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n8hanson's Reviews (479)
By the end, I almost wished I'd gone to prison with Rodion, rather than endure the cruel and unusual punishment of reading this. Perhaps my crime was expecting to get something more out of it the second time through. I had hoped that I could blame the miserable torture of the first read on adolescence, but sadly I just found the same absurdly unbelievable caricatures, hyperbolic melodrama, trite and suffocating moralism, and excruciatingly tedious monologues disguised as dialogues. Perhaps if I were better (at all) acquainted with 19th c. Russian mannerisms, the conversations may have felt less like a series of operatic, non sequitur expositories.
I will grant it was good for its time, anticipating Nietsche, libertarians, and other philosophical quackery by decades. And Dostoevsky had a better understanding of the subconscious than many Freudians much later. The book deserves credit for a great many other things that other reviewers have dwelled on at length. But this rant of impotent frustration is my only compensation for the time lost trying to find plausibility and relevance in 505 tiresome pages.
I will grant it was good for its time, anticipating Nietsche, libertarians, and other philosophical quackery by decades. And Dostoevsky had a better understanding of the subconscious than many Freudians much later. The book deserves credit for a great many other things that other reviewers have dwelled on at length. But this rant of impotent frustration is my only compensation for the time lost trying to find plausibility and relevance in 505 tiresome pages.
