“My reactions to Crime and Punishment varied a great deal as I read it earlier this month; these ranged from boredom to bemusement, mild enjoyment to exasperation. Having taken some additional time to mull it over, I came to the conclusion that its most glaring flaws could be traced to Raskolnikov, or rather, Dostoyevsky's weak and erratic depiction of Raskolnikov and his motives for murder.
Even with allowances for Constance Garnett's stodgy and dated translation of my edition, Crime and Punishment is a novel in which characterization – credible, compelling characterization – is largely secondary to ideas. It's not that I take issue with the various political, social, or theological ideologies Dostoyevsky puts forward; it's that his characters are often flat, rickety vehicles for whatever ideology they were designed to embrace. Their actions are not those of living, breathing humans, they are the actions of nihilism, communism, Christianity personified. Call it literary heresy, but reading it brought to mind another Russian writer who simply draped flesh over dry heaps of philosophy, Ayn Rand.
... my critique titled "The Flawed Foundations of Crime and Punishment" is posted in full on my blog. I'm not trying to drum up site hits. The post is just too long to repost here in its entirety.
I'm having the hardest time figuring out the HTML code for URLs on Shelfari, so here's the link in full:
http://diderotsdiary.iannelli.us/2008/09/flawed-foundations-of-crime-and_3467.html”
E.J. wrote this review Saturday, September 27 2008.
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