Crime and Punishment

I'm incredibly grateful that for the first time (ever) I have an English teacher that kicks major ass. Sometimes it can be a touch frustrating (I've the only XY chromosome set in the class of 10), but we just started Crime and Punishment and I have to say I'm pretty intrigued.

I've always taken it upon myself to devour books that aren't necessarily easy to read. I find it stimulating, and the bragging rights are always a nice bonus. Russian lit, ironically, was the first big tackle that I attempted. Together with a friend, I "founded" (read: had the intention of founding) a book club, intended to attract members of our class to come discuss literature and prove to the world at large that reading really is cool. Unfortunately, our first and last administrative decision was to assign Anna Karenina as the first novel on our list.

Long story short, everyone got hopelessly bored around Book Three, during which a lot of nothing occurs. Around Book Five, I felt like I was possibly the only person in the world who had made it to Book Five. Here's the point, I guess. I really didn't feel anything for it at the time (reading in fits and bursts of 10 pages at a time doesn't really count as reading), but now that I'm trying to hunt through for some good quotes, all I have is good memories.

Which is not to say that I'm being some pretentious cock. It's actually good. It's emotional--you can really relate to Anna, even if you've never cheated, been married, had a child, gone to the races, or even been to Russia. You can relate because you know every single fucking detail about her life. Tolstoy wants you to be inside her (zing!). The picture may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand pages of Tolstoy is worth a lot more than 300 pictures.

I'm also not trying to encourage anyone to pick up Anna Karenina. Because let's be honest: who has the time for the uber-novel anymore? It just isn't accessible, which is both a travesty and an "oh well" moment. Maybe all the lessons Tolstoy wanted to teach have been learned. Maybe not.

But I digress. After AK, I took a serious break from the Russians. I was looking forward to Crime and Punishment with my English teacher, and so far she hasn't let me down. I'd heard that what Tolstoy says in 500 pages, Dostoevsky says in 5. I've found that this isn't the case at all, however. If Tolstoy is the tenured professor in tweed whom everyone loves and who's picked up the hot Asian researcher, Dostoevsky is the PhD candidate who is lightyears farther along in his intellectual development than Dr. Tweeds is, but lacks all social skills and has a very nasty and unfortunate mole on his nose (I'm going to throw in a few gnarly hairs as well). This is not to say that Tolstoy hasn't earned that tenureship--Anna Karenina and War and Peace are often looked to as the premier exponents of the novel form of writing--but Dostoevsky broke entirely new ground. I'm sure I'm missing things from this first reading (class discussion, after all, is primarily composed of "Like, I think Rask ["-olnikov," I mutter under my breath, thoroughly peeved and arrogant] is like completely unsure whether or not to be emotional and weak or macho"), but simply reading it has given me a sense of sheer pleasure. Tolstoy's descriptions are first rate, but again and again you get the sense that you are reading a film script ("Sergey Ivanovitch asked for all the details the princess knew about the young man, and going into the first-class waiting-room, wrote a note the the person on whom the granting of leave of absence depended, and handed it to the princess.") Thus it is the essential importance of the story that reigns supreme. But Dostoevsky..."Both were silent. Razumihin was more than ecstatic and Raskolnikov perceived it with repulsion. He was alarmed, too, by what Razumihin had just said about Porfiry."

Tolstoy, I think, works the heart and soul, while Dostoevsky works the mind.

I think this post is too long to assume that anyone will even glance past the second sentence (Hah! Assuming people are even reading this!), but I think now is a better place than ever to stop my rambling.