A novel in short chapters that, perhaps, could be read in any sequence: Walking on the Ceiling

The 2019 debut novel by Turkish-born writer (writing in English) Aysegul Savas, Walking on the Ceiling, consists of 72 very short "chapters," each a glimpse into the life of the narrator (who seems to be much like the author, from what I can discern, about 1/4 through the novel - but that's typical of most debut, first-person narratives); the kick is that the segments seem to be in random order, each a piece of a puzzle whose lineaments become more clear as we proceed. I suspect one could read this novel in any sequence, and I wonder if an online version may give readers the option of doing so. IN any event, it's not a novel of high drama or mystery and the writing is clear but not self-consciously literary so the book despite its unusual structure is pretty accessible. Here's the plot as I can make it out up to this point: Narrator's childhood in Istanbul with her father, a literary sort, suffering from some kind of depression; mother, impatient w/ the father's melancholy, withdraws from family interaction; father dies, and mother feels new freedom but smothers teenage narrator with her love and control; narrator goes to "university" in England, where she lives w/ boyfriend, Luke, and dreams of becoming a writer; wants to leave for Paris but is waylaid by mother's pleas for her to come home, as mother is ill; mother dies, and narrator, against wishes of aunts, sells apartment; narrator moves to Paris and enrolls in writing program, but w/ no intention of attending classes; breaks w/ Luke - who accuses her for being under mother's influence; at a reading, meets well-known author, M. (Modiano, I thought at first, but no) who befriends her; M had written a novel set in part in Istanbul and is working on another w/ same setting, and narrator sets him right on a few points. That's it so far, but note that the very first chapter discusses her friendship w/ M., so one suspects that will be important to the plot, such as it is.

Concerns about Tessa Hadley story in current NYer

I've generally been a fan of Tessa Hadley's short stories that have been appearing in the New Yorker for probably 10 years - her more recent stories in particular; although her current piece of short fiction in the NYer shows some of her strengths in writing - beautiful topical description, sharp delineation of character - in some ways this piece of writing disappoints. The "story" gets off to a good start, as she focuses on a character, Serena, walking through a neglected English garden (this passage replete w/ names of about a thousand flowers, one of the many "very English" touches we find throughout TH's fiction, for better or worse) and then she surprises us: I'm sure most readers will think that Serena is a young girl but it turns out shes the youngest of 3 sisters, all of them in their 50s or so. Neat surprise Then TH goes on to develop each of the characters, who have come together to tend to the neglected older house and to visit their mother in a nursing home or hospice. This is a Chekhovian set-up, and TH builds tension into the story in a # of ways - the arrival of a man on the scene, who offers to do some household maintenance, and who later seems to stalk youngest daughter Serena; the discovery in the attic of some records the women kept in their girlhoods when they'd formed The Bunty Club (which is the title of the story) pledged to doing bad things and revolting against their strict father (they find a gold ring among the records that they believe they must have stolen, though none can remember). Great - but then the women receive word that their mother has died and the story just stops. Huh? TH had set up a # of tension points and delivers on none of them: In particular, couldn't there be a bigger payoff on the "club," something really nasty the women did to one another or to someone else (Alice Munro would know how to make good on these story elements). So I have to wonder whether this is an excerpt or a standlone; of the former, it's poorly edited; if the latter, it's a missed opportunity.

Bellow: The Old System

Saul Bellow's 1967 story The Old System (republished in Mosby's Memoirs) is one of those multi-generational sagas that always feel a little underdone in the short-story format and about which you inevitably think: why not expand this into a novel? To which the answer is: if I did it would feel bloated and tedious and you'd say why not cut and edit this down to a short story?, and you're back where you started w two wasted years of work behind you. Well, the correct question in this day and age is: why not sell the rights and do this as a mini-series? That's not gonna happen of course w a 50-year-old property about a family of German-Jewish immigrants one of whom becomes a prosperous developer of low-rent housing and cheap urban shopping centers in Albany. But still... Anyway, this story, told from the unusual POV of the elderly and lonesome Dr Braun (a chemist not an md) reflecting on the complex inter-relationships of his much older and now deceased Braun cousins - a saga complete w childhood sexuality, family hatred a and rivalries - w the central event being the business deal that cousin Isaac put together involving a large cash bribe to a genteel wasp businessman to buy his country club for development into a shopping center; 3 of the siblings back out at the last minute , leaving Isaac to proceed and take on alone all of the risk - which he does, and this the beginning of his fortune and of the enmity of sister Tina, who feels cheated and bitter. This enmity lasts right up to Tina's death and involves some surprising twists and turns and some great scenes, including Isaac's visit to a Hasidic rabbi for advice and counsel and his meeting by chance many years later w the son of the man who took the bribe and sold him the country club. Maybe not Bellow's strongest story - a little difficult to follow the narrative drift compared w a story of a unified action such as Mr. Green, but it's, as noted above, like one of idiosyncratic and sometimes baggy novels in pill form.

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Bellow short stories: A Father-to-Be

Saul Bellow's 1955 story A Father-to-Be (collected in Mosby's Memoirs) is of a bygone time in NYC (one of his first works in that setting?) when the only shops open on a Sunday night were delicatessens and when pretty much everyone rode the subways - most notably when the only roles for an intelligent, educated young woman of a certain social status were secretary, modeling, maybe teaching, volunteering, or subservient wife. Good riddance to that - but still a hilarious story as the protagonist, Rogin, a 30ish chemist who thinks about potential great inventions such as artificial albumen and a self-lighting cigarette ride the subway to the apartment his fiancée shares w wealthy, dislikable sister. He's bearing a bag of deli groceries that waft aromas of bread and pickles. He has several observations en route - in one of a man who he overheard confessing to a friend that he's an alcoholic and is surprised that the friend has known this for years - what delusions do all of us live w and endure?, R wonders - and another when he observes an unpleasant-looking fellow rider whom he thinks looks like his fiancée and whom he imagines to be his/their son 40 years hence - an extremely upsetting observation. But when he arrives at fiancee's door in her G Village apartment (unaffordable today!) she fusses over him and brings him into the bathroom to wash his hair - a gesture of live w of course religious overtones (baptism?) and perhaps an allusion to emasculation (Delilah). One does not have high hopes for this impending marriage.

