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“Trying to untie the string and going to the window, to the light (all her windows were closed, despite the stuffiness), she left him completely for a few seconds and turned her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the loop but did not quite take it out yet; he just held it in his right hand under the coat. His hands were terribly weak; he felt them growing more and more numb and stiff every moment. He was afraid he would let go and drop the axe…suddenly his head seemed to spin…��
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

(My raging, Raskolnikov-like conscious could not rest without warning you of potential spoilers ahead!)

The problem with being a high school student with average intelligence is that you can get fairly good grades with fairly minimal effort. It is an invitation to cut corners and utilize only one half your ass. This happened to me in English class. I'd sit back, take good notes, and bluff my way through various tests (this was back in the day before Google, when my family only had an AOL dial-up connection and all the answers, right and wrong, were on the internet). For these sins, I am now fated to read the classics long after I was supposed to read them.

On the plus side, coming to the classics on my own volition has given me a better appreciation than having to read them with a figurative gun to the head. This has allowed me to enjoy certain works to a higher degree.

However, I don't think any number of years will allow me to appreciate or enjoy or even suffer Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

First published in 1866, Crime and Punishment is the excruciatingly-detailed psycho-epic about the murder of a pawn shop owner (and her sister). The murderer is named Raskolnikov. He is a former student living in a wretched little closet apartment. He is utterly unlikable: smug, arrogant, temperamental, condescending and self-delusional. Today, we would recognize this person as having a serious mental illness (and the book would be called Inability To Form Criminal Intent and Involuntary Commitment instead of Crime and Punishment). Dostoevsky, though, presents Raskolnikov's malady as spiritual, rather than mental. In a way, he is just like every grad student you've ever met: shiftless; over-educated and under-employed; haughty, yet prone to bouts of self-loathing. I imagine if this book was written in the next century, Raskolnikov would have shaggy sideburns, wear a t-shirt emblazoned with Che's image, and have a well-hidden addiction to prescription pain pills.

Raskolnikov has some interesting theories. He's a Nietzsche-inspired proto-Nazi who believes that the world can be divided into two classes: an elite, Napoleonic class, free to do what they wish; and a second class comprised of everyone else. This former class, because of their elevated standing, don't have to follow the rules.

Armed with this self-serving worldview, Raskolnikov, in need of money, determines that the pawn broker Alyona Ivanovna is a louse who deserves to die. So he takes his axe and a fake pledge to her apartment and bashes her head in. The crime is suitably graphic:

He took the axe all the way out, swung it with both hands, scarcely aware of himself, and almost without effort...brought the butt-end down on her head...Because she was short, the blow happened to land right on the crown of her head. She cried out, but very faintly, and her whole body suddenly sank to the floor, though she still managed to raise both hands to her head...Then he struck her again and yet again with all his strength...Blood poured out as from an overturned glass...

Once the murder is complete, very early in the novel, the long, slow, excruciating psychological unraveling begins. Some of Raskolnikov's madness is displayed through seemingly-endless internal monologues. Is this what it's like to be a crazy person? Maybe, maybe not. But it's effective in its way, because it drove me insane reading it.

Raskolnikov's deterioration is also presented via his relationships. Despite being an utter jackass, he has a lot of friends and family who care for him. Among them is the doting Natasha, a housekeeper at Raskolnikov's apartment; a doctor named Zossimov; and Raskolnikov's “best friend�� Razumikhin, who is a bit like Milhouse from The Simpsons, though a bit more refined. He looks after Raskolnikov, tries to get him a job, and suffers all Raskolnikov's verbal abuse with unflagging patience. I couldn't decide what annoyed me more: Raskolnikov's monomania or Razumikhin's spinelessness.

Complicating this picture are several uninteresting plot threads that eventually, finally, after hundreds of pages, merge. One thread deals with Marmeladov, a wrecked old drunk whose daughter, Sonia, is a prostitute (with a heart of gold!). Raskolnikov is eventually redeemed by Sonia and Sonia's faith. A second thread has to do with Raskolnikov's mother and sister. His sister, Dunya, has come to St. Petersburg under a cloud, though things are looking brighter for her and the family, as she is engaged to Luzhin. Luzhin has money, and a keen eye for beautiful, vulnerable women. Raskolnikov rightly senses Luzhin's ill intent, and the animosity between the two men does not help Raskolnikov's troubled mind.

