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Kudos by Rachel Cusk5/31/2023 ![]() ![]() The novels in Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy - Outline (2015), Transit (2017), and the recently published Kudos - could be described as a succession of Marmeladov moments. By the end of the novel, the unsolicited confession of this "useless worm" will turn out to be the thing that Raskolnikov most needed to hear, partly because it comes to mirror his own concerns in ways he could not have predicted during their initial meeting in the tavern. His beloved daughter has become a prostitute to help feed the family. His long-suffering, consumptive wife, whose stockings he has sold to buy drink, has been beaten up by their exasperated landlord. Ignoring Raskolnikov's obvious reluctance, Marmeladov skips the small talk and plunges into a monologue that lasts for pages and pages: a rambling, self-lacerating narrative of abject misfortune, poverty, addiction, guilt, shame, helplessness, sin, weakness, and betrayal. Near the beginning of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov wanders into a seedy tavern, where he is approached by a bloated alcoholic wreck: a former clerk who introduces himself as Marmeladov and asks if they might have a polite conversation. ![]()
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