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Bellow: The Gonzaga Manuscripts

Saul Bellow's story The Gonzaga Manuscript (1953, reprinted in Mosby's Memoirs) owes an obvious debt to James's The Aspen Papers: an amateur literary scholar in pursuit of unpublished works by a favorite famous poet travels from the US to Europe where he tries rob track down various literary executors to get to the source. In the Bellow story the poet supposedly left poems to a beloved woman long since gone. In both stories the protagonist comes up against structures and modes of the old world and esp in the Bellow story faces prejudice and even contempt toward the new world. In the Bellow story a wealthy young man, Clarence, seeks the love poems left by his favorite writer, the eponymous Gonzaga - modeled in some ways on Garcia Lorca. In fact a highlight of the story is Bellow's attempt to provide snatches of G's verse - a hilarious re-creation of some of the tone and tropes of GL as well as some of the great Latin American poets, Vallejo and Neruda in particular. His quest leads him on many stages of what is in a sense a self-discovery and in particular a discovery of what the post-war world thinks of the US: forward, brash, impetuous, dangerous, and unappreciative of the niceties of Continental life. Spoiler alert: in the end Clarence's quest leads him to a man holding stock certificates for a uranium mine, which of course he thinks the American will want above all else: both because of the obsession w money and the dawn of the atomic age. This conclusion somehow echoes the pursuit of uranium in the movie Beat the Devil - though the two works appear at exactly the same time and don't appear to have influenced each other - but they both show the fear and loathing the US provoked at that time when the world seemed on the brink of annihilation.

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Bellow: Looking for Mr. Green

Saul Bellow's short story from 1951 - one of his first publications I would guess - Looking for Mr. Green (collected in Mosby's Memoirs) is justifiably famous, a terrific and subtle look at racism and class in America but without overstatement or acrimony. The story in follows a 30something man in Chicago in the 1930s who has just begun a new much-coveted job (this is in the midst of the Depression) w the city - delivering welfare check to those too ill or disabled to come to collect the check themselves. He's workin in the "Negro" district, and his job - all takes place one one day and setting, classic example of unified action - takes him into scenes of unimaginable squalor. He is confident that he is doing benevolent work - though there's the sense that the whole welfare industry just maintains the social inequities. What gives the story its poignancy and irony is that we learn a bit about the protagonist's back story - his working class background, his study in college of languages and classics, his brief stint at teaching - all for naught. As he reflects, he's had a lot of bad luck- in life, love, and profession, so we feel great sorrow for him as he pursues his dismal quest to fine one elusive welfare recipient - a Sisyphean task it would seem. I'm not sure whether the ending effectively closes this story but everything else in this piece is like a rich mine of sociology and a portrait of a man in his quiet and persistent way trying to do some good in this world - and not for his own advancement.

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Buchan et al: The Thirty-Nine/39 Steps

Though it may be entertaining up to a point, I stopped reading John Buchan's novel The Thirty-Nine Steps at about the half-way mark because I just couldn't care less about what happens to the narrator. The novel is full- too full - with ridiculous escapes and the most improbable encounters w friends and enemies: for example the narrator is trying to elude his pursuers in the most remote region of Scotland when along comes a "motor car" driven by a friend from London- as if the entire span of Great Britain were inhabited by two dozen people! (Which btw is something novelist Anthony Powell plays w to his comic advantage). Another ex.: When the narrator is caught and locked into a closet while his captors discuss his fate he fumbles around and lo and behold discovers that the closet hold cases of dynamite and it just so happens that he knows how to set a fuse and he blows up the cabinet and is hurled (uninjured) to safety! At this point you either go along for the ride knowing this adventure is impossible except in a cheap novel or on film, as noted yesterday, or you move on, as I did - though I did look ahead to see if the fantastic scene in Hitchcock's v of this novel (the reveal re the meaning of the title) came from Buchan; in fact it came from Hitchcock (we can also see how this novel influenced H's North by Northwest in re the chase in an open field w a crop duster shooting from overhead - much like the chase in this novel across the moor - an early example showing that open spaces can be more scary than enclosed spaces.

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A crime novel best known by its Hitchcock adaptation

John Buchan's 1915 novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, is today best known by its cinematic incarnation as Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, and with good reason: The brief novel is by Buchan's admission nothing more than an entertainment that lies just this side of the improbable, and that's putting it mildly! The narrator - who gives temporary shelter to a neighbor who's loosely involved w/ some sort of anarchist plot to drawn the UK into war - becomes an unwitting subject, pursued by both the anarchists and the British police. He escapes by train, on foot, crawling across bridges, stealing an expensive chauffeured car that he drives into a crevice, and so forth - in other words, nothing that's likely to happen to anyone let alone to this one person resourceful person. But the events seem almost to be scripted for movies - and in that regard decades ahead of its time; what we can only barely accept in a novel becomes that much more real when enacted on screen; we're that much less likely to say, no, this couldn't happen, when we're watching it happen. This novel is not only the source for Hitchcock's 39 but also seems to be inspirational for his entire cinematic style: Think of Cary Grant in North by Northwest forced to bid in an antiques auction, and compare with Buchan's narrator forced by circumstance to lecture a crowd of 500 on Australian politics, about which he knows nothing - and you'll see the foundation here of H's insouciant heroes, amateurs forced into action. I'm curious as to whether the revelation of the meaning of 39 steps is the same in both novel and film; the big reveal in H's movie is one of the great moments in crime/mystery movies, and I suspect Hitchcock not Buchan might have been the source.

