10 Answers2025-08-03
I always feel a bit icky after reading the final part of this book. The section of the book with Liza is very intense and very cringe-worthy, but also very destructive. In that section of the book, Liza’s compassion is destroyed by Fyodor’s cruelty. Then Fyodor just withdraws from that scene and we are back to Fyodor in the ‘present’ writing these notes. After describing more of his outbursts, Fyodor finally says that even he is bored with them. Thus there is no more point in continuing this book. The final quote of the book is, “I am writing this only for myself, and so, whatever I may write, it will all be the same.” This quote is the ultimate expression of Fyodor’s nihilism and his spite. And the book ends, not with a period, but with an emotional ellipsis… He’s still there, writing, thinking, suffering, but also luxuriating in his own suffering. There’s no change, no growth, no hope. This is one of the most pessimistic closing notes to a book that I’ve ever read.
3 Answers2025-07-13
Let’s just give some credit to poor Sonya. Rather than telling us about Raskolnikov’s experiences, Sonya gives up her entire life and goes to Siberia. Her quiet strength in the epilogue is far more powerful than Raskolnikov’s collapse. She is the anchor of the entire ending to the novel.
9 Answers2025-07-16
Just as there are different interpretations of a Beethoven symphony – period-instruments performance, lush orchestral recording from mid-20th century, piano transcription, etc. – all playing the same notes but with a different timbre, tempo and overall ‘feel’ to them, Garnett being the grand, romantic orchestral recording of Beethoven’s work from the mid-20th century, P&V a period-instruments version of Beethoven’s work often jarring but attempting to be historically accurate, McDuff a crisp and clear digital recording of Beethoven’s work, Avsey being a passionate live performance of Beethoven’s work, etc. – none of them are objectively better than the others; they’re all just different interpretations of the work, and which one to go for will depend on what you’re looking for in music and/or prose.
8 Answers2025-08-15
This is a miniature compared to his larger works of fiction (i.e. ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ runs to 800 pages or so). But for me White Nights is even more wonderful than that. Because White Nights is Dostoevsky concentrated to their utmost extent – all the major Dostoevsky themes are there in the SPACE given to them for the exploration of alienation and of obsessive idealistic love of an “impossible” sort and of THE most painful sort of awareness of Self that there is. It can be read in two hours. In fact, I read it on a train journey – and sat for the remainder of the journey with my head pressed against the cold window. The ending affected me so very, very much. This tiny work is also of enormous re-readability – for me every 2 years or so. And the major new thing I have noticed each time is the depth, and variousness, of the terribly desperate, romantically-love-struck monologuing of the narrator.
8 Answers2026-04-29
A tribute to pacing. The first three nights run at leisure, detailing dialogue and growing hope. The fourth night is a frenzy of action and a brutal rejection. It’s all over in a few short pages and is reported in a straightforward non-dramatic fashion. After that the book returns to a leisurely pace to relate the long slow processing of the event to its full and proper conclusion – the event’s lifelong echo. Not the event itself but its echo is given full weight.
9 Answers2025-06-02
There are scam websites which are selling PDF versions of novels by famous authors and claiming that they are selling “exclusive rights” to read the work. I have seen this done for works by Mark Twain such as The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. They are simply ripping off the free PDF versions found on websites such as Project Gutenberg and then charging people to read work that can be had for free. Always check out the work in one of the official free repositories before buying. The copyright status of a work is its friend and prevents it from being artifically scarce.
3 Answers2025-08-24
The character of Mark Twain in ‘Bungo Stray Dogs’ is essentially Samuel Clemens, just distilled down. The man who got the name ‘Mark Twain’ from a riverboat, the showman-lecturer, the travel-writer all shine through in this character. The man lived through the biggest changes in America’s history, before and after the Civil War, the industrialization of the country and all the grime of the Gilded Age. So naturally his character has a moral ambivalence and a satirical view of life. His best known works ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Letters from the Earth’ are full of warmth, irony and dark satire. Mark Twain was a traveling performer, a humorist, so the character is also half entertainer. If you want to get more into his character, it might be useful to read through ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ and then look up some of his speeches.
6 Answers2025-08-31
I must acknowledge that the P&V marketing machine is very good at what it does. So, you’ll find them on the cover of most classic sections in bookstores, and they are often good. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the best translation of a given work, and therefore, other very good translations are dismissed solely on the basis of-store front hype.
And it creates a fascinating (and totally unfair) situation in which to laud Garnett or another translator one instantly appears to be a snarky, overhyping hipster contrarian challenging the givens of mass marketing. P&V is, for many, often the only good option, for specific books, however, another translator might be offering a far more suitable translation than P&V’s. Ultimately, one serves Dostoevsky, not the translator or publishing brand.
7 Answers2025-07-13
My edition of the novel was 671 pages long, and I read it in 14 days, averaging 48 pages per day. I didn’t force myself to read a certain amount each day, but instead tried to read at about the same time every day. By doing so, I was able to sustain the mood of the novel, and maintain the necessary tension. Reading a long classic such as this can be daunting, but by setting a daily goal of, say, 30-50 pages, it becomes a pleasant daily ritual, rather than a chore. I read for about 30 minutes before bed each night, completing a chapter or two before drifting off to sleep. During the night, I would have strange and philosophical dreams. The novel would seep into my subconscious if I gave it consistent attention, and I found that the daily commitment to reading was enjoyable, rather than arduous.
10 Answers2025-07-13
A book that benefits from marginalia. I felt like I had the most wonderful time reading this book. I underlined so much, put in so many question marks and exclamation marks, and felt that I was almost arguing with Raskolnikov on the margins of the pages. Noting down all the symbolic moments and tracking the weather and how it affected the mood of the characters was all so very worthwhile. And I felt that the length of the book was made so very meaningful by my having been an active reader, as opposed to having simply read the book. All in all, therefore, my having read this book was not simply a matter of my having logged so many hours, for in fact the time spent reading, and then thinking about and annotating what I had just read, was more than worth while. In short, I felt that I had been able to establish a most wonderful relationship with a very complex book. And if one approaches a classic such as this with the same mindset, then soon one will realize that the number of pages does not even begin to matter. For what matters is not the mere counting down of the number of pages left to read, but rather the wonderful and most superb process of understanding the book that one is reading.