PHILIP ROTH
171
I'm lonely without my Raskolnikov . Crisis is a violent way to
live . Everything magnified . I think Dostoyevsky fell in love with
him. I wouldn't have ended the book like that. Can't imagine how a
double murder of an old woman and dressmaker by an elitist intel–
lectual didn't get him clubbed to death.
If
blowing the D .A. taught
me anything, it's that justice is bloodthirsty, always. A deranged
maniac, a mutant, a savage, he still knows his onions about punish–
ment. He is wild on the subject . And adores crime. Despondent
without it. "We haven't had a good shocking trial in this town since
X was hired to kill Y's wife and blamed it on the priest." When one of
his pals stashed his girl in a closet, the D.A. was crushed. A man
considered a friend by a lot of people in the highest moneyed circles.
International circles . Consulting for big companies . Someone should
have consulted with him before he stashed her in the closet. When
they broke through the door they found a skeleton in a bikini and
gold chains. I understood that skeleton. This was a man we ate dinner
with one or two times a month. So much for one's idea of knowing
somebody else . The D.A. hates him not because he killed her but
mainly because he didn't confess that he killed her. Shudders at the
mention of his name . He says smug bastards like that he could tear
up into little pieces, and he made grimacing expressions and fists. I
could have handled the punishment better myself. Light sentences are
fairy tales. I would have finished Mr. Raskolnikov off right . Though
the rage against people who did him no real harm, that I know is
human enough . Hate and hatred is what one's alone with. I under–
stand that book: a brilliant loiterer who is suffering immensely. Rage
like it was all put to music . Rage like two hundred pounds to lose .
Rage sucking you low, dipping you down till you can hardly surface,
and when you do you surface crazed. People don't get older, they get
enraged . The royal road of rage. A siege of rage. Melancholy and
slavery and rage . Dinners , trips, escapades, benders, and rage . All I
want is my sleep . Slothing out. The books . Those books.
If
that's the
deal , I'll move to the library. He has a mind. Had a mind since he
was a baby . Precise like that since childhood. I did as he instructed . I
cut myself back to a stump. To spare him the drudgery I'd do it my–
self. Rip out whole parts of myself. I cringed for doing what he de–
plores . Emotion , red light-reason, logic, order, green . No slothing
out. Your mind is a little nut that hasn't been cracked . Open sesame
and soon, or you're back to being a dart board again. I did my little
exercises daily. Read , so I read. Fence it off, so I fenced it in . A ti–
tanic effort to
contain.
To make the deal with life, I pretended I was
him. Brave , a champion. Playing him, doing exactly what he would