Thoughts on the contemporary significance of Crime and Punishment

So Crime and Punishment ends - no spoilers here, everyone knows where this novel is headed, right from the start - with Raskolnikov at last, after confessing to his partner-to-be, Sonya, and his beloved sister, Dunya, hauls himself to the police station, where he endures a rambling yet solicitous monologue from his old friend Z. (I can't exactly remember his name and I can't even place where or how Dostoevsky introduced this character into the narrative, but so be it) before at last confessing to Z that he's the murderer. Notably, not only does inspector Porfiry play no role at all in the concluding chapters but FD reports that Porfiry never divulged his fixed belief that R was the killer - he knew he'd done his work when he'd told R of his suspicion and encouraged R to turn himself into the police, which he did, end of story: P will get no credit for his work. We have to wonder how many secrets have been concealed - or revealed. The epilogue shows us R in Siberia, serving his sentence of 8 years at hard labor; Sonya has followed him to Siberia and lives quietly in the same city as the prison (based on Ormsk, where FD was imprisoned for 4 years, the notes tell us); she runs a little business doing seamstress work and wins the affection of all the men in the prison - except for R, who treats her with cold indifference. But after several years - after his mother's death, who died knowing nothing of R's guilt - and after the marriage of Dunya and best fried Razumikhin - Raskolnikov prostrates himself before Sonya and the two are in love; from that point, his imprisonment becomes bearable and he recognizes that he can change, evolve, and be redeemed - though as FD wryly notes that is material for another novel and this story is done. I don't know how many times one can re-read this novel (this was my 3rd reading), knowing full well the outcome from the start, but it seems to be that every reading would bring new understanding and appreciation, not only for some of the greatest scenes in literature - the 2 interrogations with Profiry, Svidrigailov's last night, the abrupt brutality of the killing itself - but for insight into our present state: As R notes in justifying the murder, which he'd thought would relieve him and others (he's generous throughout) of poverty while crushing a woman he can describe only as a "louse," is this any different from our worship of war heroes, who kill to advance the interests of the many, or from bomb-throwing terrorists, who believe their cause can best be advanced by taking the lives of the innocent?

Perhaps the most horrifying chapter in Crime and Punishment, the death of Svidrigailov

It's kind of odd that in some of the last chapters of Crime and Punishment F Dostoyevsky shifts the focus from the murderer, Raskolnikov, to the secondary character Svidrigailov (sp?), who was introduced late in the novel and plays a somewhat minor role: He has tried to seduce R's sister, Dunya, who'd worked in his household as a maid, and has now followed D and her family to St. Petersberg. Odd as the new focus on S may be, FD gives us some terrific chapters about S and his demise: After lengthy dinner meeting w/ R at which S tries to convince D that he's a good and generous guy - and in which he describes his perverse pursuit of women and of a new wife - even pursuing an engagement to a 16-year-old girl (he's 50!), whose family welcomes his advances because he's rich - S meets w/ D and tells her that her brother is guilty of the murder of the pawnbroker and her sister. Dunya is horrified; S threatens her and says that he's pay to get her brother and her family out of the country if she'll have sex with him. She pulls a pistol from her purse and shoots at him twice, but it's only a grazing wound. He at first refuses to let her from from this locked room, but he relents. Overcome w/ some kind of remorse, S goes out into the night and finds Sonya and her family and gives them a great deal of money to pay for housing and education for the newly orphaned children. Having done this good deed, he roams the city streets through the night - this is perhaps the most harrowing chapter in the entire novel - and winds up at a decrepit hotel, where he checks in for the night, spends a horrible night tormented by vermin and mysterious cries, has a horrifying dream about rescuing a child, or perhaps abusing the child?, and wanders into the dawn where he approaches a man (a Jewish man - why is that so significant to FD?) and shoots himself in the head. After that, the focus goes back to the protagonist, R., in a horrifying scene where he says good-bye to his mother, without telling her why he is leaving or where he is headed, and then a final meeting w/ sister, Dunya. Oddly, the inspector Porfiry, who'd nailed the case against R, more or less has dropped from the novel at this point, as noted in the intro to the Everyman edition; it's as if we're now completely in the minds of the main characters and the institutions of state and justice no longer seem to matter; we've moved as far as possible beyond the police procedural.

The two interrogations in Crime and Punishment - 2 of the greatest chapters in literature

Of course two of the greatest scenes/chapters in F Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment - which is to say two of the greatest scenes in literature - are the two conversations/interrogations between Raskolnikov and the police detective/inspector Profiry. I won't be able to capture in full the complexity and nuances of these chapters in this blog post, but among other observations they show that methods of psychological profiling, though they didn't have the modern terminology for such practices, were well in use in 19th-century Russia (or at least FD foretold their use), pace Mindhunter and its assumption that these methods were an FBI revelation in the 1970s. In the first interrogation, Profiry keeps insisting that the two of them are simply having a conversation, that he's in particular interested in R's published article about "justified" killings - the bizarre theory that certain exceptional people are above the law and can rightfully take the lives of "lesser" people (you can think of contemporary analogs at will - this line of thinking is in some sense an indictment of all warfare). R becomes increasingly uncomfortable and disoriented, states that P is conducting an investigation and pushing him to slip up on various inconsistencies in his account of his activities on the day of the murders. P denies this claim, insisting that it's just a discussion - but R freaks out and demands that P charge him if he in fact is a suspect. Hm. The second interrogation is almost a reversal: Here P does almost all of the talking, giving his interpretation of how the murderers will reveal himself - and throughout his monologue R thinks, or at least wills himself to think, that P is describing the hapless house painter who confessed to the killings; at last, R asks who murdered the pawnbroker, and P replies: You did, of course. And then he tells of all the incidents that he's heard about from his sources - episodes from earlier in the novel, in which, for ex., R faints in a police station when the subject of the murders arises. R asks why P, therefore, doesn't arrest him on the spot; P, in his odd manner, tries to encourage R to admit guilt and turn himself in, which he says could lead to a lighter sentence. So in this instance, unlike the first interrogation, P insists that he is certain of R's guilt, that R is the only real suspect.

