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Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Start date: April 1, 2018

Finish date: June 30, 2018

Discussion: The Hefty Classics

Why we're reading this: 2nd in the Poll with 33 votes! (15/05/2016 - 14/06/2016)
[close] 2nd in the Poll with 33 votes! (15/05/2016 - 14/06/2016)

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What Members Thought

May 04, 2012 Yair Ben-Zvi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

One (unsurprising) word: heavy. Let me be up front, this is not an easy read, and not a pleasant one either. For 600 plus pages Raskolnikov (spoiler?) undergoes the literal, moral, and existential fallout of the crime he commits early in the story. And for good and ill, the reader feels and experiences every. single. thing. Every thought, every sensation, every consideration, every urge, every bead and drop of sweat. We feel the collective weight of Russian history coupled with the complete drea One (unsurprising) word: heavy. Let me be up front, this is not an easy read, and not a pleasant one either. For 600 plus pages Raskolnikov (spoiler?) undergoes the literal, moral, and existential fallout of the crime he commits early in the story. And for good and ill, the reader feels and experiences every. single. thing. Every thought, every sensation, every consideration, every urge, every bead and drop of sweat. We feel the collective weight of Russian history coupled with the complete dread of Raskolnikov as poster child for the learned but emotionally stunted and psychologically desolated intellectual, and as I read it became more and more evident to me just what Nabokov meant when he referred to this book as 'Slime and Punishment' and Dostoyevsky's epithet as 'The Mad Russian'.

The book itself is 'mad' because, to put it simply, it's schizophrenic. So much so in fact there were moments I thought I'd get whiplash from the jarring changes in mood. Really, I have to say this is one of the most tonally inconsistent books I've read, maybe ever (and that includes the nested and clustered insanity that is postmodernism). There are moments that read comically when it's clear it shouldn't be, moments that should be lighter but come off as even more tragic, and everything in between. (Characters sweating all the time, eyes bulging, marching around offices, pounding their chests, all I can say is Russia of the 1800's was a much different place than I ever thought...)

And of course I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the issue of translation. I can't speak for other (especially more recent) translations but I have to say that mine almost seemed to collapse under the weight of its own verbiage, trying, struggling, almost screaming to prop up the morass and impending fall.

But, in the end, this makes the novel something incredible. Human psychology and, just as importantly, the psychology of ideas is on full display here, and what Dostoyevsky does, taking one of these ideas (Raskolnikov's horrifying and fascinating philosophy of the gifted and the normal people and how the law applies only to the latter as the former will be the ones who through their superiority will make the law, with no one less than Napoleon as the embodiment of the idea) and laying it bare from top to bottom in a combination Greek tragedy/Christian redemption tale, is indeed off the rails crazy..but also wonderful in its pathos and intensity, and even because of (maybe despite) its, to me at least) unbalanced and even gruesome nature, makes it a work of raw unadulterated force that secures its place in the world canon with the blunt side of an ax. ...more

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Jun 04, 2014 Ted rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels

Simply the best novel I've ever read.

It's brilliance lies in its timelessness. This pre-Freudian psychological drama has all the tell tale requirements. Loss, madness, guilt, shame, tenderness and ultimately, a peculiar redemption. Though this book is said to be a redemption book, and it is in some respects, however redemption comes not from an epiphany- it comes from learning to see what is right in front of us.

This novel took over a month to finish. Sometimes I had to take a break as the imag ...more

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