By Riccardo Meroni For ODDA Korea July 2024

“mary wollstonecraft sent a volume of jean-jacques rousseau's bestselling novel julie, or the new heloise (1761) to her lover william godwin in 1796, with the request that he ‘dwell on your own feelings: that is to say, give me a bird's-eye view of your heart.’

the shrewdest lovers marked up their books by highlighting the passages that they most agreed with, thereby ensuring that they found a spouse with a similar intellect, interests and outlook on life.”

we have loved the same way for centuries.

jolts upright I've just had a realization. how much did atsushi think about when akutagawa died? how much did he replay it in his mind, go over every detail again and again? how much did he mourn it, grieve him? how many times did he recall akutagawa's last words? because for atsushi to be able to, in a split second, as he *dies* and everything around him has already gone to shit, recall what akutagawa said to him, and repeat it back? it must have been constantly.

as im rereading crime and punishment one of the things that makes me remember why i love this book so much is that it takes the whole "brooding male character is too intelligent for the surrounding laymen, his lack of empathy makes him more masculine, he is above the average person" male fantasy and flips it on its head. raskolnikov wants to believe he's all of these things. he wants to believe that he's already so detached from society that he's above it and beyond saving. that he's already a bad guy, that it's just a burden he'll have to bear, and that if he's gonna alienate himself he might as well play the part of the monster. he might as well commit murder (both to prove that he can do it, and to lift himself and potentially others from financial hardship) because he knows he can put himself into a logical mindset since he believes he's so good at turning off his emotions. he won't feel any guilt or compassion, right? he's a step above human, right? so he must be the perfect sacrificial lamb to bear the burden of murder.

but he's not. and the book is just him constantly betraying himself. he wants so badly to believe that he's capable of cold-blooded premeditated murder, and that he's capable of putting his humanity aside for the "greater good." he swings between considering himself a sort of superman for his ability to commit murder, and considering himself scum of the earth for even thinking of such a thing. he never just considers himself human. but the problem is that he is human, and he's a lot better of a person than he wants to admit. he's absolutely full of contradictions. in the same breath as cursing himself for being crushingly poor, he gives away his remaining money to children in need--despite it logically putting him in a worse financial situation. within the same hour he kills an old woman with an axe, after he nearly gets home, his first instinct is to go out of his way to return the axe to the worker he borrowed it from, cleaned up and in the same position he found it--despite him acknowledging that returning it was much riskier than just getting rid of the axe somewhere else.

raskolnikov paradoxically wants to commit the perfect crime, and get recognition for it. but as soon as it's recognized, he's no longer gotten away with it. with recognition comes confession, and with confession comes the realization that he's just not the guy he thought he was. he's not some ultra cunning, heartless, cold-blooded mastermind. he's not the napoleonic figure he admired. he's not a cardboard cutout of solid logic and reason 100% of the time. he physically falls ill from his own mental battle ffs. no matter how much he plans the murder, he still panics. no matter how much he tiptoes around conversations after the murder, he still feels guilt. no matter how much he isolates himself from his friends and family for the sake of self-crucifixion, he still allows himself to be fed soup by them, one spoonful at a time, while they gently blow on it so that he does not burn himself.

he's driven by emotion just as much as logic. the biggest problem with raskolnikov is that his humanity far exceeds his own expectations. and learning that redemption is possible is scary, because it means learning humility and taking accountability for oneself. having something to live for and improve toward is as much of a heavy nuisance as it is an honorable goal. only a person with some amount of goodness can recognize that and still choose to undertake that task, regardless of how logically inconvenient it is. and raskolnikov is, unfortunately, a much better person than he thought.

John Amplas in Martin (1977)

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My favorite ultra-specific character type is "this fucked up little man clearly just needs a consensual BDSM relationship and some therapy and he'd be fine, but that is very much not what happens in this story."

Hitomi Murakami

泡沫の一碗/fleeting bowl - 田中流撮影

STRANGLED VOL. 2 #26 [1987]

popular culture used to be very much about eroticism. rockstars used to be on stage in sequins and thongs and thigh high boots playing guitars like they were masturbating. girls used to wear velvet mini dresses and no bras and red-brick-brown lipstick and mascara on their bottom lashes. people used to have body hair on television and in the movies. people used to be sweaty. people used to touch each other over denim and under cotton. foreplay used to be staring at someone over the rim of a glass across a bar across a park across a dinner table. people used to want. i think we’ve lost something