Raskolnikov moves by increments toward his inevitable fate

Part 5 (of 6) of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866, Pevear-Volokansky tr.) ends with an over-the-top dramatic sequence, even by FD standards: After Raskolnikov has his heart-to-heart meeting with the Sonya, ending in his confession to her and her absolution of him, handing him a small makeshift cross that she asks him to hold near to him, they received word from the comical leftist friend (whose personal account absolved S of the accusation that she'd stolen 100 roubles from the odious Luzhin, completely out of character for her - she'd obviously been framed) that S's (step?) mother is on the streets with her three young children, forcing them to sing and dance and begging for pennies (kopecks). S et al. rush out to find the mother hysterical and delirious, talking nonsensically about how she'd been wronged by a general who refused to pay her a widow's pension (the general was correct albeit unfeeling). After some hysterics she collapses, S and R bring her to S's small apartment, where she dies, leaving 3 young orphaned children. Then another figure shows up to speak w/ R: Svidrigailov (sp?), the wealthy man who'd made passes at R's sister and now has been trying to make amends by buying her off (which she refused). This time his plan is to give his money to the orphaned children, an act, it seems of true benevolence; and then he tells R that he knows that R is the murderer. How is this possible? His rented room is adjacent to S's and he'd heard R's confession. So this section ending leaves us w/ a # of questions, not the least of which - and this has not really entered R's consciousness - that another man, the house painter, is being held on a murder charge (in fact, he's confessed to the killings, probably after a brutal interrogation) - so R's silence on this matter makes him guilty of, in a sense, a 3rd killing. He is beginning, it seems, to recognize that he has to unburden himself of this crime, pay the price - years at hard labor, probably in Siberia? - and hope for some kind of Christian redemption (though he has shown little evidence of faith, Sonya is clearly an allegorical figure who can provide him w/ an opportunity for at least partial absolution). Given that we have known from page one who killed the pawnbroker, it's incredible how much tension and drama FD has been able to develop and sustain by concentration on the mental and social status of the killer as he moves by increments toward his inevitable fate.

The so-called comic relief in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment

The post-funeral reception - at which Marmeladov's widow puts on a elaborate spread and invites pretty much everyone in the run-down tenement in which she and her 3 children live - turns into a riotous dispute between the widow and the landlady, with much commentary from the many drunken guests. In some ways it's a comic scene, w/ lots of antics and ending in a physical altercation, and I suspect many who've read or taught Crime and Punishment would call this an example of "come relief." That's a term that I think has no meaning or validity whatsoever; it's often used to describe the appearance of the drunken doorkeeper in Macbeth, for one ex. But really - do these works build to such a pitch that we actually need some kind of relief, that we need to take a mental breather before proceeding onward? I doubt that. I think comic scenes such as this funeral catastrophe actually heighten the sense of the tragic; the behavior at the funeral could possibly be "comic" or more accurately a "farce" if one were to read this chapter only. But the context makes this brutal dispute among neighbors all the more ghastly; all this fighting and scratching and name-calling is set against the backdrop of a double-murder - and the perpetrator is sitting, mostly silent, among the many guests. What are Raskolnikov's thoughts? How does he justify his own placidity, and what does the fighting and ingratitude do to confirm his thoughts about humanity - the powerful and ennobled (who have a right to kill) and the ordinary (the victims)? But in the next chapter, he will speak up, in defense of the weak and ill-treated.

One of the greatest chapters in literature - in Crime and Punishment

Raskolnikov's interview/discussion/interrorgation with the police inspector Porfiry has to be one of the greatest chapters in literature. R goes to P, if my memory serves, because he wants to retrieve from the watch he'd pawned with the late pawnbroker (his murder victim), and P turns this visit into a long discussion in which he professes great admiration for and sympathy w/ R; he's read what R wrote about justified killings - his perverse belief that there are some exceptionally talented and gifted people in the world who have the right to kill others in the greater service of humanity (well, perhaps this isn't so different from the idea of justified warfare?) - and he proceeds to question R about his views on murder. The more he befriends R, the more distressed R becomes: P insists to R that R is not a suspect, why would he be?, that this is just a friendly conversation, etc., and R responds that there must be a protocol of some sort for interrogations, that P is trying to disarm him and get him to say something self-incriminating when his guard is down. P denies this, of course. Eventually, R demands that, if he's a suspect, P must tell him so - R ends up pounding a table and saying that he will not stand for such treatment Then, pretty much as he seems to be on the verge of confessing, there's an interruption and someone's brought into P's office - one of the two housepainters who were working in the building at the time of the murders - and he confesses to the crime. Everyone's astonished (including us), as we know that this poor man is innocent and was probably pushed to the brink by a brutal interrogation. All told, this chapter is incredibly dramatic and incisive - and it's probably been the basis of hundreds of other interrogation scene is literature and film for the past 150 years.

Two dramatic scenes in Crime and Punishment

Moving into part 4 of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), the protagonist, Raskolnikov, has two extremely dramatic scenes that show is erratic behavior, his disturbed mind, but also his passion for the well-being of others - a seemingly complete contradiction in his personality: how could someone so sensitive and passionate have murdered two women? We see R at his best in the long family drama, at which his sister's fiance, Luzhin, pleads his case - and R stands up to him and tells him to get lost and to never approach his sister again. This reaction is all well and good, as L is clearly a loathsome and self-centered character, but, as sister Dunya notes, she can feel free to push L out of her life now that she's learned she's inherited 3,000 roubles, apparently enough to establish her in an independent life. Would she have taken L's side had she needed the money? Probably - that seems to be one of the themes of this novel, how poverty and desperation can drive good people to ruinous acts. (To her credit, D refuses the offer of a payoff from her former employer who (in today's terms) harrassed her sexually.) After settling his families problems, R, in a moment typical of his behavior, tells them he has to be alone and to not bother him and he storms off - headed for the dwelling of Sonya, the 18-year-old whose father died in the street run over by carriage horses (and R paid for the funeral - which he could definitely not afford). Now he nearly confesses his crime to S, but also seems to throw himself at her feet in worship, completely confusing and troubling her, and he says he will come back the next day w/ important information. Will he confess his crimes to her? To what end? How will this help her? Nothing in his behavior is rational, but we see that his instincts are at this time anyway for the best - even though impractical and extreme: He has rescue fantasies, perhaps as a form of atonement for his crimes - but he will learn, I think, that charity toward others does not eradicate what he'd done.

