Crime and Punishment: the “quintessential Russian novel”

At least that’s how the study guide website eNotes describes the novel.

Originally published as a series of magazine stories by a desperately indebted Dostoyevsky who was looking at a stint in debtors prision if he didn’t generate some quick cash, his efforts later morphed into the “quintessential Russian novel.” But its more than a classic. eNotes had this to say about the novel:

It is not, however, a murder mystery: we know the murderer’s identity from the very beginning. Moreover, although Dostoyevsky depicts the crime and the environment in which it takes place with great realism, he is more interested in the psychology of the murderer than in the external specifics of the crime.

According to Penquin.com, the main question the book attempts to answer via the premeditated dispatch of the greedy pawnbroker Alyona Ivnovna and the inadvertent murder of her kind but abused daughter, Lizaveta is, “Can evil means justify honorable ends?”

This question really didn’t sink in for me until roughly the middle of the book, when the crafty investigator, Porfiry Petrovich debates an old article about crime written  by Raskolnikov and, much to his surprise, was eventually published. In it, Raskolnikov suggests that “there are certain persons who … have a perfect right to commit breaches of morality and crimes, and that the law is not for them.” (p. 259)

In the article, Roskolnikov, a former law student, argues that the world is divided into two classes of people. The first are “ordinary” people who live submissive lives and must obey the law. The second type are  “extraordinary” people, who, under certain circumstances have, he argues, an “inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep … certain obstacles,” that is, the law, if it serves the greater good of humanity. (pp. 259-260)

The story is as incredible in its breadth of  plot, character and story development, as it is in its philosophical debate. As the Penguin study guide asks, who is the real criminal?

Marmeladov, for abandoning his family? Luzhin for exploiting Dunya? Svidrigailov for murdering his wife? Sonya for prostituting herself? The greedy pawnbroker whom Roskolnikov murdered? Or, to turn the question around: Who among us is not a criminal? Who among us has not attempted to impose his or her will on the natural order?

Finally, in novels, character names often have symbolic meaning. Crime and Punishment is no different, although the significance of the Russian character names was certainly lost on me. Here are the name-translations of some of the major characters in the story, taken from this Vermont college website.

Raskol’nik – schismatic
Luzha – puddle
Razum – reason, intelligence
Zametit’ – to notice
Marmelad – sort of sweet candy
Svidrigaïlov – name from the medieval Russian history, Lithuanian prince

Although it started out ponderously slow, the book turned into a page-turner for me. Here are some reading resources that might help us answer some questions as they are presented in this Dostoevsky classic.

• Penguin.com
• Spark Notes
• Classics Reading Group

Discussion Questions: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Below is a conglomeration of discussion questions gleaned from various Web sources relating to our current book, The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein.

MORE COMMON DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Many online sources — Reading Group Guides, Harper Collins, the books publisher, and others — have shamelessly plagiarized one another’s reading guide questions. Here they are, in all their commonality:

1. Some early readers of the novel have observed that viewing the world through a dog’s eyes makes for a greater appreciation of being human. Why do you think this is?
2. Enzo’s observations throughout the novel provide insight into his world view. For example:
   • “The visible becomes inevitable.”
   • “Understanding the truth is simple. Allowing oneself to experience it, is often terrifically difficult.”
   • “No race has ever been won in the first corner; many races have been lost there.”
   • How does his philosophy apply to real life?
3. In the book’s darkest moments, one of Zoe’s stuffed animals — the zebra — comes to life and threatens him. What does the zebra symbolize?
4. Can you imagine the novel being told from Denny’s point of view? How would it make the story different?
5. In the first chapter, Enzo says: “It’s what’s inside that’s important. The soul. And my soul is very human.” How does Enzo’s situation — a human soul trapped in a dog’s body — influence his opinions about what he sees around him? How do you feel about the ideas of reincarnation and karma as Enzo defines them?
6. Do you find yourself looking at your own dog differently after reading this novel?
7. In the book, we get glimpses into the mindset and mentality of a race car driver. What parallels can you think of between the art of racing and the art of living?
8. The character of Ayrton Senna, as he is presented in the book, is heroic, almost a mythic figure. Why do you think this character resonates so strongly for Denny?

OTHER DISCUSSION GUIDE QUESTIONS

A deeper plunge of the Internet provides more unique discussion guide questions. The blog Read to Enrich offers these for discussion:

1. What was your favorite scene in the novel?
2. Did you like the technique of making Enzo be the narrator?  Would the story have worked if the narrator was one of the humans?
3. Do you think dogs or other animals can really understand humans and have the desire to communicate with them?
4. Discuss Enzo’s more human characteristics:
   • His feelings after Eve died (and his animal reaction of chasing and eating the squirrel ) [page 165]
   • Advising people to learn to listen (page 102)
5. Can dogs and other animals sense things that humans cannot?  Enzo smelled Eve’s cancer well before anyone made a diagnosis.
6. What did you think of Enzo’s description of communication, “…there are so many moving parts.  There’s presentation and there’s interpretation and they’re so dependent on each other it makes things very difficult.”  (page 5) Was this a good analysis?
7. What did you think about Enzo’s analysis of his death?  He said about Denny, “He needs me to free him to be brilliant.”  (page 5)
8. The author wrote, “A true hero is flawed.  The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles – preferably of his own making – in order to triumph.”  (page 135)  Do you agree?  What do you think about the obstacles “being of his own making?”  Can you name anyone who you think is a hero?  Does he or she fit this description?
9. About a champion, he wrote “It makes one realize that the physicality of our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible.”  (page 65)  Do you agree?
10. One of Denny’s favorite statements was “…that which we manifest is before us.”  (page 43)  What did he mean?  Do you agree?
11. The author stated that women and dogs feel pain the same (“tap directly into the pain” page 62) whereas men “are all filters and deflectors and timed release.”  (page 63)  Is this an accurate description?  Do you think there is a difference in how men, women and dogs experience pain?
12. Regarding the evil zebra, at the end Enzo realizes that the zebra is, “not something outside of us.  The zebra is something inside of us.  Our fears.  Our own self-destructive nature.  The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times.  The demon is us!”  (page 264)  Do you agree?  Can you think of any examples from other books you have read where the characters were their own worst enemies?
13. There were many comments in the book about life in general.  What comparisons were made between driving a race car and life?  Can you add others?

