About 8 years ago, I think, I decided I wanted to read more of the classics of literature. Some were a little more accessible like Dracula; some were a little denser, like Crime and Punishment.

And generally speaking, somewhere around age 42 or 43, I finally turned the page so to speak on my reading habits, where I recognized that life is too short to be reading books I don’t enjoy. Obviously, I’ll never read every book ever written, and my TBR pile just for mysteries will likely outlast me. But if I’m enjoying it, I do tend to stick with it to the end.

Crime and Punishment is challenging me. That’s not surprising, it challenges everyone. The length, the prose, the subject matter is not light reading for most. Add in the translation from Russian and well, it’s at the top of many people’s list of the most challenging book they have attempted. Not necessarily the most challenging book ever, just of the ones they’ve attempted. Many of the really challenging ones from classic lit are rarified items for anyone to attempt or finish. But C&P is enduring. Lots of people read it at university, some read it in high school. And it remains to this day a frequent if not actually popular choice.

On Attempt #1, perhaps 8 years ago, I managed to get about 20% of the way into it. Attempt #2, a few years later, I continued from there and got another 5% or so. Attempt #3, about 2 years ago, I made it in fits and starts all the way to about 60%.

It’s not a bad book, but a page-turner it is not. It is really slow to read, with most of the story happening in the narrator’s head. A lot of time is spent while he wanders around the city, doing other things, with a stream of consciousness (before the term existed) and conversation with himself being the main output on the page. It sounds terrible, but it’s amazingly well done. It would be hard for anyone to read without recognizing themself in the thought pattern, if not the situation. For example, in the opening chapter, you see a youngish man, maybe 30 or so, it’s hard to tell, who has been at university, worked for a while, and now dealing with poverty. Much of the first 40% of the book is dealing with urban poverty, in fact, and how one’s mind reacts to it. As the book opens, he is going to do something that he finds morally repulsive, and so he tells himself that he can’t really do it, he isn’t that low (yet!), and that it is merely an intellectual exercise. It’s how he protects his psyche from reality. It IS happening, he IS going to do it, he just hasn’t sunk that low yet.

I had hoped that I would be able to restart at the 60% mark where I left off. I had just finished a much simpler fantasy tome, and saw it on my Kindle, taunting me. I do enjoy it, and I do want to finish it; it’s just slow going. So I flipped through until I found my last spot, but as I went, I saw a few parts that I wouldn’t have remembered if I hadn’t been flipping. Much of the first 60% is lost to me, too much time has passed. Reluctantly, I restarted the book at the beginning during lunch yesterday. I skimmed through the commentary at the start, some of the author’s life, etc. And then restarted the story.

Reading it this time has a bit of a different feel to it. He has been isolated from people for some time, not only in terms of just avoiding people, but also a bit of illness and social distancing. Sound familiar? Anyway, he’s pawning some jewellery while contemplating a more serious crime. Shortly thereafter, he goes into a tavern, which he is not used to doing, and after a bit of drink, he starts to feel better. He craves some company, and he gets it in the form of a drunk civil servant who shares a tale of woe (civil servant, married a widowed woman with kids, lost his job due to drinking, family fell on very hard times with daughter turning to prostitution, but he gets his job back so everything is right with the world for a week until the takes all the money and runs off to the tavern, sells his good clothes when he runs out of money, and now fears going home).

It’s a little heavy-handed for the drunk’s tale, as he debates if he is a bad person or simply a weak person who has done bad things. But it was a bit interesting that I did the “quick” flip-through to see where I had left off, before deciding to restart at the beginning. In one of the scenes I flipped to, that same character shows up somewhere around the 50% mark, and I confess, I had no memory from reading it previously that it was the same character. Only by happenstance of having re-read the other scene just before starting again where you meet him for the first time that I realized it was the same person. It confirmed that I was right to restart, I just wasn’t tracking the people well enough.

I will try to read it at lunch more regularly, and make it through to the end this time. Fingers crossed. With the opening commentary and the first few chapters, I’m officially at 10%. If I can manage 3% a day for the next month? Hope springs eternal, perhaps.