The horror and darkness of Joyce Carol Oates's latest story

Joyce Carol Oatses's story in current New Yorker, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, is, at least at first, as dark and foreboding as anything she's written, which is saying something. This is a dystopian story in the not-too-distant future, focused on a 70-something couple living on the Hudson near Poughkipsee, at a time when every aspect of the earth is poisoned and polluted and when all four elements are in turmoil and rebellions against human habitation (firestorms, floods, soil poisoned with bacteria, polluted waters). The woman at the heart of the story, Luce, begins by reflecting on her (many!) friends who have recently died or received terrible diagnoses. I almost couldn't get past the first two pages. The story then focuses on the couple's decision to have a big party/gathering for all their friends with the highlight being the performance by Luce and others of a Schubert quartet. To my surprise, the performance comes off pretty well and the story ends with Luce feeling somewhat at peace. This ending is not what I expected from JCO - I thought there would be something dramatic or tragic during the course of the performance, in keeping w/ JCO's writing over her long career, writing that's full of death and violence and mishaps. Is she softening? Not really, because the world established in the piece is maybe a greater horror than any act of violence or natural disaster; human-made disaster is the worst, and her view that we're pretty much over the precipice is scariest of all. One thing I found strange in this story is that this gather of the retired and semi-retired and this close look at one couple includes virtually no mention of children or grandchildren, which I think is always a major topic among the 70+ set; is that a deliberate absence in this story, as if the next generation has been eliminated? Of is it just the strange focus of this gathering of (mostly) academics and artists?

Raskolnikov's justification for murder and what that may mean today

By the end of Part 3 of F Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), the protagonist and murderer, Raskolnikov, engages in a long discussion with Porfiry, a police official of some sort (not sure his precise position in the department), who is related to his best friend, Razumikhin. Porfiry notes that he has read Rask's recent magazine article on justified killing; this comes as a shock to R, who didn't even know his article had been accepted and published. In the article, R argues that there are two kinds of people, ordinary people and the exceptional, and the exceptional - geniuses and independent thinkers - have rights, he believes, that the plebes don't have - notably, the right to kill for their own good and for the greater good of society. We can see how this line of thinking led R to kill the pawnbroker and her daughter in order to get money to pay his bills and help his family. We can also see why this article, along w/ R's erratic behavior, have led Porfiry to suspect R of the killing; their discussion of R's ideas and his publication is filled w/ subtle tension and provocation. What are we to make of R's theories? Obviously, FD is not in sympathy, and in fact no reader then or today is likely to be drawn in by R's arguments. How can we not, today, see in his justification of the killing of the innocent not see a parallel w/ all kinds of terrorism and murder: taking thousands of innocent lives in service of a political cause, shootings at churches and temples and schools. Those, we almost universally condemn. But isn't in just another step to justified killings in war, and to capital punishment? The main difference is that those as sanctioned by the state as a whole, as an entity, whereas R talks of an act by an individual, whose rights to kill are entirely self-anointed. But perhaps the distinction between personal killings and station killings is not as profound as it at first appears.

Family tensions heighten in Crime and Punishment

Part 3 of F Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment continues with Razumikhin waking and checking with his Dr. friend, Zossumov (?) and learning that friend Raskolnikov is still sleeping, so Raz hustles off to check in w/ Rask's mother and sister; he arrives at the hovel that Rask's sister Dunya's fiance has rented for them - a sign of his disrespect as he could have afforded better temporary lodgings for them - and finds that they'd been up for 2 hours awaiting his arrival. In any event, he feels deep remorse for his drunken monologue the previous night and apologizes profusely. He'd said a # of things, however, that disturb Dunya and her mother, among them suggesting that Rask is mentally ill and noting that he's a lot like Dunya; she doesn't deny this, but it's obviously a troubling observation. Raz keeps stumbling into dangerous areas, however, and wonders aloud why Rask gets so perturbed when the discussion around him turns to the murder of the pawnbroker; he also recalls - though he doesn't blurt this out - that Rask "pretended" to confess to this crime in a conversation w/ another mutual friend. A key element in this chapter, however, is the presumptuous letter that Luzhin, the finace, sends to Rask's mother, telling her that because of important visit he won't be able to see them until that evening - further evidence if any was needed of his graceless and egotistical behavior - and then he demands a meeting her and Dunya without Rask's presence. They're obviously being pressured to push Rask out of the picture, which of course they won't do; in fact, Rask himself has the most lucid interpretation of Dunay's impending disastrous marriage: She's doing it for his benefit, in hopes of providing financial support for the family (which Rask obviously cannot provide) and that he might even find a place for Rask in his law firm (to be fair, that's probably way too much to expect).

The comic overtones and the terror in Crime and Punishment

Part 3 of F Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (Pevear-Volokhansky tr.) begins, of course, w/ Raskolnikov sick and delirious in his bed and with his best friend, Razhumikhin, trying to put everything aright; for the most part, this consists of seeing to the welfare of R's just-arrived mother and sister (Dunya). In a scene that would be broadly comic in almost any other setting, Raz escorts the two women back to the house - a decrepit and crime-ridden lodging, which R and Raz both note that it shows Dunya's fiance, Luzhin, to be a cheapskate and to not care about the welfare of his to-be family - while assuring them that he will look after R and will get a dr. - their friend in common Z (can't remember his full name) - to look after him and will report back to them after the dr's visit. Throughout the whole walk to the renal apartment Raz talks nonstop, mostly nonsense; by his own admission he is quite drunk. What we see, however, is that he's smitten w/ the beautiful sister, Dunya. But despite the comic overtones and broad strokes, we have to keep in mind the situation and the setting: Late at night, lots of drinking and rowdiness, and R himself almost out of his mind but not with drink or illness - rather because he has murdered two women and he is wracked between concealment and confession. No good can come of any of this.

