Crime, Punishment & Redemption

[snopes]

Comment: Hello, in the fall of 2003, the then-Provost at Youngstown State
University (and now President of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania),
Dr. Tony Atwater, told an amusing anecdote.

He claimed that a young author had received a note from his publisher
indicating that his book, while good, was far too long and should be cut
by one-third. That book? "Crime, Punishment & Redemption".

I never thought to research it until some time ago; I myself cited it a
couple times before thinking to question it. Today, however, some more
robust Google searching yielded two results of note:

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~ikalmar/426/426pres.htm
http://www.mblwhoilibrary.org/servic...anscript1.html

Both suggest that it was Judah Folkman who said this in 2001. The latter
is a transcript of when she said it, while the former shows that its
citation may have begun with her.

Can you confirm whether or not this anecdote is true?

[Sesquipedalian]

FWIW, Joseph Frank, in the introduction to the copy I own, discusses the origins of the book and dealing with publishers but makes no mention of this anecdote.

[DesertRat]

Sounds like a bad literary joke taken as fact.

[RivkahChaya]

I would doubt it, because the book is on the whole about redemption. And it doesn't actually devote 1/2 the pages to the crime, and the other half to punishment. To suggest there is a missing measure, equal to one half of what exists, detailing a redemption, would suggest Dostoyevsky didn't understand his own work.

Moreover, there's lots of symbolism of duality in the book. The main character's name is even based on the word "split in two" in Russian. Many of the people and things have a dual nature, and the dual structure of the book is deeper than its simply being about a crime, and a punishment.

So, yeah, I'd say it's a joke.

[Nick Theodorakis]

Originally Posted by snopes

...
Both suggest that it was Judah Folkman who said this in 2001. The latter
is a transcript of when she said it, while the former shows that its
citation may have begun with her...

To make a nitpicky hijack, Judah Folkman is a "he."

Nick

[Sebbenth]

"Crime and Punishment" has been initially published as an episodic content in a magazine, and has actually been partially written in between the issues. Due to the strong demand, the full edition (in a separate book) has been printed very soon after completion of journal print, and edited personally by Dostoevsky. It has never been formally reviewed in a complete form before any of the prints so that the cuts could surface.

Besides, by the time he wrote "Crime and Punishment", Dostoevsky was Dostoevsky. It is highly unlikely he would have received a similar treatment, even regardless of the actual (well-documented) story of the publication.