Well, I had just been zipping through my Penguin paperbacks, reading between one and three every week for over a year. And my reading included some rather lengthy Russian novels, like “Crime and Punishment”, and “Oblomov”. But when I got to “The Possessed” (sometimes known as “The Demons”) by Dostoevsky, I was slowed down into first gear, sometimes as if I was climbing a too steep hill, and sometime as if I was just stopped, waiting for the train to pass. I am happy to say that my ordeal is over.

Over the past few years, I have read both “Crime and Punishment”, which I consider one great book, and “The Brothers Karamazov”, which I consider a bit too dense and spotty. “Crime” is the psychological story of a university student who is so alienated from the world that all he can think to do is to plan and execute the perfect crime. And he does so (event though to the reader, the crime doesn’t seem so perfect) in such a way that not only is he able to avoid detection, but even when he wants to confess nobody believes him. Of course, he finally does get his comeuppance, but it isn’t easy.

“The Brothers” on the other hand is an overdrawn and bizarre family saga about a boorish man and his three sons, each of whom has a different view of life and different sense of entitlement. Yes, there is a crime in this one, too, and then punishment and what to do about it. Except for some few chapters, “The Brothers” does nothing for me.

Now we get to “The Demons”. Frankly, I think it is a spoof. But not a quick and cutesy spoof, but one which is so detailed and seemingly so meaningful that you really have to concentrate on it seriously to believe it is a spoof. Yes, there is a story line, and there is an extraordinary collection of characters. And that’s what they are – characters.

If “Crime and Punishment” is Dostoevsky’s psychological novel and “The Brothers Karamazov” his philosophical one, “The Demons” is his political novel. It is 1850 or so, the serfs have been freed, and reform is in the air. But what kind of reform, and how are the Russians, used to living under an absolute czar, supposed to define it and cope with it.

The younger generation, of course, has its ideas – socialism, freedom, religious toleration, equality. All these things that most older Russians (I am speaking here of the aristocratic class) cannot understand, and certainly of which they don’t approve. But it’s in the air.

And when the son of the very wealthy widow and the son of her longtime friend and teacher return to town with progressive ideas, you can be certain that everything will fall apart, and that this small and close community will never be the same. And you can be certain that chaos will lead to embarrassing situations, murder, suicide and mayhem.

This would be a great novel if it was half the size it is. The Penguin version is 648 pages long, with very small print.

Why did Dostoevsky make this book as long as he did? Perhaps, he was paid by the word? Could be. Like Dickens, this novel was first issued as a magazine series over, I think, a few years. But the primary reason is that this is a book filled with diversions. It’s written in the first person, by a character who is never named and rather minor, except that he is always around. And he is telling us this story. And every now and again, he stops in his tracks and says something like: “Before I tell you what happened next, I better give you some background.” And we are off on a multi-page digression. Or he says, when a new character is introduced, “I must tell you about him first”, and again we are sent down a different road.

One other point. As we know, Russian novels can be hard to follow because they do have a lot of characters, and each character tends to have a long three-part name. In “The Demons”, though, Dostoevsky goes one step further. He gives the characters names that are so close to one another that you cannot keep them straight, even if “War and Peace” gave you no problem.

There are two Verhovenskys (father and son), two Stavrogins (mother and son), two Shatovs (brother and sister), but also a Liputin, two Lebyadkins (brother and sister), a Lyamashin, two Lembkes (husband and wife), a Kirillov and a Karmazinov. It’s the L’s that get ya.

OK, enough of that.

Onward. I should switch to some very short Penguins – 200 pages or less for the next, say, 6. I have lost time to make up. But if I go by the pile I have been working on, it’ll be “Life in Shakespeare’s England” (365 pages), Isaac Babel’s “Collected Stories” (333), “The Canterbury Tales” (512), “The Magic Mountain” (716), two books on English History in the 18th and 19th centuries (total of 475). And one short one: “Requiem for a Nun” by Faulkner (only 232, but it’s Faulkner).

I think I need a new strategy.