On top of all this, there is a clever, Dickensian police inspector named Porfiry Petrovich. He knows immediately that Raskolnikov is the murderer, yet insists on playing a lame game of cat-and-mouse. One of the few enjoyments I got from this novel was the cold irony of a Russian police officer patiently waiting for his suspect to confess. In Dostoevsky's Russia, the law is clever, intelligent, and implacable. Of course, just a few decades later, the NKVD and KGB would be breaking down doors in the middle of the night and hustling people off to Siberia for no reason at all.

To Dostoevsky's credit, all these characters intertwine, and all the stories pay off, such as it is. In order to do so, however, there are plot contrivances piled atop plot contrivances. Dostoevsky relies heavily on characters overhearing important bits of information.

The only Russian novels I've read have been by Tolstoy, so I don't have much to compare this to. I'm not fit to analyze Crime and Punishment against other works of Russian literature, or even against Dostoevsky's other books. All I know was that this was a drag to read. There are paragraphs that go on for pages, and the density �� unleavened by any action �� is numbing.

One of the most common complaints when reading Russian literature is the names. It's almost become a cliché. Well, in this case, it's true. At least �� for the benefit of English speakers �� Tolstoy gave his characters American nicknames. Here, you have to deal with both the patronymics and identical-sounding or near-identically-named characters. The easiest task you have is not mixing up Raskolnikov with Razumikhin. It gets a little harder trying to keep Alyona Ivanovna (the pawnbroker), Katerina Ivanovna (Sonia's mother) and Amalia Ivanovna (Sonia's mother's landlord) straight. Also remember that Dunya goes by the name Dunechka or Avdotya Romanovna (but that Porfiry Petrovich is not the same as Ilya Petrovich). These complaints are childish, I know, and I have no excuse. Yet I feel the need to unburden myself now, as I missed my chance in high school many, many (many, many) years ago.

More confusing than the names is the culture shock. When I first tried to read Crime and Punishment as a teenager, I chalked my confusion up to a poor translation. Well, this time around, the translation is in the incredibly capable hands of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. They managed, in Anna Karenina and War and Peace to be both faithful and readable. (They are recognized, by people far smarter than me, as the best Russian-to-English translators around).

Here, again, I have no complaints with the translation; but I also had a revelation: I don't get Russians. I don't fully grasp their social hierarchy; I don't get why they like mustaches on women; and I certainly don't understand their interactions. They get mad for reasons I can't comprehend; they are insulted for reasons I do not fathom. In Dostoevsky's hands, Russians are hopelessly operatic, incapable of having a subtle or nuanced reaction to anything. Every emotion has an exclamation mark. You get Dunya trying to shoot Svidrigailov one second, and then tearfully embracing him the next. Characters fall on their knees before each other, and laugh at inappropriate times, and have opaque motivations. I am not trying to be culturally insensitive when I say I am confounded by the Russians in Crime and Punishment.

Of course, there are enjoyable moments, including a classic set-piece following Marmeladov's funeral (imagine a Russian version of Clue, in which accusations are followed by counter-accusations, and everyone is shouting and fainting). Surprisingly, there is also a good bit of humor, such as this interaction between Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov regarding the morality of eavesdropping:

In that case, go and tell the authorities; say thus and so, I've had this mishap: there was a little mistake in my theory. But if you're convinced that one cannot eavesdrop at doors, but can go around whacking old crones with whatever comes to hand, to your heart's content, then leave quickly for America somewhere!

When I was young, I often gave up on challenging books like Crime and Punishment. If I managed to finish �� or at least come close �� I treated them with snark, which was obviously a self-defense mechanism, hiding an unspoken belief that maybe I just wasn’t smart enough to get it (whatever it was). When I got a little older �� when I was no longer a kid, but didn’t have kids of my own �� I went back to those classics I had dismissed, as a way to test myself. Older still �� with kids of my own who don’t have their own kids �� I circled back again, a strange sort of revisiting in which I tried to remember my past self through literature. Sometimes, I found myself revising old opinions. The Scarlet Letter, for instance, worked for me as an adult in a way it never had when I barely skimmed it in my youth.

Crime and Punishment, however, is never a classic I am going to love (and I’m unlikely to give it another try). Yet, in the perverse way of classics, it is utterly memorable, if only because I struggled so hard to get through it. Believing this a worthwhile hill to climb, I did not give up, even though I could have finished three others books in the time it took me to slog through this one. Heck, despite not liking this the first time, I even gave it an entire second reading. Thus, even though I can’t stand it, Crime and Punishment will be somewhere in my headspace forever, a vague recollection of mustachioed women, strong emotional reactions, and a know-it-all with an axe.