The noose begins to tighten around Raskolnikov

Ask, and ye shall receive. In yesterday's post I noted that at roughly 1/3 through F Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment we have yet to meet Raskolnikov's  mother and his sister (Dunya) - R received a letter from his mother noting that she and D were en route to St. Petersburg - and we had lost sight of the Marmelladov (sp?) family, whose daughter, Sonya, will play a major role toward the end of the novel. The next chapter - the last in Part 2 (of ) - introduces or re-introduces all of these characters. R - after his reckless and almost suicidal behavior when he returns to the scene of the crime and draws a great deal of attention to himself (and does he tauntingly say that he committed the murder?; maybe not at that point, though he did say so earlier in his meeting at the Crystal Palace) R spots a commotion in the street and rushes toward it to discover that a drunken man had been trampled by some coach horses; the man turns out to be M., and R sees to it that M is taken to his nearby apartment and that a doctor is called to help. This is another instance of R's benevolent nature and his oblivion regarding money - he offers to pay all the medical expenses, when he can barely spare enough money for food and clothing; the episode becomes particularly striking when the daughter, Sonya, 18 years old, comes to the flat in her "outfit": She's been working the streets as a prostitute. It appears that Her father, M., dies just as she arrives, though FD is a little squirely on that, as we never see the moment of death - perhaps he survives, against all odds (as many people w/ alcoholism seem to do). Leaving the scene, R heads to his own tiny flat, where his mother and sister, just arrived, greet him with tears and embraces (they had not seen one another for 3 years). FD doesn't develop this scene much further in this chapter, but it's obvious that their arrival will provide further torment for R.; how can he possibly tell them that he had killed two women w/ an axe? Yet how can he hide from them his predicament and his overwhelming guilt? Obviously, as the investigation of the murders leads officials to his door, the pressure on R will become unbearable for him; it's clear that then next section will have to introduce the police inspector, w/ his seemingly friendly but actually, for R., quite sinister and threatening, interrogations.

Raskolnikov's increasingly bizarre behavior in Crime and Punishment

In Part 2 of F Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment the protagonist, Raskolnikov, engages in increasingly bizarre and self-destructive behavior as he is tormented by his guilt and shame over his murder of the elderly pawnbroker and her daughter, Lizaveta. As he recovers from a fever and delirium after the murder, which his friends assume is just some kind of three-day fever, he hears various men who come to his sick-room as they discuss the murder and the status of the investigation (the police had held for a time the two men who reported the death; at present they're holding one of the men who was painting an apartment in the same building). R's friends expound w/ their opinions on the investigation, more or less decisively proving that the men the police held or are holding could have possibly been the killer. R is at several points on the verge of confessing to the crime; in fact, at one point he provocatively tells one of his acquaintances, whom he has run into at a tavern, that he committed the murder - which his friend believes is a perverse joke of some sort. R's bizarre behavior culminates w/ a visit to the crime scene; he actually lets himself into the apartment where he'd killed the 2 women and he pokes around while two painters wrap up their work for the day (actually, it seems to be pretty late at night). In other words, R is playing with fire, seeing how close he can get his hand to the flame and how long he can hold it in place. Meanwhile, he's finally met Luzhin, his sister's fiance, and as he'd determined earlier he's hostile and rude to the man, not that Luzhin didn't deserve such treatment. R's best friend, Razumikhin, keeps trying to save R from his worst instincts, but without much luck - he's the kind of friend Hamlet really needed but didn't get in the loyal but feckless Horatio. Note that at this point in the novel - more than 25% in - we have not yet met R's mother nor his beloved sister, Dunya; we have not yet met the police inspector who will investigate the case, Porfiry; and we have nearly forgotten Marmeladov and his daughter Sony, who will play a key part of R's redemption. I'm not one to complain about "long Russian names," but have to admit I've been puzzled at a few points by the appearance of characters who get almost no introduction, such as the friend whom R meets at the Crystal Palace; these meetings send me leafing back through the novel to see if I've missed something. We do get a sense, though, that FD composed this novel in the same sort of frenzy in which R lives (or maybe that's an illusion).

Irony in Crime and Punishment, and a note on the 2 Nobel Prizes for literature

First, on my Nobel Prize predictions: Glad I didn't bet! I've posted on Tocarczuk earlier this year, finding her novel Flights to be intelligent but nearly impenetrable. I've never posted on Handke aside from a reference to his work in a post on Knausgaard, but he's had a long and successful career; for some reason, I've never read any of his novels, but I think I will - possibly The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, which if nothing else has one of my all-time favorite titles.

On Crime and Punishment, the 3rd chapter in part 2 of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel begins w/ Raskolnikov waking in his dingy cupboard of an apartment (the intro to the Everyman edition wryly notes that this tiny apartment seems always to be hosting visits of four or five guests, along with tea and soup!) after a delirious night's sleep. He's greeted on wakening by best friend Raszumik (sp?, I'll get it right eventually) and the servant, Nastasya; they say he's been delirious for days; R immediately worries that have said something in his delirium about the killing of the pawnbroker. Apparently, he didn't, at least nothing that his guests could comprehend. Raz informs Rask that a bank agent is present, and when Rask signs a paper he'll received a payment of 30, I think, rubles - sent to him by his mother (who cannot afford this largesse). At first R refuses to sign, but he gives in - and Raz departs and later returns, having spent part of the money on a new set of clothes for R, who really needs the duds - he was down to one set of cloths, some of which had been blood-spattered. So at this point in the novel, R's affairs should be looking somewhat better, as family and friends are taking care of him; there's an irony here, of course, that R ruined his life by the killing and, had he waited a few days, he would have been all set financially - but irony is not the point: The point, I think, is that anyone who would contemplate and enact such a malicious plan is someone who has cast himself as an outsider and antagonist. From the moment he set his mind on murder, R was a doomed man, as his fear and guilt will overwhelm him and send him toward destruction - self-destruction and destruction by the hand of the law. What we will see over the next 400 pages or so is the R's struggle to redeem himself: first to save his body, eventually to save his soul.

Nobel Prize predictions, and the further suffering of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment

First, my Nobel Prize for Literature predictions, 2018 & 2019 (2 prizes to be awarded tomorrow: Margaret Atwood and Louise Erdrich; you heard it here first!

