just made my own comment about how good Moby Dick was, then read this and could not agree more with all points above. Part I of Crime and Punishment is kind of nauseating. I feel sweaty when I read it. Thinking about it now, I still have a sense of what Raskolnikov's room smells like. The prose of the book also mirrors Raskolnikov's clarity - as he regains his social support and place in the world, the writing becomes easier to digest, more leveled, as he moves from his own problems to those of others. Another Dostoevsky book that captures this well is Notes from Underground - the scene with the prostitute and the first part of C&P share the same of sort of uh, intense anxiety about everything

If you ever want to reexperience that sense of feverish anxiety, I'd recommend the Kieslowski movie a Short Film About Killing (or the episode of the Decalogue it's taken from). For most of the first half of the movie, he blocks out part of the frame to give you that idea of immediacy, the inability to understand a situation, claustrophobia, that Raskolnikov feels leading up to the pivotal act. I'd be very surprised if it were not directly inspired by C&P