Crime and Punishment

I'll have to reread the damn thing now.

I think Doe blah blah failed to map what was going through his mind. the double murder made me yawn.

this is where columbo WORKS and crime & punishment doesn't.

Astonishing!

actual true mark s fact: i read the brothers karamazov bcz linus read it

So basically it is polite to use first name/patronymic but you CAN use last name and then there's nicknames. I suppose the reason why it is weird is because they don't choose one consistently (I guess because of the familarity/politeness thing you mention) within the books so I can never figure out who the hell they are talking about.

russian nicknames aren't that tricky; raskolnikov's first name is rodion (a fine and very Russian first name), so his nickname would be "rodya." on the other hand, i still don't know how the Russians got "Sasha" from "Alexander."

btw, i'm the board's resident Dostoyevski basher. awful man, awful writer -- without his novels, there'd have been no Sartre and no Ayn Rand, and the world would have been an infinitely better place.

Rodion -> Rodya makes sense to me. But there are plenty others that just don't make any sense at all to me. Unfortunately I'm at work and nowhere near my book collection to pull up the examples that are missing from my head.

FWIW I don't think Crime & Punishment is the most read worthy of the Russian classics. It's a good book, I think, but not as great as everyone seems to think it is.

and dostoyevski still sucks -- read Gogol or Tolstoy instead. you'll thank me later.

Pooty Poot is a fantastic nickname.

as fer my comparison of Dostoyevski with Fred Durst -- maybe it's my idiosyncratic take. but they both like to peddle second-hand cliches and "angst" and neither would be particularly pleasant to be around (we all know about durst's many flaws, and dostoyevski was a hateful bigot and a vicious anti-Semite.)

I actually liked C&P though I can't tell you why - probably because it's so different than much else I have read and the character insight is so compelling and alienating at the same time.

I dunno, if you put it that way, maybe he is.

prove it!

''but i would put the convolutedness of his style at least partially down to the circumstances in which he wrote. for a large part of his life he was an inveterate gambler and thus often deeply in debt. many of his major works were actually written and published in instalments to desperate deadlines, just to get the money coming in, so it's not surprising his writing lacks polish.''

Philip dick's writings apparently 'lack polish' too and yet he is far more fucking readable.

I thought his portrayal of Sonia was a wee bit over-sentimental, but maybe I'm just being cynical.

The only thing I didn't like was the redemption ending. I don't mind redemption stories, but this one was too facile and easy... and too damned religious, if I might let my biases show through for a sec. (I have no objection to religious themes, although no strong interest either. But this was almost a sermon. It just seemed entirely less credible than the rest of the book.)

"Scoundrel!" Dunya whispered indignantly.

"As you please, but note that I was speaking only by way of suggestion. According to my own personal conviction, you are entirely right: force is an abomination. What I was getting at was that there would be exactly nothing on your conscience even if... even if you wished to save your brother voluntarily, in the way I have offered. It would mean you were simply submitting to circumstances -- well, to force, finally, if it's impossible to do without the word. Think about it; the fates of your brother and your mother are in your hands."

amazing; svidrigailov == dennis reynolds!

btw i'm not quite done yet but i've counted 3 pejorative references to jews so far. okay, one i can understand. two, even. but three? anti-semitism is a compulsion for these russians! even dickens had more restraint.

Dunya raised the revolver and, deathly pale, her white lower lip trembling, her large black eyes flashing like fire, looked at him, having made up her mind, calculating, and waiting for the first movement from his side. He had never yet seen her so beautiful. -so good

Ha spoke too soon; just hit my 4th derogatory reference to Jews.

Yeah. It's good. And it is scurrilous.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230125222304/https://www.pressherald.com/2023/01/25/portland-police-investigating-bank-robbery/

"A security image of the man, which shows him wearing what appears to be a Cossack-style hat, was posted on Twitter by the Portland Police Department."