Back to Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The 2nd chapter in Part 2 of Crime and Punishment (reading the Pevear-Volokhansky translation, Everyman edition) has Raskolnikov in a frantic state as he tries to stash the loot - a purse and some jewelry - that he stole after he murdered the pawnbroker and he daughter. He starts off thinking he should just get rid of this evidence, toss it in waters of a canal, but then panics as he realizes he's in a public place where many might see him throwing items into the water; besides, some of the boxes might float. So he goes on walking, aimlessly, and eventually sees a nearly hidden worksite where there's a large stone toward the back; he moves the stone and stashes the loot behind it (or in a hole beneath? not too clear) and rolls the stone back into place. (A note in the edition I'm reading says that there really was such a place in St. Petersberg, and FD showed it to his wife one time while they were walking.) Then R makes his way to the dwelling of his best (only?) friend, Razumikov (sp?), who he hadn't seen in 4 months. Raz immediately sees that R is in acute distress and in dire poverty; he offers R some work doing translations, which R refuses, as he quickly departs, leaving Raz in utter confusion. Obviously, over the course of these chapters in Part 2,R oscillates in his moods: Feeling guilt for committing this horrendous crime (taking no consolation from the philosophical and abstract idea of "the greatest good for the greatest #" as he does nothing to put the goods to use for himself or others), trying to evade the police officers, yet not willing (or able) to dispose of the stolen goods, tormented by dreams and hallucinations, and at times thinking of turning himself in and ending his suffering. We still await the arrival of his mother and sister; how will he possibly accommodate them and take on the task of rescuing his sister from what looks to be a dreadful marriage?

The course of Dostoyevky's Crime and Punishment - narrowing the gap between what the police know and what we know

The first chapter in part 2 (post-murder) of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) finds the protagonist, Raskolnikov, waking and feeling sudden panic (not remorse): Are his clothes soaked in blood? He sets about cutting some blood-stained fringes from his clothes (always ragged anyway), then realizes he's made no plan to hide the items he'd stolen from the pawnbroker (he'd expected to pick up only cash); he stuffs some of the watches and other loot in a crevice behind his tattered wallpaper, obviously a terrible hiding spot should he ever become a suspect. Then the servant in his building, Nastasya, knocks on his door to present him with, of all things, a summons to appear at the police station. Immediate panic! R heads off to the police station, which is mobbed w/ various criminal elements and petitioners. He finds the officious young man who'd summoned him and gets into some sort of argument - it's hard to follow the exact course of his thinking, intentionally so I believe, as the choppy narration of this chapter gives us the feeling of R's panic and distress. At last the Chief of Police (head of the station of bureau, of course - not of the whole city police force) arrives and R learns that the summons has nothing to do w/ the murder - it's about money he owes to his landlady. With a wave of relief, R begins to act even more bizarrely to the point where he faints (a shadow of the epilepsy to which FD was subject?); on his revival, he hears the police officers discussing the murder; they'd been holding the 2 men who reported the murder, which is obviously absurd, but have released them and begun the investigation anew. R is so disturbed that he gets to the verge of approaching the police chief and confessing to the crime. Overall, this chapter does not really advance the plot - and of course we know much more than the police do, and the course of the novel involves bring the police every closer, inch by inch, to our level of knowledge about the Crime - but it does effectively convey the disturbances in R's mind: the killing was easy, compared w/ the cover-up and the guilty (if not, at least yet, remorse).

Dostoyevsky - sympathy for the devil

In the 7th chapter and conclusion of part 1 of F Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment the deed is done: Raskolnikov smashes the pawnbroker over the head w the axe handle. Without remorse he grabs her keys and rummages in various places till he finds her stored loot and stuffs watches and other items in his pockets. Then, something I completely forgot from previous readings, the victim's daughter, Lizaveta, enters unexpectedly and R splits her forehead w the axe. Suddenly - bad luck. Two "customers" show up and knock. Through some good fortune R manages a tense escape and a dash to his dingy home where he returns the axe to its spot and crashes w exhaustion. What's most amazing about this highly dramatic chapter is the D manages to keep us in sympathy w this brutal killer - it's impossible, I think, to read the section without screaming (in your mind) to R: Get out of there! Somehow we find ourselves rooting for his safe escape from the scene - perhaps because we are so preconditioned to identify w the protagonist. Any rational response would have us condemn R as a monster. Yet we lose our reason somehow and get caught up in the dramatics. We can't get out of R's head - even though D created only the most thin and attenuated motive for this killing: narrative daring at the extreme.

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Dostoyevsky: The Moral and ethical basis of crime and Punishment

The 6th chapter of F Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is a cliffhanger, leaving us at the end w Raskolnikov standing at the doorway, with an axe concealed in the sleeve of his jacket, as the pawnbroker whom he intends to murder lifts the latch. It's not truly a cliffhanger of course in that we know the next action will be the killing - C&P is of course a crime novel in reverse, the narrative tension built upon the punishment not the crime and not the police investigation. A key element in this chapter is the conversation the R - in one of many coincidences that give this novel some of its oddity- overhears immediately after his first visit some months back to the pawnbroker: two young men in a tavern happen to be discussing, too loudly, the possibility of killing the pawnbroker; one argues that doing so could provide money to many who need it while do harm to one nasty woman w no need to live: the greatest good for the greatest number. The Everyman edition that I'm reading has a thoughtful intro that discusses this philosophy, in vogue esp in England at the time of composition (1866) and that D found to be morally abhorrent- the philosophical and ethics foundation of this novel is the refutation of the moral calculus through the experience, suffering, and redemption of one person.

