rodhunt

Right. First things first, I'm going to redact the declaration I made halfway through that this was the most boring fiction I'd ever read. It's a good book, I just didn't enjoy it like I enjoyed Crime and Punishment. I maintain though, that part two (the novel is in four hefty parts)is dull. Very much so. A quick skim over the introduction reveals that after Dostoyevsky finished that part, he was, in his own words "disgusted" with the novel. So I'll give myself a mild pat on the back for sticking with it, pompous and pointless as that might seem. Anyone thinking of giving it a go, be aware it's more interesting afterwards! The main struggle for me is that if this is allegorical writing, it's allegory using character and pretty much nothing except for character. There's very little in the way of atmosphere or scene setting here. In fact I'd go so far as to say there's none. So it often felt like a soap opera script to me- inheritances, love triangles, lies, everything you'd associate with that medium, all wound up into convolutions. Dialogue is generally what drives it along, and because it's so well done, the characters slowly emerge into these incredibly believable people. They're unpredictable and often annoying, but the story works because they do. However, the downside of this for me is that it renders the setting basically irrelevant. There's not really a sense of place at any point- for part of the novel I wasn't even sure if they were in Pavlovsk or St Petersburg. This character-building is at it's keenest with Prince Myshkin, the epileptic protagonist and titular "idiot". I thought this perjorative could be read in several ways. The high society he lands in consider him to be so medically, or emotionally, because of his unpredictable ways, even though we can see that by his simple frankness and understanding of situations he's anything but. The thing is though, perhaps he's an idiot-that is, actually stupid or dangerously naive- for thinking that forgiveness and openness with these people is the way to handle them. He meets people that hate him, the vain, the sneaky (slimy civil servant Lebedev is an excellent character) the compulsive liars, not to mention his mercurial femme fatale Natasya-and he's prepared to turn the other cheek to them all, no matter what they do. So perhaps one thing that stuck with me is, doing the right thing in certain circles will nearly get you killed. There's no point in being a good guy simply for the sake of being a good guy-not in a society that will obliterate you as soon as your back is turned. There's lots of other things to ponder once you get to the end of this difficult book too. The beginning of all the parts except for the first being by addressing the reader directly, and I acually thought these were some of my favourite parts. There was a section about vanity in "ordinary people" (using the character og Ganya as an example) and what they hope to achieve that hit hard so directly for me that it was actually a bit hard to read. Winding it up here, I'll say that once you get over the hump, there's some great stuff going on here. The only warning I have for you though is-don't necessarily expect it to be a "good story", because I don't think that's the point. It's more like watching people under a microscope.

2022-10-21 05:46