Crime and Punishment

I was eighteen when I first read Crime & Punishment. It was the end of my freshman year of college and over the course of the last two semesters I had been introduced to a constant stream of new novels, authors and genres in and outside the classroom, accelerating me from an avid reader to a voracious one. Dostoevsky loomed large over a lot of the writers I loved at the time: particularly Hemingway and Kerouac. Crime & Punishment had already long been on my radar as a weighty Russian tome and one of the great works of world literature. So I was surprised by Bantam\’s pocket sized volume translated by Constance Garnett, which on scanning the first few pages, had the stiffly sophisticated tone I\’d come to expect from 19th century novels and a compulsive readability presented in its breathless opening pages. Plus, it was on sale for something like five bucks, so what the hell. That first reading of Crime & Punishment proved to be one of the most important literary experiences of my life. I read rapturously over the course of a few summer days, carrying the book about in a back pocket, and finished it around 6 am one morning. It seemed to me everything that a really great novel should be: entertaining, thought provoking, beautiful. A year of intro philosophy classes had convinced me I was some kind of original thinker, or at least a conscientious atheist. But Dostoevsky\’s take on spiritualism and religion gave me real pause; and despite a year\’s worth of railing against organized religion as the bane of all existence, the image of the murderer and prostitute reading the story of Lazarus together proved enormously powerful. In the end Crime & Punishment didn\’t convert me or bring me back to any kind of religious doctrine, but it did have a huge impact on the way I thought about fiction and viewed the world – a sensation I\’m always looking for in books, but only a small handful have ever successfully accomplished. So reading Crime & Punishment proved to be a pretty good idea, and much to my delight it seemed a fairly universal notion amongst my undergraduate peers. I can\’t think of many other books that have been read by so many people I\’ve encountered and, maybe more astonishing, were deeply moved by it. Of course, there\’s always the stray dissenter. Vladimir Nabokov famously didn\’t think much of Dostoevsky, but then, he didn\’t like music either, so there\’s little accounting for taste. For whatever reason, Dostoevsky started coming up in a lot of recent conversations, and it occurred to me that it had almost been a decade since my first and only read of Crime & Punishment. I\’ve become well acquainted with a good deal of Dostoevsky\’s subsequent work, along with the writings of his fellow countrymen, so I knew it was vital to pick up the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky and, having become addicted to my Kindle Paperwhite, downloaded the e-book so I could recreate the read-on-the-go experience should the book sweep me up a second time. To be honest, I was a little worried how well Crime & Punishment would stand up ten years later. After all, tastes change, and in the past I have been dismayed by how radically my opinion of a fondly recollected novel can take a turn for the worse on rereading. But from the opening description of Raskolnikov descending from his crappy little apartment into the streets of St. Petersburg I was hooked all over again. But while I found all the major plot points and characters had stuck in my brain through the years, I was surprised how much smaller the novel\’s scale seemed; sort of like visiting a house that seemed enormous as a kid but shrunk in scale on visiting as an adult. In his introduction, Richard Pevear explains that Dostoevsky built the novel with the structure of theater in mind. I doubt I would have made this astute observation on my own, and yet it became the unavoidable lens I reread the novel through. Crime & Punishment takes place in a very hermetic universe of small dingy rooms, chance encounters, rapid action, and philosophically loaded dialogue; making it a heavy but never dense reading experience. This philosophical bent tends to be the most common point of complaint amongst critics. Novels with a metaphysical agenda are often populated by flat characters who act as little more than mouthpieces for the author. Rascolnikov, in particular, is much more an idea than a person, whose true crime is his modern intellectual arrogance rather than the murder which derives from his hubris. But Dostoevsky populates his novel with a supporting cast that creates an incredibly rich illustration of 19th century poverty, as well as the existential comedy and despair that would color the coming century. Again, the Pevear introduction relates how Crime & Punishment grew out of an earlier novel, The Drunks, which Dostoevsky had been struggling with. It\’s the vestiges of this previous novel that are, for my money, the most fascinating aspects of Crime & Punishment, and reminiscent of another 19th century master, Charles Dickens. Like a Dickens novel, Crime & Punishment contains enormously entertaining murder plot and, with the added philosophical heft, it\’s easy to understand why the novel is so appealing to undergrads. The aforementioned Dostoesky hater, Vladimir Nabokov, believed that a serious reader is, in fact, a rereader. For a long time I\’ve found myself almost panicked by the overabundance of books I want and feel the need to read, and disregarding a few exceptions which I\’ve obsessed over, I have never defined myself as much of a rereader. But this second look at Crime & Punishment has definitely changed how I\’ll choose to read in the future. There\’s a magic that comes with reading Dostoevsky, and I cannot recommend the experience or reliving the experience enough.

