A man who had taken on the literary challenge of reading the literary classic, 'The Idiot' by Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, has revealed how he became so bogged down in the author's excessively verbose style, that he felt obliged, on health grounds, to put the book down until he felt better.
Moys Kenwood, 57, initially found the concept of the book brilliant: a man who is totally selfless and honest, surrounded by a collection of individuals who are his moral opposite, and who seem to exist merely to satisfy their own desires and objectives.
Initially mistakenly being taken for some kind of simpleton - or 'idiot' - Prince Myshkin quickly becomes admired by everyone, but Dostoevsky's long, drawn-out tracts of texts with regard to what different characters are thinking, feeling, and doing - and why - eventually got the better of Kenwood.
Having reached page 216 of 578, he came across this passage:
"Conviction - of what? (Oh, how Myshkin was tortured by tge hideousness, the 'degradingness' of this conviction, of 'that baseforeboding', and how he had reproached himself!) 'Say of what if you dare,' he kept telling himself continually with reproach and challenge. 'Formulate all your thought, dare to express it clearly, precisely, without faltering! Oh, I am ignoble!' he repeated with indignation and a flush on his face. 'With what eyes shall I look upon that man for the rest of my life! Oh, what a day! Oh, God, what a nightmare!"
And, indeed, it was a nightmare; for Kenwood, at least, as his attention 'veered off', as if it had been a truck that was being driven by an exhausted driver who is in the process of falling asleep.
Brain Freeze, for this is what the hapless Kenwood took his affliction to be, had caused his senses to be temporarily paralyzed under the burden of weight of the now-dead Dostoevsky's unending and relentless prose.
A failure to accurately comprehend and assess the constant flow of arguably superfluous uses of complex ideas of the vast number of protagonists - and their extended family members - had the effect of numbing his own thought processes by way of overwhelming their capability to remember just who half of them were, and what the fuck was going on.
At the point where consciousness fades into unconsciousness - or, rather, subconsciousness - Kenwood thought he caught a glimpse, through the mind's fog, of a way out, and immediately put the book down, with one half of his psyche promising to pick it up after his tea to continue reading, whilst the other half cackled to itself that it would strenuously resist a resumption in reading by reminding its host of how Crime and Punishment had pushed him to the end of his mental tether just last week.
He went and had a cup of tea to thaw his brain, and felt somewhat better afterwards..
