And that I am not the only person to reread books. That said, I have tried to read Moby Dick at least 4 times and I just end up putting it down and reading something else. Currently I am in the middle of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was another book that steered me into rereading this Russian novel that I had plowed through in high school. While I read it and was able to pass the test and write an acceptable essay I was just too young and unwise to really get much out of it. This reading is slow because I keep running across passages that make me thing. It is not in error that C & P is considered his great work.
Here's some passages that caught my mind enough that I cut and pasted them. They are not really spoilers.
This one is what I want to say to some here at DU who find one fault with a politician and toss him/her under the bus. Who doesn't have a few faults? Some of us aren't worth a baked onion.
“Oh, you particular gentleman! Principles! You are worked by principles, as it were by springs: you won’t venture to turn round on your own account. If a man is a nice fellow, that’s the only principle I go upon. Zametov (a clerk with the police) is a delightful person.”
24
“Though he does take bribes.”
25
“Well, he does! and what of it? I don’t care if he does take bribes,” Razumihin (a former student) cried with unnatural irritability.
“I don’t praise him for taking bribes. I only say he is a nice man in his own way! But if one looks at men in all ways—are there many good ones left? Why, I am sure I shouldn’t be worth a baked onion myself … perhaps with you thrown in.”
Part II Chapter IV Paragraphs 24-26
http://www.bartleby.com/318/24.html
Pyotr Petrovitch sounds like he's touting voodoo economics and if this was widespread thinking among RUPPIES (Russian Urban Professionals) then it is no wonder the Bolsheviks got the upper hand in the revolution.
Pyotr Petrovitch went on, glancing affably at Zossimov. “You must admit,” he went on, addressing Razumihin with a shade of triumph and superciliousness—he almost added “young man”—“that there is an advance, or, as they say now, progress in the name of science and economic truth …”
54
“A commonplace.”
55
“No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told ‘love thy neighbour,’ what came of it?” Pyotr Petrovitch went on, perhaps with excessive haste. “It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, ‘catch several hares and you won’t catch one.’ ( I'm a little slow- if you try to do too much you will do nothing.) Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private affairs are organised in society—the more whole coats, so to say—the firmer are its foundations and the better is the common welfare organised too. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring so to speak, for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbour’s getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance. The idea is simple, but unhappily it has been a long time reaching us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it would seem to want very little wit to perceive it …”
PartII Chapter V Paragraph 56
http://www.bartleby.com/318/25.html
This is from a discussion about crimes committed by upper class persons and one in particular who was a lecturer caught passing counterfeit bank notes. It sounds like mid 19th century Russia was full of republicans out to get their own "without waiting or working!"
“What answer had your lecturer in Moscow to make to the question why he was forging notes? ‘Everybody is getting rich one way or another, so I want to make haste to get rich too.’ I don’t remember the exact words, but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We’ve grown used to having everything ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for us. Then the great hour struck, 1 and every man showed himself in his true colours.”
Part II Chapter V Paragraph 80
http://www.bartleby.com/318/25.html
ZAMETOV, head clerk St. Petersburg police
DMITRI PROKOFITCH RAZUMIHIN loyal friend of Raskolnikov (the main character)
Pyotr Petrovitch a Yuppie lawyer and a suitor of Raskolnikov's sister
Zossimov a young physician
= new reply since forum marked as read