You will not be disappointed. The beauty is in the author\’s meticulous work as he places the reader in the story as a witness. The translators do an excellent job showing us how Dostoevsky paints a picture for us that moves and has sound. Even more, they get that prophetic something that he gives to his work. I gave it five stars for the above reasons and because the plot was unpredictable. It kept me turning the pages and hoping for a better life for Raskolnikov and Sonya and the other characters. It is a very soulful story. Don\’t stop at the end, as dramatic as it is. Read the Epilogue! It\’s the best part. I plan to read that part again after reading another book. Read this book!

Does anyone comb through these reviews looking for actual discussions of the plot? If so, I apologize – my rating is purely for this specific edition. I had initially downloaded a cheapie Kindle version of C&P until two separate friends peer pressured me into getting \”the only version worth reading\”, the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. I begrudgingly did so, dropping the extra $, and I found it to be an excellent translation – tons of footnotes, explanations, the prose itself was smooth and there was even a diagram about the Russian patronymic name system. I met up with a friend to discuss the book after we\’d both finished and at least 50% of the conversation was her saying \”Oh, my version didn\’t mention that…\” or \”Wow, that makes more sense with that footnote…\”. I would recommend paying the extra money for this translation, or at least do some research on which translation would suit you – this didn\’t turn out to be my favourite book but I recieved a much deeper and smoother understanding of the time period, the actions of the characters, and the location than my friend with the lesser translation.

Crime and Punishment was always one of those books that I kept intending to get around to but for some reason always felt reluctant to actually start reading. I think to a certain extent I was intimidated by the book, by some hard to name quality that seems to accompany the truly great novels and writers. A list provided by my law school of recommended reads thankfully gave me the final push I needed to dive in and what I found was a book deserving of all the adulation it has received. Fyodor Dostoevsky does not need my endorsement and I scarcely think anybody considering picking up this book will look at my support as a deciding factor. More likely than not, the undecided would-be-reader is trying to decide between the various editions and versions. In this respect, I cannot recommend this edition strongly enough. The translation work is exceptional and it is almost easy to forget that this was originally written in Russian. I have seen in a few other reviews (which sold me on this edition) the praise for the footnotes and I echo this applause. The book is filled with little acknowledgements of political and philosophical movements of Dostoevsky\’s day as well as to obscure traditions and habits of Russians that would escape the reader\’s attention were it not for these helpful notes. These notes are perhaps not essential to a grasp of the larger themes of the book, but it informs certain situations with added meaning that one might otherwise miss (not to mention, it just helps satisfy curiosity as to what certain things are). Personally, this is enough to set this edition above all the rest. As to the substance of the novel itself, Crime and Punishment is a masterpiece. It is a searing portrait of a person besieged by his own delusions of grandeur, the competing philosophical rationalizations that make it possible, and the psychology of both crime and punishment (obviously enough on this last part). The narrative is bleak and offers few moments of respite from an overwhelmingly unhappy tale but the journey into Raskolnikov\’s mind is worth it. I fully endorse this book more broadly and this edition of it more specifically. 500+ pages never went by so quickly!

Physical quality review: I got the paperback version of Pevear translation. Great quality and fast delivery within two days. I was surprised by the thickness and weight of the book. I find it a bit hard to hold up while reading but its probably because Im not all that strong. The cover has a matte finish with a sandy texture which I like. The paper inside feels really smooth. The font is quite on the smaller side but not too small. I prefer a less bold font but this fine. Its readable. The pages are easy to open flat with force, but I still have to hold it open since I dont want to crease it. Content review: Pevears translation seems a bit too literal for my liking when compared to the Garnette translation. Whereas Garnettes translation can sometimes be A little difficult to understand. But that is just me being nit picky. I havent finished reading yet but it seems fine if you remember to read between the lines sometimes. After all, some thing is always lost in translation. They also provide a Foreword and a Translators note in the front and Notes pages and an introduction to other works by Dostoevsky in the back of the book.

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