Crime and Punishment and zombies
PAWNSHOP HORROR:
STUDENT MURDERS 
OLD LADY WITH AXE
(He had the axe, not the old lady)

Isn't it wonderful having enough time to read just for fun again?  But I thought I ought to read something that would also broaden my mind, so I chose Crime and Punishment.  (Also, admittedly, I want to watch the Peter Lorre movie and I'd feel bogus watching a film of a classic if I hadn't first read the book.)  I think I expected it to be incredibly dull and contain long authorial tracts of no bearing on the plot, kind of the way Notre-Dame de Paris turned out to be very little about Quasimodo and Esmeralda and very much about architectural archaeology.  Then again, Moby-Dick has a very poor ratio of plot to content, and I love it anyway because I enjoy Ishmael's voice and Melville's weird outlook on life in general and the whaling industry in particular.  Such being the case, I was willing to give Crime and Punishment a try.  Oh!  Also, I remembered asakiyume 's recommending it to me once, so I wanted to try and see what she'd seen in it.

Well, I loved it.  The other morning, I read the last pages, and put it down with that sense of delightful discontent that you get when you have to stop reading a really satisfying book because it's over.  Who would have thought that a grim Russian novel about a self-enchanted depressive who murders two women for no immediately clear reason, then skulks around in denial for four hundred pages, could be such a page-turner?  But it is.  It unquestionably is, and I'm trying to get a handle on what makes it such a wonderful read. 

Before ever coming near C&P, I read a parody in The Five-Minute Iliad And Other Classics For The Short Attention Span.  The author did a decent job of sending up the book while still obviously being fond of it.  One of the lines that I've always liked is, "...Raskolnikov thought [the policeman] was a vulgar knave.  But then, Raskolnikov thought everybody was a vulgar knave.  Except Napoleon."  

That was such a summation of our (anti)hero that throughout the book, I kept thinking of the parody and smiling.  What an unpleasant person our Raskolnikov is.  He's like the popular stereotype of thirteen-year-old boys: surly, lazy, and self-pitying, hurting his nearest and dearest without really noticing, getting violent just to take his pain out on other people, and adopting a cynical attitude towards life that actually only forms a thin skin over the top of a vast reservoir of depression and self-loathing.  In general, I find it hard to get very involved in plots where people's motivations are unclear or lacking, and yet here I rather like that he never really explains himself until late in the book.  We can see inside his head, of course, but he never really puts it into words till he has to own up to Sonia and his sister.  The whole book, as far as I'm concerned, is about Raskolnikov ceasing to be the sort of person who thinks he's sufficiently better than other people that he is above conventional morality.  Or, he wants to be.  In the event, he can't really convince himself to ignore his conscience, and he finds that out almost at once after killing the pawnbroker and her sister.  Anyhow, as far as the book's "about" anything, it's about his getting the hell over himself, and boy, does he have a lot of self to get over.  For most of the book, he made me alternately wince and hate him.  Once he actually tries to explain to Sonia why he set out to commit a murder, he instantly becomes a lot more likable.  It feels right that it only happens toward the end of the story. 

Also, he's depressed.  I've only ever spent a little time in the grip of depression, but I used to be close friends with this one girl who was depressed all the time.  It was sad and even frightening to see the world through her eyes: nothing really matters; you might as well disappoint people as not, because everything comes to nothing anyway; people are roaches; everything sucks.  Raskolnikov is like her.  ...So what? you may ask.  Stick him on lithium?  Send him for counseling?  

Well, counseling, anyhow.  Talking to someone could sometimes make J. feel better .  The thing is, it has to be the right someone.  Crime and Punishment is full of wonderful, supportive friends for Raskolnikov, who cluster round, pay his debts, butter up his landlady, hold his hand while he's ill, and generally ask him over and over if there is anything on his mind.  And he turns his back on his best friends and his mother and sister.  Teenaged boy stereotype, # whatever: snubbing all your friends and wandering off into the night complaining that no one understands you.  That was pretty painful to watch, really.  I've done it myself.  Sometimes, when people who love you want to help you, you can't bear to tell them stuff that you can tell to a near-total stranger.

Whoa!  It's late!  I have to get to work.  Lots more thoughts on this in the near future.