Tyler Cowen, who is often a great source of insights on new literature, last night had a post about Dostoyevsky. It largely consists of an account of his own utility function (which, come to think of it, is largely what Facebook consists of: precisely why advertisers love it, though I don’t see why anyone else should). And then this:
If you enter “Dostoyevsky” into the search function of Twitter, you don’t come up with much interesting these days.
Heavens. We’d better just write him out of the canon then. Cowen’s commenter “vanderleun” nails it:
That [sentence] just says so much about so many things not even distantly related to Dostoyevsky that it can be put up as a “Koan for Our Era.”
Precisely. If you meet the Tweeter on the road, kill him.
“If you enter ‘Dostoyevsky’ into the search function of Twitter, you don’t come up with much interesting these days.”
That’s true these days, but back 30-40 years ago you’d find lots of interesting Dostoevsky tidbits on Twitter.
It was called ‘Twittski’, and produced in the USSR.
And, of course, it twitted *you*.
Not Twitter’s fault; you’re restricted to 140 characters.
I wonder what one would get for “Dickens”, but not enough to try it… At least the characters’ names are shorter.
There’s a whole ‘nother batch of tweets for Dostoevsky, an alternate spelling (10 letters instead of 11).
Wonder if that’s the “vanderleun” who is aware of all internet traditions…
Is there another RBC that treats that glorified Koch lobbyist with the scorn he deserves? I want to read that.