Guilt

In WORKS, see the first 45 pages of Mothership – a novel prequel to Lostine.

5th-Grade “Chet” hasn’t limited himself to his two main problems: how to follow his long-absent dad’s orders to “take care of your Mother”, while Chet, concealed from his mother, is forced deeper and deeper into a desperate relationship with an old homeless man he thoughtlessly half-blinded months ago.

As I review/re-write for the (n +1)th time the M/S of Mothership, I realize I have probably not adequately illustrated Chet’s sense of shock and guilt over what he did in one rock throw at a man standing in the open door of a box car on a passing freight train.

So my big idea is to go to The Guilt Man himself – Fyodor Dostoevsky, and review just how he drives Rodya Romanovich Raskolnikov to desperation. After 50 years, I see I had completely forgotten that Rodya never gets so much as a page off! The author’s inventiveness of mechanisms of psychological torture is endless and cruel. It also occurs to me that I’m not Fyodor’s 1st student.

Well, gosh! I think that’s why Crime and Punishment lives on, no?