Well, THAT's kinda scary.

[proudduckling]

Recently, I started thinking about Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, which I haven't read all the way through since I was twelve or thirteen. I've started rereading it, and there's all kinds of stuff that affects me that didn't when I was in middle school. One of my dad's colleagues told him that I shouldn't be reading Dostoyevsky, since there

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[kira_dancing]

I hope you realize this post will be used as evidence in the trial against you ;())

Seriously, though, you probably don't need to worry until the yellow wallpaper in your apartment starts making you sick and you find yourself obsessed with Napoleon and a little old pawn-shop lady.

I love Dostoyevsky for that, though-- I had the same reaction reading "The Brothers Karamazov"; I was identifying with each of them in turn (except maybe Smerdyakov), and Stavrogin in "Demons". I think it's why he's known as such a disturbing author, because if you're smart and thoughtful and just a little weird (i.e., the kind of person likely to read him) you're probably going to identify way too much with the extremely fucked up main characters.

I fucking love Dostoyevsky.

[arisrabkin]

I think Dosoyevsky is really underrated. People had told me, "oh, he's dense and hard to read", but I actually thought it was compulsively readable. Among other thinks, old Verkhovensky feels a lot like a lot of professors I know.

Like Kira, I also loved The Possessed* . I can't say I identified with the characters, but I thought it was disconcertingly topical, in our modern era of political violence.

* Though I'm not pretentious enough to use the Russian title. :)

[kira_dancing]

* "The Possessed" is actually a mistranslation. That's why I say "Demons" :0)

I totally fell in love with Nikolai Stavrogin, although I can't quite say why.

[proudduckling]

Oh, people who say Dostoyevsky (and Hugo, and really most of my favorite authors) is "hard to read" just aren't trying. It is somewhat dense, but in a good way that I love - I sort of feel like he has more ideas per page than most authors can dream of.