Exposing the Rise of Corporate Exploitation

It’s been said that history is doomed to repeat itself unless we learn from the mistakes of the past. That’s the theme that ties one book already on our reading list — The Grapes of Wrath — with a newly published book I stumbled across recently.

As is my habit on weekends, I was languishing in bed as the crisp rays of the rising sun streamed into my window, tootling through my smart phone when I came across a book review in the Seattle Times. The book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, is written by Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent Chris Hedges and supplemented with illustrations by award winning cartoonist Joe Sacco. The book examines four American “sacrifice zones” — places right here in America that have been left to the devices of corporate greed.

One of those places is Camden, N.J., where, according to a synopsis by the book’s publisher, the estimated unemployment rate (nobody knows for sure due to generational poverty) is 30 to 40 percent, the high school drop out rate 70 percent, and where a 25 percent across-the-board city budget cut will likely cause the local library system to collapse and half the police force to be laid off. This in a city where “perhaps a hundred open-air drug markets” operated by competing gangs thrive. Once an U.S. industrial mecca, “Camden now resembles a penal colony,” the publisher writes.

Other places examined in Days of Destruction include the West Virginia town of Welch, where strip mining for coal is killing the local inhabitants; the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, S.D. where impoverished and drug-addicted Native American’s are forced to deal with the Bureau Indian Affairs, stewards of their treaty money; Immokalee, Fla. where, according to Seattle Times journalist Nicole Brodeur, migrant workers are “seemingly enslaved.”

“These sacrifice zones are now growing exponentially across the country.” Hedges said in a short video clip about the book. “When everything becomes a commodity — when the natural world becomes a commodity, when human beings become a commodity that you exploit until exhaustion or collapse — you eventually destroy human capital and you destroy the natural world. And that’s precisely what’s happening. That’s what’s already happened to the working class.”

How did this happen in these places and why? Is it slowly happening elsewhere, like the Olympic Peninsula? And what does the future hold for other U.S. places if this type of corporate exploitation continues without regulation? And most importantly, what can and is being done to abate what Hedges claims is an unabated exploitation of, well, everything?

This is a subject that fascinates me, almost as much as the level of passivity with which the average American accepts it. Is revolution or economic enslavement in our future? It isn’t fiction. It’s non-fiction in its starkest and most troubling form. I hope our little book club posse will choose to dig into this book and the idea that the American working class is more than just a disposable commodity.

The Wonderful World of Online eBook Resources

Are electronic books, or eBooks, the wave of the future? Absolutely, at least if the information I came across while researching an e-reader as a gift is any indication.

My mom loves reading, especially mysteries, and  is a regular at the local library. But she will soon be leaving her increasingly old fashioned book resource behind when she and my dad tour North America in their RV. The solution? An eBook, of course. So I went shopping.

Mom hasn’t evolved technologically, so I whichever eBook I chose had to be simple to use and compatible with the various e-book formats available. What I found was not only a amazing number of available e-readers on the market, but also a number of resources for them. And what’s great is that many are gratis, as in no charge. Free.

One local resource is the venerable North Olympic Library System, or NOLS. As a member of the OverDrive system, a global network of electronic books, audio books and other electronic media to public libraries and schools, a NOLS library card provides library patrons with free, limited access to OverDrive eBooks, just like a hard-copy library book.

Keep in mind that like a hard-copy library book, there is only a limited number of copies of an eBook available from any one library, and they can only be checked out for a set period of time. But unlike a physical book, once the due-date arrives the eBook is suddenly — poof! — gone from your e-reader. It disappears for the next person in line to read. Rather disconcerting perhaps, but on the plus side one can’t incur late fees.

But the nice thing about eBooks on the Web is that any library that caters to eBook readers also has the same book. Another regional resource is the Washington Anytime Library, an OverDrive consortium of local libraries throughout Washington state. I haven’t looked into it, but theoretically a person could get library cards from a variety of libraries, thus extending one’s access to certain eBook titles.

For research purposes, another e-resource resource is the Washington State Library, which houses mainly digital historical information. The Library of Congress, has a vast e-library that is also research oriented.

Why Reading Is Important

Books, and the stories inside them, make life more vivid and colorful because of what they tell us about ourselves and the world we live in. That’s the message behind The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, a 15 minute clip that won an Academy Award in 2011 for Best Animated Short Film . I stumbled on the film after hearing a report on NPR and thought I’d share. (Isn’t that a great name? Morr-is-Less-more?)