Fri 13 Aug 2021
Book Noted, by Dan Stumpf: FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY – Crime and Punishment.
Posted by Steve under Books Noted , Pulp Fiction[3] Comments
OTHER INSIGHT BY DAN STUMPF:
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY – Crime and Punishment. Translation from the Russian of Prestuplenye i Nakazanye. First published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments in 1866. Vizetelly, UK, hardcover, 1886. Crowell, US, hardcover, 1886. There have been over 25 film adaptations of the book.
Just finished this book, but I don’t Intend to review it here; I get the feeling all the best things have already been written about it, and besides, it’s pretty easy to spot the killer. One major problem I had with it, though: the story is supposed to be set in St. Petersburg, but this guy doesn’t write like he’s ever even been to Florida. Descriptions, names. even the money are all wrong. If I were giving him advice, I’d say, “write what you know, Fyodor.”
August 13th, 2021 at 8:42 pm
We think of Dostoyevsky as a litterateur of the first order, and he is in our time, but in the Russia of his day he was a a considered lowly pulp writer as far as Russian men of letters were concerned, which in an ironic way fits him in here perfectly.
And as you say Dan, he obviously did no research at all on Florida, there isn’t even a beach scene.
August 13th, 2021 at 9:30 pm
I was going to add “Pulp Fiction” as a category for this post, but changed my mind at the last minute. I agree with you. I’m going to change my mind again.
August 14th, 2021 at 11:15 am
Film adaptations of ‘Crime & Punishment’: I’ve seen the first half of Von Sternberg’s 1935 Peter Lorre portrayal of Raskolnikov; but found it slow-moving and leaden.
Men-of-letters sneering at Dostoyevsky: not sure that this ever hurt his fame or his circulation. If they looked down on him, surely only sporadically, or based on aberrant reasons like his ‘low upbringing’, his socialism, his prison term, or the vulgar themes/characters he treated in realist style. St. Petersburg at the time had an obsession with Paris, and lingering sentimentalism for the Romanticists. FD had ups-and-downs, but it seems to me he had the last laugh on any detractors.