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Dostoyevsky and the inversion of narrative convention - the great dream sequence

In the 5th chapter of F Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov does an about face and decides not to visit his best friend; he's not explicit about the reason but implies that he doesn't want to see his friend until "after," that is until he has completed his planned murder and robbery. He goes on a long and troubled walk and the strangely lies down on the ground and naps. Then begins one of iconic scenes in all of D's work and R dreams about returning to childhood. He's an a walk w his father past a church and cemetery where he pauses at the gravesite of his youn brother then they walk on past a tavern where men are aloud and drunk and he witnesses one sadistic man overload a wagon and slash the small horse who cannot budge the overloaded cart. He slashes and beats the horse to death to the boy's horror - everyone seems to enjoy the scene and when the young R dashes coward to protect the horse his father pulls him back. This terrifying scene - was it a memory or pure dream work? - shows us R's kindness and also his helplessness in the face of horror. D breaks the rules here - long dream sequences and the bane of 2nd-rate novelists, too tempting and a cheap way to develop character without real narrative consequence - butbD as usual takes on convention and inverts it to his purposes- this entire novel is such an inversion, a murder mystery without the mystery, a crime novel that's about redemption.

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Dostoyevsky

The fourth chapter of F Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) begins w Raskolnikov's analysis of the letter from his mother, and as most readers would anticipate his reaction is one of loathing toward his sister's fiancé , Luzhin, whom his mother damned w faint praise - and D pledges that the marriage is never to be. Of course he feels deep guilt in that the engagement seems to be in large part so that his mother will have the funds to continue to support him as a perpetual student. All of this seems to bring pressure on R to murder the pawnbroker although he does not yet make that specific connection- it's just that he's increasingly under pressure and stress. Strangely he has a weirdly generous side to his personality - as he recounts an episode in which he comes to the defense of a young woman completely inebriated and being stalked by an older man. This is the second young woman whom R has stepped forward to help (and to whom he has given money he can't afford to spend) - he has a strange rescue fantasy that leads him toward self-destruction. At the end of the chapter he sets out to visit his best - only? - friend, whom he has not seen for months and in whom , we suspect, he will confide about his struggles and perhaps about his planned killing.

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A 3rd theme in Crime and Punishment: Dunya's intended marriage

In the 3rd chapter of Crime and Punishment Dostoyevski introduces another major theme and plot element, as Raskolnikov, returned to his inhospitable apartment after scoping out the premises of his intended murder victim and listening to the pitiful monologue of Marmelodov, who'd spent all his money on drink while allowing his daughter (Sonya) to support the family thru prostitution,receives a letter from his mother. He hadn't seen his mother (and sister, Dunya) for 3 years, as he supposedly pursued his studies in St. Petersburg.The letter informs him, first, about a scandal that touched on his sister as she was suspected of having an affair w/ the husband/father in the house where she worked as a servant - this accusation made her a pariah in their village, but eventually her name was cleared and the accusing family repented (a foreshadowing of FD's theme of crime and redemption). Central to the plot of C&P, however, is the news that a lawyer, Luzhnov (?), plans to marry sister Dunya. R's mother writes effusively about this man, but we obviously can read through her enthusiasm and recognize that L is a horrible person who will ruin D's life. For ex., the mother praises him for helping pay for their intended journey to St. P - by paying for transport of some of their furniture, leaving them to pick up the rest of the cost: hiring a peasant to take them in a wagon 6 miles to Moscow, then traveling 3rd-class to St. P. This man, 45 years old to Dunya's 18)says he wants a wife with no dowry so that she will e completely dependent on him, and many other disparaging observations, which R's mother brushes aside. She's obviously trying to make the best of a bad situation, but in the process comes off as almost criminally blind to her daughter's predicament and intended sacrifice. We get in this chapter another form of access to R's mind at work, as he obviously can see through his mother's letter and recognize the danger to his sister - and in the first paragraph of chapter 4 he resolves that this marriage is never to be. Amusingly, FD describes the letter as of two full pages; the pages must be the size of a newspaper sheet, as the chapter is about 15 pages long!

What we learn in the 2nd chapter of Crime and Punishment

The 2nd chapter of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is pretty amazing as well, although quite different in tone and narrative strategy from the first (in which Raskolnikov scopes out the apartment of the elderly pawnbroker whom he's planning to murder). In chapter 2, R has settled in for a few drinks at an extremely dingy pub and is captured, like the Wedding Guest (see, Coleridge) and forced to listen to the life story of a man named Marmelodov, whose life has gone to ruin because of his alcohol addiction (a serious Russian problem to this day and evident to anyone who'd ever visited to erstwhile Soviet Union). M recalls how after much struggle he got a civil-service job and it looked as if at last he might lift his largely family - wife and her children plus his daughter by his first (late) wife - from their poverty and despair but he "drank" all of his earnings and has been away from home for 5 days, living on a hay-barge in the harbor. Taking pity on the man, R. brings him home and even leaves behind a small amount of money to help the family, which he cannot afford. Those like me who've read the novel before will know that the key element in this tale is the daughter Sonya, a teenager who is supporting the family as best she can as a prostitute. She will play a key role in the salvation of R., and FD sets that up through R's small but significant steps to aid this troubled family: He's not entirely an evil character, as he's capable of feelings of sorrow and pity and small acts of charity.

The most dramatic first chapter among all 19th century novels?

Could there be any literary fiction from the 19th century that begins more dramatically than Crime and Punishment? Against all expectations, F Dostoevsky begins C&P at a point that in most novels would be 100 pages or so into the text: the protagonist, Raskolnikov, has already plotted in his mind the murder of the pawnbroker and in this first chapter we meet him as he's heading over to the dwelling of his intended victim. There's no backstory, no long explanation of motive, no detailed scene-setting, no rumination, little topical description - just a character on his way to the site where he intends to commit a murder. On the way, we get a sense of the environment: really hot and sultry,  crowded streets, tiny almost suffocating dwellings. And we get a sense of R's mind at work: Someone in passing remarks on his hat, which makes him realize that he can't where such a distinctive item of clothing or he will be remembered by potential witnesses. We see the pawnbroker's apartment - R takes note of who's present in the crowded building and in particular on her floor. We see him in his frenzied and troubled negotiations w/ her about the value of a few items he wants to pawn; she's tough and unrelenting (tho she calls him "Dearie") and won't back off on her interest charges etc. He leaves minus a watch and with a few kopeks and walks into a dingy tavern for a beer, so we get a sense, with dwelling on the topic, of his weaknesses and perverse priorities. What a start to a great novel!