摘要：I confess from the outset to being a ‘Dostoevsky fanboy’. If Doctor Who fans are Whovians and Star Trek fans are Trekkies then I am a ... Dostoevskyite. If there was a convention I would be there, ‘cosplaying’ as Raskolnikov while my friend ‘cosplayed’ as the student corner I writhe in remorsefully. Or something. So this work by René Girard, the famous French literary critic, historian, philosopher, and one of the ‘forty immortals’ of the French Academy, translated by James G. Williams, was something I found myself devouring with glee. As we train to be academics who cut into the very core of literature and reveal its sometimes sickly and shrivelled beating heart, dare we admit that it is sometimes difficult to analyse and take apart books we truly love? Occasionally one winces even to see another do so, as one would flinch at the sight of a stranger receiving a beating. We all have our literary gods, we have those stories closest to our hearts, and perhaps we do not always want to open those texts up and watch their cogs and mechanisms fall onto the floor and roll under the sofa. The lowest grade I ever received at university was for a paper about Crime and Punishment, my favourite novel of all time, something I had been aching to write about. Praise and awe do not lead to insightful essays.
