Well I did finish the book, and enjoyed it considerably. I hope to say more later on the book. But overall I’d have to say I’m in a rut. I’ve always considered myself a reader and a writer, but I don’t honestly read that much anymore and I write even less.

The main reason I got through Crime & Punishment was some extended reading time on a long bus ride and a rare business trip. And even then it took eight months to finish.

One factor that has changed in my life is I no longer read books during the day. Whatever daytime reading I do is online. My “deep reading” or “close reading” is confined to the half-hour or so in bed before I fall asleep. That just ain’t gettin the job done.

NURSE: Jesu, what haste! Can you not stay awhile?

And my writing habits – nonexistent. I can’t even send old friends a birthday greeting or a How-ya-doin’? email.

The frustrating part is, I feel a desire to read. There’s so much out there I don’t even fricking know! Listening to Team of Rivals, I realized I had no idea who Lincoln ran against in the 1860 Republican primary or how he beat them. I didn’t even expect the book to explain that.

It’s mainly fiction that keeps drawing me in. I look for a certain mystery in fiction. That feeling of “I don’t completely understand everything, and I want to go back and try again.” In Crime & Punishment, for instance, there is a connection between Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov, as there is between Sonia and Dounia, and for that matter between Sonia and the pawnbroker’s daughter. I would like to re-examine those relationships, now that I know to look for them.

Then there are the dreams: Svidrigailov’s dream the night before his suicide; Raskolnikov’s dream of a man beating a horse.

I’d like to study all these things. Maybe even re-read The Idiot.

If I only had the time.

Raskolnikov – the proud youth plotting his revenge on an unjust society – him I understood (or thought I did). But Marmelodov, the embodiment of Romans 7:15-20, would have been a complete mystery to me.

Even reading his drunken speech today I am shocked by it. First there is his abjectness, especially when he returns home after drinking his earnings. There is the cruelty as Katerina sends her stepdaughter into the street to prostitute herself. Then the compassion when Sonia returns with the 30 roubles and Katerina kisses Sonia’s feet and crawls into bed with her.

So I’m going to read Crime & Punishment – the Constance Garnett translation – and write about it.

But first some background.

Somewhere in the ninth or tenth grade, I decided I needed a favorite author. Someone big and great and serious. In seventh and eighth grade, all I read was Poe and Bierce. So it had to be somebody weightier than them.

I really don’t know how I came to pick Dostoyevsky. I wasn’t yet a Christian, so it wasn’t his faith that attracted me. I remember being drawn to one of his short stories about a miserable young man who sees a beautiful woman in a church and is sure that she can save him from his misery.

I also distinctly remember watching and enjoying the TV adaptation of Crime & Punishment starring John Hurt.

Finally, I remember being impressed that Freud called Brothers Karamazov one of the great works of literature.

Whatever the reason, Dostoyevsky was my guy. I bought C&P but never actually finished it, feeling the TV movie was enough. I read Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot and a number of shorter works. The Possessed went unfinished.

I carried Brothers K around to my high school classes – even though I wasn’t reading it for a class – and made sure it was visible on my desk.

Needless to say, none of my classmates gave a damn.

In the intervening years, I did not return to Dostoyevsky, mostly put off by the sheer time commitment. But David Foster Wallace’s essay in Consider the Lobster reawakened my interest in the great Russian.

Anybody want to tell me if I should stick with “Dostoyevsky” or follow my spell checker and go with “Dostoevsky”?

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thought-provoking writing from a great man of letters.

View all my reviews

The drowsy blond carouses on the avenue

is the greatest use of vowel sounds since William Butler Yeats’

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

?

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book is far longer than it needed to be. After page 100, I completely skipped all the 18th century France scenes. The book is filled with just the kinds of characters you’d expect to meet in an MFA creative writing assignment: Marlow, the psychoanalyst who (of course) fails to psychoanalyze himself; Marlow’s father, the judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged milquetoast of a retired cleric who (of course) diagnoses his son’s problems; the tortured artist Robert Oliver.

Robert meets the two main female characters in obnoxious meetcute scenes that would have been cut out of any self-respecting Hollywood B-movie slated for a Thanskgiving release. The female characters are strong, and the ending is satisfying. But the descriptions of Robert’s relationships go on far too long. In a development that ultimately leads nowhere, we even meet Robert’s wife’s mother (of course, this is all to show the difficulties of life in the sandwich generation.)

View all my reviews >>

First is the Big Read, a site devoted to Luke’s Gospel readings for Lent and sponsored by the home diocese of Bishop Tom Wright (probably better known to American audience’s as N.T. Wright.

Second is goodreads.com. Check out my page.

• Finish Swann’s Way.
• Read some of Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales.
• Re-read Moby Dick
• Two words: Inherent Vice
• Finally finish Crime and Punishment
• Some Chekhov short stories (added 4/15/09)
• Katherine Anne Porter short stories (added 4/15/09)
• Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff (added 4/20/09)
• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (added 4/20/09)
• A Separate Peace

Note a trend of being overly ambitious. I’ll undoubtedly scale back by Memorial Day. But it’s a start.