Dustoy . . . Distoev . . . Dostio . . . Dostoevsky, Maybe

For complex personal reasons, including a finely developed sense of the value of procrastination, I tend to read something completely unrelated to schoolwork alongside all the serious stuff. While I've been closely reading Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and assorted crime novel critics, I've also been reading a little fiction. The funny thing is, whenever anyone sees what I'm reading during lunch, their noses wrinkle up.

On campus, the question is always, "What class are you reading that for?" Off campus, people just sort of back away quietly. In all cases, they definitely don't want to know anything about the book I'm carrying around. And I worry that their noses may stay wrinkled permanently.

So, what's so bad about Dostoevsky? Crime and Punishment is an interesting story about what guilt does to someone who commits a crime -- a double murder -- for what he considers philosophical reasons, and then discovers that he is capable of suffering from his own guilt. Raskolnikov, the criminal and primary character, is both a nihilist and narcissistic, and justifies his plan before the crime by misapplying the principles of utilitarianism. He figures that destroying someone he dislikes will improve society as a whole. He discovers that the murder of a little old lady and her mentally-impaired sister doesn't improve his world, and that the effort to cover up his offense is beyond his capacity.

That's as far as I've read so far. I can see why some people are intimidated by the book: there are certainly a lot of -isms involved, since at least two of the characters are current or former college students. Russian personal names and place names are unfamiliar, and Dostoevsky has a reputation for being difficult, challenging, and unrelentingly gloomy. Fortunately, most of his reputation is false, like most reputations.

With the benefit of a good translator, Dostoevsky brings his characters to life. Each one has his or her own speaking rhythm, vocabulary, and tone, and you can feel what it would be like to live in their skins. They have worries, affections, hates, and hopes -- like real people, rather than characters in a novel that you'll forget.

Admittedly, the book is sad, since the main characters are poor and unhealthy, living in rundown tenement apartments where life is brutish and short. If you were Tolstoy, though, you'd have the answer for that problem. He wrote, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The other answer is, life is different from a cheerful picnic in the park, and so is Crime and Punishment.

I took some advice from another devoted reader and dug up the Spark Notes on the book, so I could keep track of the names and some of the plot twists. I started by reading the Spark Notes and then reading the book itself. With only 200 pages to go, I've pretty much dropped the Spark Notes, since I've finally got the names sorted.

Is it worth spending the free time this summer on this heavy, heavy book? Yes.

Am I more likely to remember this book long beyond the time I would recall the typical beach read? You'd better believe it.

After all, education is supposed to open the mind to new experiences, and old Russian novels are certainly new to me.