The Brothers Karamazov

Make sure your copy has this cover.I've mentioned in a few previous posts that I've been reading The Brothers Karamazov. It's true -- and I've been doing so since the beginning of this year. Yes, I decided to read a 776-page Russian novel. As the father of a two year old.

What possessed me to do this? In addition to the fact that it's always been on that list - the list of books I know I should have read but haven't -- I bought myself a copy of The Top Ten, a book that asked 200 writers for their own personal top ten, then aggregated the answers to get an overall top ten. I consider myself a pretty well-read person, and I realized that I'd only read one of these books (The Great Gatsby, should you care).

So, I scooped up three of them: Karamazov, Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Then, I asked folks - specifically, my Facebook friends - which one I should read. Overwhelmingly, the choice was The Brothers Karamazov. So I leapt in ... and, at long last, my journey is done. It took me only about seven months. Sigh.

I absolutely understand why so many people love this novel -- indeed, it's pretty much everything one could expect from a piece of fiction. It's important to note that I chose the image above and linked to the specific edition of the novel; I first bought a separate, older translation and that alone slowed me down from the start. This one, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, won awards for translation and is considered the most faithful translation of the original Russian text.

The story is about Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons: Alyosha, Dmitri and Ivan. (Each of them is alternately called about a gazillion different names -- each character has a slew of nicknames, and it can be hard to distinguish or keep up.) Fyodor is a lout, a wretched person and father (all three sons are from different wives, and a fourth potentially illegitimate child Smerdyakov - who plays a gigantic role in the novel - lives with him as a servant), and none of his sons have positive relations with him.

Alyosha, called "the hero" by the omniscient narrator, is a novice in the local monastery and provides a link between many of the characters as he travels through the town during the course of much of the novel. His brother Dmitri is almost a complete opposite, living life on the edge, drinking to excess and burning through money with impunity. (Of the three sons, he is most like the father he loathes.) Ivan is the oldest, and a sullen intellectual who openly challenges the idea that God exists, among other things.

SPOILER ALERT! 

The book is, of course, about the murder of Fyodor, and the possibility that Dmtri killed him, committing parricide...and then, whether he may or may not get convicted for a crime he may not have committed. I should state that this really isn't a spoiler alert, because many folks who haven't read the book know this, and those who don't - like myself - can say freely that it didn't spoil the book whatsoever.

I just really wanted to try this spoiler alert thing out.

Of course, the novel is about much more than that -- and the most famous part of it is The Grand Inquisitor, a parable Ivan tells Alyosha as a way of questioning the concept of a kind, benevolent God.. The Grand Inquisitor is even studied on its own, and it isn't hard to understand why - it's not only beautifully written but also raises core questions and issues -- and leaves it open for personal interpretation.

The other passage that resonated so much with me comes much later, when Ivan has (hallucinates?) a conversation with The Devil. Here is a small quote, where the Devil taunts Ivan:

But hesitation, anxiety, the struggle between belief and disbelief—all that is sometimes such a torment for a conscientious man like yourself, that it's better to hang oneself. . . . I'm leading you alternately between belief and disbelief, and I have my own purpose in doing so. A new method, sir: when you've completely lost faith in me, then you'll immediately start convincing me to my face that I am not a dream but a reality—I know you know; and then my goal will be achieved. And it is a noble goal. I will sow a just a tiny seed of faith in you, and from it an oak will grow—and such an oak that you, sitting in that oak, will want to join 'the desert fathers and the blameless women'; because secretly you want that ver-ry, ver-ry much.

I personally love that - but the text isn't simple reading, nor is any of the novel. Still, once you get absorbed into the characters,  the plot and the messages of the book, it truly is brilliant.

What struck me when I read Crime and Punishment years ago was how surprisingly modern and often humorous it was. The same can definitely be said for The Brothers Karamazov and I often found myself smiling despite the often horrible themes and situations in the novel. Fyodor Dostoyevsky is clearly one of the true masters, and his life is well worth reading about as well. In many ways, this novel has the most personal connections to Dostoyevsky's own life, and I think it shows in the power of his words.

The book did take a terribly long time for me to "get into" -- part most of that is about me, and the fact that I allocated the few minutes before I passed out each night to read it. But, if I'm being fair, the book also takes awhile to get rolling and it's quite hard to know what you are quite getting yourself into.

I am eminently glad that I read The Brothers Karamazov, and it definitely deserves its place as among the greatest novels of all-time. Does that mean it is personally one of my favorite novels of all-time? No, it's not quite at that level. (Though, perhaps ironically, a book inspired by this, The Brothers K, is on that list.)

This is a perfect example of a book that benefits from being part of a curriculum; talking it through with peers and professors would undoubtedly lead me to more insight, and I'm sure that I missed much of the meaning and allegory contained within those 776 pages. But, you can only rule the play on the field.

My Rating: 9.0/10.0