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landingtreeI read a whole great russian novel! It went well, I may read others.
It was funnier than I expected.
It starts with the student, Raskolnikov, who has spent a month being almost too depressed to get out of bed, contemplating a course of action he won't name to himself, because he isn't really going to go ahead with it... That would be stupid, not to mention wicked... Of course if he were to do it, he'd do it better than it had ever been done before, but of course, it's only a thought experiment... And if he did do it, it would of course be virtuous really...
One of the book's strengths is the way it hovers near Raskolnikov's motives, without letting them seem overridingly important. The book has a lot of good monologues, from various people: it lets them say their pieces, but is in may cases quite reticent about how much you should believe them. (Not always: sometimes Dostoyevsky just tells you. Occasionally I wish he didn't).
This is also one of those books where on a first read, it's interesting not to know what shape it is, so I won't say much else about it. It's full of small structural symmetries, and it leaves its title up for grabs. There's an obvious crime for it to be referring to, but there are also other crimes, and things that might be crimes; at one point, some people in the background of a scene are engaged in a massive argument about what turns out to be the theft of a teaspoon.
Some of the things here to dislike: a few bits of casual antisemitism, a few bits of eye dialect.
~
I read, and liked, the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation. I still have very little sense of Dostoevsky in his context (I have read none of the writers he loved and know barely any of the history) but from the start of the prologue, Dostoevsky was not someone who lead a boring life: before beginning the novel I read up to the part about how, after spending ten years in prison for anti-government activities, and while travelling overseas to escape his creditors, he was required to finish a novel in a great hurry as part of a contract with an unscrupulous bookseller who would receive ownership of all his past and future works if he defaulted. Then I stopped reading and thought, maybe I'd better learn the rest of this after reading the book. Good thing too, since the rest of the prologue describes most of the events in the plot.
~
Within five minutes of finishing this, I wanted to go reread Cyteen next, because that's another very long solid novel to spend time in, and also read something by Saramago, for reasons unknown, and also to read other Russian novels. One reason to have a to-read shelf and stick to it for a bit is that every book I read with enthusiasm logically implies several books to read immediately following it, and then every one of those also implies several more books, and none of this branching tree of reading actually happens since it forms anew with different books every half hour until I give up.
Another reason is to make me excited to read these books so I can get to those books, and then makes me excited to read those books because I've been waiting, which is a better model than the kind of 'book soup' sensation I sometimes get.
It was funnier than I expected.
It starts with the student, Raskolnikov, who has spent a month being almost too depressed to get out of bed, contemplating a course of action he won't name to himself, because he isn't really going to go ahead with it... That would be stupid, not to mention wicked... Of course if he were to do it, he'd do it better than it had ever been done before, but of course, it's only a thought experiment... And if he did do it, it would of course be virtuous really...
One of the book's strengths is the way it hovers near Raskolnikov's motives, without letting them seem overridingly important. The book has a lot of good monologues, from various people: it lets them say their pieces, but is in may cases quite reticent about how much you should believe them. (Not always: sometimes Dostoyevsky just tells you. Occasionally I wish he didn't).
This is also one of those books where on a first read, it's interesting not to know what shape it is, so I won't say much else about it. It's full of small structural symmetries, and it leaves its title up for grabs. There's an obvious crime for it to be referring to, but there are also other crimes, and things that might be crimes; at one point, some people in the background of a scene are engaged in a massive argument about what turns out to be the theft of a teaspoon.
Some of the things here to dislike: a few bits of casual antisemitism, a few bits of eye dialect.
~
I read, and liked, the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation. I still have very little sense of Dostoevsky in his context (I have read none of the writers he loved and know barely any of the history) but from the start of the prologue, Dostoevsky was not someone who lead a boring life: before beginning the novel I read up to the part about how, after spending ten years in prison for anti-government activities, and while travelling overseas to escape his creditors, he was required to finish a novel in a great hurry as part of a contract with an unscrupulous bookseller who would receive ownership of all his past and future works if he defaulted. Then I stopped reading and thought, maybe I'd better learn the rest of this after reading the book. Good thing too, since the rest of the prologue describes most of the events in the plot.
~
Within five minutes of finishing this, I wanted to go reread Cyteen next, because that's another very long solid novel to spend time in, and also read something by Saramago, for reasons unknown, and also to read other Russian novels. One reason to have a to-read shelf and stick to it for a bit is that every book I read with enthusiasm logically implies several books to read immediately following it, and then every one of those also implies several more books, and none of this branching tree of reading actually happens since it forms anew with different books every half hour until I give up.
Another reason is to make me excited to read these books so I can get to those books, and then makes me excited to read those books because I've been waiting, which is a better model than the kind of 'book soup' sensation I sometimes get.
