirmishes and raids, by the better horse mounted troops of Russia.

Few people understand The Brothers Karamazov, those that do are in awe.

For the common man, it's just a long story about a dysfunctional family. But for the more enlightened among us, it's something much, much more!

Good post. Certainly Kramnik's career can't compare with Kasparov's, not even in one particular category, but the comparison with Fischer is more difficult. It seems in terms of quantity Kramnik is somewhat ahead of BF, although certainly in quality BF certainly leads. And yea it's refreshing to see Kramnik change his silly attitude, realizing (hopefully) his relatively modest place in history of chess. He's growing up, and that's a positive development.

On the side note: Kramnik is right about the Brother's K: the thing is way too long. I envy people who have the patience to read something so long. If it has (which I am sure it does) an important philosophical message, it seems Dostoyevsky could have communicated it in a much more compact manner, say 300 pages? Although then it wouldn't be classical literature anymore...

It's a great novel, with many oft-referenced scenes (e.g., The Grand Inquisitor parable)--but it does ramble.

Don't forget though, that it was a serial novel, written in 16 installments that were published in the Russian Herald over a period of almost two years. Dostoevsky admitted that of all his novels, the Brothers K. was the least planned out before he began writing the installments.

http://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/DS/07/08...

<[...]First, the separate edition, which appeared immediately after the serialization was completed and which serves as the basis for modern editions, preserves many aspects of the novel's serial form: titles, subtitles, segmentation, and format, even when the format was a typesetter's mistake, as was the case with the single uninterrupted paragraph of "The Grand Inquisitor."

In preserving his serial form, Dostoevsky differed from such Western writers as Dickens, Thackeray, or Trollope, who would dissolve and regroup the parts of their serials into new wholes as they prepared separate editions.

Second, the separate edition of The Brothers Karamazov preserves the mnemonic strategies (summaries, repeated phrases, recurring imagery) which Dostoevsky used to enable his initial readers to bridge the gaps between installments.

The devices which made it possible for readers to control nearly two years of reading prove not unhelpful for readers encountering the 700-page assembled text. Third, the initial critical response to the novel, which has set important issues for modern scholarship, frequently addressed the uncompleted novel.

Dostoevsky himself, who had only written several books of the novel when he began serialization, could react to this criticism as he continued to write and, in fact, entertained the possibility of responding to his critics in a letter to the editor of The Russian Herald which appeared at the end of the first year of serialization.

Here is an oddity:
<Avro38> says, <Since it's publication in 1880 it has been hailed the world over as humanity's supreme achievement in literature...>

<Wikipedia> says, <Since its publication, it has been acclaimed all over the world ... as one of the supreme achievements in literature.>

And the fact that I could have written the Wikipedia article has completely escaped you!!

But what can one expect? To a moron from Oregon, Dostoyevsky is some pinko commie who wants to take away your guns!!