Why you should read long books

A short essay on Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Watching a movie you’ve never heard of can be a great experience, but starting on a hefty tome such as Crime & Punishment without an inkling of whether it’s for you, seems like a potential waste of time. I read it because I reckoned it’s probably a classic for a reason.

It was an easy read, as far as classics go, but it wasn’t exciting. It’s not a page turner. And I wasn’t floored by it. But it was interesting, in retrospect.

Perhaps the reason why it’s a classic is because through its exploration of an intellectual’s post-murder “guilt”, one can find parallels to one’s own thoughts and existential grapples.

Of the many themes and topics the book covers, is a contemplation of ‘free men’ vs. the rest, a division similar to the Nietzschean concept of ubermensch (although written before Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”). On the surface, our hero Raskolnikov sets out to prove himself an “ubermensch” by killing an old pawnbroker. He’s rather shocked when this act violently disturbs his psyche and proves he doesn’t belong among those free from the shackles of society.

What follows (near the end) is insight and personal growth, in a way. Interestingly, it’s this transformation that makes our hero Raskolnikov into an ubermensch closer to the Nietzschean concept, rather than the misunderstood concept of ubermensch discussed earlier in the book, and abused by a certain Führer.

The clincher, for me, was the following line on the final page of the book:

“Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.”

or a more direct translation

“Instead of dialectics came life”

See, Raskolnikov was obsessed with his theory of “two types of people”. Naturally, if he could discern these two types of people (leaders and followers, ubermensch and camels), he must be of the cool type. Upon discovering that brutal murder didn’t shrug off him as it ought to (if he was an ubermensch) his worldview shattered and his mind went along with it.

It’s reminiscent of a line from Ibsen’s Wild Duck,

“Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.”

What went wrong for our hero wasn’t so much that he couldn’t murder someone without a care in the world, but rather that he had up to that point lived a theoretical life. He understood society, why people lived in misery and slavery to the system rather than breaking free, and that accordingly it was better to be dead than to be a horse tortured to death to the amusement of the crowd (a metaphor for being poor). But it was a theoretical understanding. He didn’t understand why the other poor people around him seemed to dig in and stick it through, even if the situation seemed hopeless. He pitied them, yet in some way envied them too, even if he was too blind to see it.

The final revelation is that life cannot be understood through words or formulas or diagrams. Life must be lived to be understood. One cannot distance oneself from life, in whatever form it takes, lest you bring double misery upon yourself.

There, I spared you 500 or so pages. Or did I?

I could have read a synopsis of Crime & Punishment, perhaps a few discussions on Reddit, and be left with the same understanding as I wrote above. But it would be a theoretical understanding.

Reading a book, or any long form entertainment requiring a proper deep dive, gives a tiny drop of lived understanding. Following the characters, putting yourself in their shoes, empathically feeling their burdens and their world, that is a kind of lived experience. The message of the book, whatever it might be for you, will resonate all the more deeply once you’ve taken the journey.

It’s like reading an inspirational quote online. It barely registers! You might nod and smile, before jumping to the next one. Without the context of the whole book, and your own personal story up to reading the book, the line “Life had stepped into the place of theory” will not mean much.

That’s why I wrote above that Crime & Punishment was interesting, in retrospect. As a very theory minded person myself, simply living has seemed very lackluster when we’re given only one life. Got to be special, you know? And therein lies the problem.

So, is Crime & Punishment a classic? I think there’s enough in it that if I read it again in 10 years, I’ll latch onto another line and see the whole book in a new light that’ll perfectly encapsulate some of my own lived experiences. That’s good enough for me.