From Ephemeris, Montrealer poet, writer and critic Norm Sibum's final (but not last) assessment of Jane and "Dusty."
"I have no criticism to bring to bear on Austen, certainly no critique as would broaden anyone’s understanding of her work, having only read the three books: Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, and Persuasion, and no biographical or pedagogical material, just that I sometimes find her drawing rooms a little close. No wonder her characters go on so many excursions out of doors. With Dusty’s [Dostoevsky's] drawing rooms, sometimes the fug cited above colours it all, both the grand passions and the pettiness of the human lot. The vicious civilities. Snow melt and wool mittens and close quarters – stuffy room, is a childhood smell that stays with me, and, as we speak, Montreal is all about snow, the silent church bells, the murder rate thus far, and will the crows survive the coming week of artic freeze."
The last work of Dusty's I read, years ago, was Crime and Punishment, which for me went swimmingly well until the protagonist undergoes — in the course of paying for his crime — shall we say a spiritual awakening. I have nothing against such awakenings; on the other hand I weary of novelists who preach, even the Grand Russian ones. Tolstoy agreeably surpassed Dostoevsky in subduing this tendency.
Of Austen, well, she's a near-Shakespeare counterpart — there is no equal to Shakespeare — in exploring the turbid depths of the human heart. I would, however, also put Virginia Woolf up there — way up there; fewer words do not perforce mean lesser thought.
Postscript: My friend Mr. Sibum also writes that he "beg[s] to differ" with the literary appraisal of "The Odyssey [being] nowhere near the equal of The Iliad." Friendship aside, Mr. Sibum and I could well come to blows over my difference with his difference. Indeed, I can foresee the emergence of a Canadian-American war, the collective national passions, perhaps, being that great.
I shan't tire you with arguments as to why I'm right and Sibum is wrong— that, if you haven't already, you can discover for yourself, and far more pleasurably than reading me. (There are many, but I would recommend the Robert Fagles translations. You can't go wrong with Prof. Bob.)
Assuming you've already overlooked the link to Mr. Sibum's jaunty Jane-Dusty assessment (and his most unfortunate, Homerian wrongheadedness), again, this is it.