Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[AustralianWinter]

So, I finished reading Paul Auster's "Oracle Night" yesterday, and I'm still reflecting on it. Specifically

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

why is the protagonist of the story in the Blue Note Book left in the dark room? What does this symbolise? Is it because Sidney Orr himself is "left in the dark" so to speak? The novel leaves an impression of several unfinished stories. I have trouble coming to any conclusion on this.

Today, I started reading Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment". Do any of you have any experience reading him? I read a good part of "Notes from the Underground", but never got around to finishing it.

Any suggestions for books are also very welcome. Being Scandinavian, I sometimes feel a bit estranged from World Literature.

[ChairmanPoo]

IMO Raskolnikov's problem is that he is a wuss, and the cop is full of manure

[Lord Dullard]

Crime and Punishment is really heavily philosophical. Great book, but it's more of a thought-provoking read than something you'd want to read at a leisurely or recreational pace. Raskolnikov is representative of somebody who tried to become the 'uberman', but in attempting to validate this by overstepping the bounds of society's legal constraints and morality, he finds that he is just as subject to these things as anybody else (especially the morality part).

[RedKing]

What ChairmanPoo said. Crime and Punishment was the most frustrating thing I've ever read, and I just wanted to beat the shit out of Raskolnikov.

If you want a novel about a waffling, indecisive Russian that is much MUCH better, then read Goncharov's Oblomov.

EDIT: Actually, Oblomov is worth reading in its own right, if only because most of us can recognize at least some of him in each of us. He's the quintessential slacker, and most of the story is about how he comes up with great things he wants to do, and then promptly comes up with excuses why he should just stay in bed instead. He's even too slack-ass to properly pursue the woman who is interested in him despite his problems.

[fqllve]

And if you want a novel by Dostoevsky that is better, try just about anything else he wrote, particularly The Brothers Karamazov.

Notes from the Underground is excellent though. I'm undecided whether or not I prefer the first or the second part. The first part is hilarious (although sometimes I get the feeling that Dostoevsky is making fun of me personally) but the second part is so pathetic that it makes the first part even more hilarious. Actually, the Underground Man and Raskolnikov have a lot in common, Raskolnikov just isn't presented so satirically, presumably because Dostoevsky was older and found the misanthropic intellectual to be more serious a problem.