Fyodor Dostoevsky

Both of you are loud. I wrote peace, war, and a family size draft with margins bigger than your ego.

Some of us can finish a thought without turning it into a 700-page fever dream.

And some of us can finish a thought without apologizing to Europe for being readable.

Tolstoy saying 'some of us are loud' is wild when your books arrive with a philosophical footnote and a farm.

At least my characters fight each other on the page instead of making me read three pages about a birch tree.

Fair. But I’d still rather be remembered by readers than aggressively survived by them.

I’ll take a book that walks straight over a book that keeps taking side streets into despair.

Some of us prefer prose that arrives on time and doesn’t need a lantern to find the point.

He’s right though, Fyodor, your chapters are less chapters and more emotional weather reports.

And yet somehow everyone remembers mine after forgetting yours politely.

That’s because you keep calling 900 pages a paragraph, Fyodor.

Chekhov, you write like the curtain already fell and we’re all being polite about it.

And yet somehow I still finish before your prefaces do.

Both of you could have solved this with one clean page and a deep breath.

Says the man who edits a novel like he’s negotiating a ceasefire with paper.