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Well, what’s a global pandemic for if you don’t read the stuff you think you really ought to have read by now. Although I hope this strange circumstance will not result in me referring to Fyodor Dostoyevsky as The Corona Guy.

Those yet to read this towering inferno of literature may wish to know what’s in the nearly 700 pages, so here is a scientific analysis :

WHAT HAPPENS IN CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Long conversations between people who could talk the hind legs off a donkey: .....................53%
People going mad and running about wildly or quietly chewing the wallpaper in their tiny room : .........11%
People being in debt :.................. 41.7%
People being unsteady on their legs due to vast consumption of vodka :.................... 51%
People being ill (physical) :.................... 34%
People being ill (mental) :...��...��...��...…��37%
People contemplating suicide :...……………��19%
People enjoying a pleasant stroll in the countryside : .....0%
People having a friendly chat over a cup of coffee :... 0.03%
Men figuring they can force a poor woman to marry them :.....…��...…………��. 36%
Women being terrified :...��...…………��..……………��. 39%
Horses being beaten :...…………��...��..…��...��...…��...…��... 2%
Nothing exciting happening :...…��...…��...………��.. 0%

This all adds up to more than 100%. That is because C&P is a very excessive novel. It has more than 100% inside it.

INTERVIEW WITH F DOSTOYEVSKY, 18 March 1867

FD : You see, in my books...the numbers all go to eleven. Look...right across the board.

V. M Vorshynsky: Ahh...oh, I see....

FD : All other novelists, they only go up to 10. But I go up to 11.

V. M Vorshynsky:: Does that mean you have more emotion in your books ?

FD: Well, it's one whole notch more, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most...most novelists, you know, they don’t know eleven exists. I get my characters all the way to ten with their emotional situations, and then...push over the cliff. See?

V. M Vorshynsky: Put it up to eleven.

FD: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

And it’s really true. If they are not about to jump into a river, they are going to fall in love with a prostitute, or they are going to get roaring drunk because they have fallen in love with a prostitute and will later jump into a river.

CAN WE GET SLIGHTLY MORE SERIOUS PLEASE

C&P surprised me. It was like a Dardenne Brothers movie with the camera tight up to Raskolnikov nearly the whole time, and the action shown in detail almost hour by hour over a couple of weeks. Yes it’s a whole lot about th psychological disintegration of this arrogant twerp who thinks he might be some kind of extraordinary person destined to improve the human race by sheer power of his brainwaves & so therefore is justified in bashing in the head of some horrible old woman pawnbroker to steal her money and kickstart his wonderful career. And bash in the brains of her sister who unfortunately comes in the door at the wrong moment. Bad timing.

But it seemed to me that at least half of C&P was all about the horrible powerlessness of women and how they are forced into marriages which are no more than licenced prostitution. An antidote to Jane Austen, indeed.

And it was about how the arrogant twerp murderer can also be a guy who perceives this injustice and wants to revolutionise society. And to do that he starts by bashing in the brains of two women.
So you see this is a psychological minefield we are in.

Like Macbeth and An American Tragedy by Dreiser the murder is contemplated beforehand, then committed, then acts like acid on the mind of its perpetrator, and the reader is along for the excruciating ride.

Thre are hundreds of connections that trigger like flashing synapses as you go through this big ass book�� Freud, Leopold and Loeb, the philosophy of the Nazi Party, Camus, Beckett��

I do admit that there are probably three windbags too many in C&P and I could think of snipping a chapter here and a chapter there to get the whole thing down to a tight 500 pages of ranting and caterwauling. But all in all, this novel rides all over you like an out of control ox cart & will leave you gasping and discombobulated.

Conclusion : excellent pandemic reading