I recently saw an info-graphic about how long it takes to read famous books. It's pretty interesting, but it mostly reminded me of my Crime and Punishment story.
When I was in high school, like a lot of high schoolers, we had to read Crime and Punishment. What makes this story unusual is that we had three days to read it. We got the book on Tuesday and had a test on it on Friday. The reasoning for this escapes me now, but I think it had something to do with the end of the grading period, how long we spent on Wide Sargasso Sea, and the fact that our English teacher didn't really like the book that much.
So we tackled this book in indignant, panicked frenzy. We tried to finish other homework, study for more reasonable tests before staying up late, trying to get one more chapter read, two more chapters read. We hurried between classes so we could get a couple minutes of reading time in. We read over lunch, in a group around a table, all of us buried in our books in silence, eyebrows pulled together and shoulders hunched.
All the teachers made fun of us. This was terribly hilarious to all of them and they showed no sympathy at all.
I don't remember how our English teacher managed it--what she said, how she guilted us--but the level of energy and fruitless effort put into reading this thing was surreal. We were nerds, sure, but we were math and science nerds. And we were seniors, who had decided that previous projects weren't worth it and thrown in the towel. Surely this was a fruitless effort and running ourselves ragged would prove counter productive. But no. For some reason, we were crazed to get this book read.
I got the audio book so I could listen on my hour long commute to and from school. But looking at the box, I frowned and calculated that there was no possible way I was going to finish, even if I secretly listened through my blow off classes.
Thursday night, my friend Matt called at 8:00 with a plan.
"Okay. I went to the video store and rented the movie. Come over."
Normally, this would be a ridiculous suggestion since we all knew that movie adaptations from the video store were created with the sole purpose of leading lazy high school kids astray, and that the whole English department had movie night or something where they watched the adaptations and then wrote test questions to trick you into admitting you didn't read the book. They were sneaky and were really proud of themselves for it.
But this was a desperate situation, and so far no one knew how the damned book ended. I don't know why none of us knew about cliff notes.
"Okay," I said, said goodbye to my mother (who laughed at me and wished me luck), got in my car, and drove to Matt's house.
At Matt's house, Matt and I exchanged terse nods. Our friend James had his book in hand, like that might help. And Matt's father laughed at us. We glared at him. This was serious.
Matt's dad made popcorn, then ate it while watching us set up the VCR.
I remember it being a three hour movie, but IMDB now says it's only two. Either way, both Matt and James fell asleep and missed the ending anyway. When the movie ended, I explained it to them.
For those like Matt and James who don't know, there's a guy, Raskolnikov, who decides (based on divine compulsion more than anything else) to murder his neighbor and rob her. He kills her with an ax, then freaks out, kills her sister too when she catches him, then flubs the robbery part and only takes like $20. This much we had all managed to read. The guy spends the rest of the novel wracked with guilt--a guilt that burns and builds and eats away his sanity. He's pursued by a detective who knows he did it because he's the most suspicious, guilty person on earth. There's drama involving a sister and a prostitute with a heart of gold, and in the end the guy turns himself in.
Matt and James were disappointed with my synopsis.
The next day, we slouched into English class, curling in on ourselves in guilt, ready to face the music. No one pulled out their book to try to read one more page. We sat in silence and waited for our teacher to come.
I looked around, so overwhelmed with spending every spare moment wrapping myself in this story, and thought, "We are all Raskolnikov."
"Alright!" Ms. McDonald said, clapping her hands and taking her place in the middle of the room. "What'd everyone think?"
Silence.
Silence.
"We didn't finish." Someone said it. We all said it. Heads in hands and slumped into desks. Tired eyes giving up and flagging in defeat. We confessed. We surrendered.
Ms. McDonald smirked.
We are all Raskolnikov.
And none of us had finished the book to realize it.