Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is one of the heavyweights of Russian Literature.
The first reader of Dostoyevsky’s deep tome will encounter many difficulties.
But if you push through and overcome those difficulties, you will be endlessly rewarded. So, as host of the Hardcore Literature Book Club where we’re reading Crime and Punishment deeply together over six weeks, let me give you a few tips on how to increase your appreciation of Dostoyevsky.
How to Read Crime and Punishment (10 Tips for Digesting Dostoyevsky)
1 – Get the right translation of Crime and Punishment
There are tons of great translations of Crime and Punishment to choose from.
But which translation of Crime and Punishment is the best?
- Pevear and Volokhonsky?
- Constance Garnett?
- David McDuff?
- Jessie Coulson?
Choosing the right translation of Crime and Punishment is the difference between really enjoying the sense and flavour of Dostoyevsky as he would sound in the original Russian and abandoning the book from boredom.
My personal recommendation for the best translation of Crime and Punishment is the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation:
Russians who speak English often agree, and this is the translation we’re working from in the Hardcore Literature Book Club.
2 – Make the names easier for you to remember
There are tons of Russian names in Crime and Punishment.
That’s a serious and very real barrier to appreciating great books by writers like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov.
Here’s a trick for remembering Russian names:
Pronounce the names however you want.
Mangle them and anglify them.
I would also highly recommend you spend some time with a character sheet (we’ll have a video guide to the characters in the Hardcore Literature Book Club), and familiarise yourself with the different forms they take.
You might find it useful to explore the different meanings behind the names. Names like Raskolnikov have symbolic meaning.
Befriend these characters and learn their names – it’s polite with real people and just as important with the characters of great novels.
3 – Embrace the long monologues
In addition to the long Russian names, Dostoyevsky indulges in long rambling monologues.
These monologues stretch on for pages without paragraph breaks.
In a way, it’s good training for when you come to read Proust.
These monologues might put you off when you first read Crime and Punishment, but I promise you will come to love them as the most thrilling parts of the novel.
So embrace them, exercise some patience, and take your time.
Which leads onto my next tip for reading Dostoyevsky…
4 – Take your time
Readers like to brag about how quickly they read these big books.
Oh, it took you weeks to read Crime and Punishment? Hah hah! I read it in three days.
That’s fine.
Some people are naturally fast readers.
But if you find yourself on the faster reading spectrum, at least consider going back and rereading it.
The slower you read, the more time you spend in the world, and the longer you spend mulling over the themes and preoccupations of the world.
These great novels have themes that need some serious digestion time.
- Join the VIP Waiting List for the Crime & Punishment Lecture Series, and I’ll give you early access.
So, try and take 6 weeks with Crime and Punishment.
That’s one part per week.
You’ll really live with the book.
5 – Make notes/marginalia
You can learn a lot about life, yourself, your morality, and how you view ideas of crime and punishment, transgression and retribution, from Dostoyevsky’s weighty tome.
Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.
Meditate on these grand themes in a journal or in the margins of the book.
We’re doing difficult but rewarding work here.
6 – Don’t read spoilers
Stay away from book summaries.
Discussions about Crime and Punishment are valuable, but unless it’s like the ones going on part-by-part in a self-paced way over at Hardcore Literature, be wary – if you’ve managed to avoid knowing the twists and turns of these great books up until this point, save yourself.
7 – Embrace open-ended questions
You might find it useful to think about different themes and ask yourself questions as you go through Crime and Punishment.
Of course, there are aesthetic questions like the ones from the Walter Pater School of Art Appreciation:
- Does it give me pleasure?
- If so, what kind and in what degree?
And there are orienting questions about unity, designed to give you clarity and penetrate to the heart of a book, from the Mortimer Adler School of Reading Great Books:
- What is being said?
- How is it being said?
- Is it true?
- So what?
But you might also want to give yourself questions that throw up more questions in regards to authority and obedience, environment vs biology (nature/nurture), society vs the individual, the nature of the outsider, and so on.
8 – Portion your pages
Do you know how you can read Crime and Punishment in just six weeks?
13 pages per day.
That’s a few pages upon wake-up in the morning, a few pages over lunch, and a few more pages before bed.
Most people can read 13 pages of highly enjoyable, challenging, psychologically complex imaginative literature per day.
9 – Bring your experience to bear on the work
Weigh Dostoyevsky up against other books you’ve read.
If you’ve read Anna Karenina, how does Dostoyevsky’s novel compare to Tolstoy’s novel?
Is it better written? Why? Why not?
Which book is more moral?
Is it even useful to assign moral value to a book?
How does Crime and Punishment pass comment on what you’re going through in your life today?
10 – Get a book buddy (or join a club)
The number one thing I love about reading the Great Books is the community aspect.
Reading is, of course, a solitary activity.
But it’s fundamentally communal.
We’re communicating with the author across time, we’re communicating with ourselves, and if we read it with friends and loved ones as part of a Book Club, we’re learning to talk to each other.
There are few activities as rewarding and spiritually nourishing.
If that sounds like a great way to unlock deeper enrichment from your reading, you’re warmly welcome and invited to join the Hardcore Literature Book Club.
