“The Brothers Karamazov.”

I read it in school first, dismissed it, and then revisited it years later on the recommendation of my co-religionists (the book is, for reasons not fully understood even by Dostoevsky’s compatriots, well-loved by English-speaking Catholics).

I actually found it even worse on the second reading, because, after reading, in the intervening years, about all the Tsarist crimes against religious minorities that they conquered (the Old Believers, Ukrainian Catholics, Polish Catholics, Circassian Muslims, pogroms against Jews, etc.), the entire “Grand Inquisitor” sequence, which is so famous and oft-cited for this book…just comes off as hypocritical tripe. I prefer Gogol–at least he wears his bigotry on his sleeve and doesn’t cloak it in nonsense about “universal love”.

And, frankly, I don’t find Dostoevsky’s psychological “insights” particularly groundbreaking. Ivan, who is so often mentioned as a Christian believer’s attempt to steel-man atheism, is just laughable to me–‘if God, why bad thing?!’ is the most coherent argument he can come up with, and it’s just sentimentalism, not actual philosophy.

On the plus side, the lifelong hatred of Dostoevsky I gained turned me on to other writers who also hated Dostoevsky. Like Joseph Conrad. And one of these days I’ll read Lolita for the same reason. And I tried Tolstoy because someone told me that people who hate Dostoevsky tend to like him, and I did enjoy War and Peace.

Dishonorable mentions:

Ethan Frome. Yes, I get it, the pickle-and-donut meal is innuendo. That doesn’t make it appealing.

Cat’s Cradle. I just don’t like Vonnegut’s sense of humor, or his nihilistic tendencies. He was basically an early-2010s Redditor.