Classics Considered

For my next read after Brothers K, I returned to White Nights and Other Stories , which includes several Dostoyevsky short stories translated by Garnett.  This collection was a mixed bag; in spite of that, I give it a cumulative  4 out of 5 stars based on enjoyment level. The first and feature story is White Nights , a very romantic, fanciful sketch about unrequited love.  Previously, I had read some quotes from it online, and reading the entirety, I was not disappointed.  The ending was so depressing, but the story itself was bittersweet and thought-provoking.  Recommended if you want to read Dostoyevsky in a nutshell. I skipped Notes from Underground , having already read it. A Faint Heart was a psychological mystery, reminiscent of Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" which I read in September.  (Not to sound like a broken record, but it is worth mentioning that Dostoyevsky's so-called "existentialist" themes are sometimes compared to Kafka, as was ...

I finished The Brothers Karamazov  this past weekend.  From the last two parts, "Brother Ivan Fyodorovich" and "A Judicial Error," I was left with no particularly strong feelings or impressions.  It was a struggle to finish - ultimately, I rate the book 3.5 out of 5 stars , leaning towards 4 on Goodreads (which still doesn't allow you to have "half" a star.) Thinking back over this book journal - which I am glad I kept and am sorry to see end - I feel the first half of the book was very strong.  The religious chapters and scenes at the monastery were honestly my favorites.  Parts III & IV, which is to say books 7 – 12, were not so interesting, despite being highly sensational, as you come to expect from Dostoyevsky. Incidentally, this mirrors my reaction to The Idiot .  I gave that one a better rating of 4.5, and I have to say I liked that book better...I'm not sure it is a better book , but its treatment of similar themes was more compelling. ...

Previously:   Book I ,  Book II ,  Book III ,  Books IV & V ,  Book VI , Books VII–IX What does it say about Dostoyevsky that, after the roller coaster of the last three parts, he switches gears and writes a whole section about - schoolboys? Let me just say: any remaining reservations I had about his writing skills disappeared in this part.  I mean that seriously.  As with "The Russian Monk" (VI), this part left me very impressed. Most of us who have ever thought of being writers know about the Character Arc.  We tend to think the Character Arc is a long journey (it is).  But the most difficult part is actually writing it.  It can become a laborious process, and in the middle of that process we writers tend to lose the subtlety of good writing that the rest of our novel may possess.  We usually sacrifice the subtlety because the Character Arc appears to us like the milestones of life - big, earth-shattering, and loudly delineat...

Previously:  Book I ,  Book II ,  Book III ,  Books IV & V ,  Book VI And now we (unavoidably) head into spoiler territory... In these three parts - "Alyosha," "Mitya," and "The Preliminary Investigation" - we learn that Grushenka, while attempting to escape with her former seducer, becomes convinced that it is Dmitri "Mitya" Karamazov she really loves.  He pursues her and interrupts her elopement by throwing a raucous party, squandering hundreds (or is it thousands?) of rubles which he claims he stole from Katerina, his ex-fiancee.  Meanwhile, when his father Fyodor is found dead and 3000 rubles missing from his bedroom, all evidence is against Mitya.  He is found and interrogated; he himself claims no alibi.  In fact, he confesses he  was at his father's house, but ran away before committing the murder that was in his mind.  Nothing else Dmitri or the witnesses say can corroborate his alleged innocence, and he is arrested as ...

Previously: Book I , Book II , Book III , Books IV & V Today I spent some time cleaning out my closet, one of my favorite things to do on academic break.  Afterwards, I settled down to read another part of BK.  In all honesty, the chapter "From the Life of the Elder Zosima" did not look too promising.  Typically my expectations are low for stories in a story, and I was anxious to get back to Alyosha's story.  This was going to be a struggle to get through, I thought. As Thorin might say . . . I have never been so wrong. About halfway through, this "story in a story" actually moved me to tears.  And it struck me how timely it was, reading this part during this time of my life.  I always thought I should have read BK long ago, but it turns out this was the best timing.  "The Russian Monk" is a story about love, Godly love, and what a powerful force it is, and how profound, deep, painful, and beautiful it must be, to love your neighbor, and your enemi...

Previously: Book I , Book II , Book III The carriage started and raced off.  All was vague in the traveler's soul, but he greedily looked around him at the fields, the hills, the trees, a flock of geese flying high above him in the clear sky.  Suddenly he felt so well. What I got out of these two parts was not so much plot development but character development.  Through the eyes of Alyosha, we finally get to meet the enigmatic Karamazov brother, Ivan.  This in turn shows us their family's dysfunctional situation through his perspective, which by instinct is less disinterested than he might wish it to be. It's odd, but by far Ivan is my favorite character.  He is somewhat coldhearted, frequently profane, and not without some of the violent emotional tendencies of the oldest brother, Dmitri.  Still it is his anti-heroic traits and heroic potential that make him the most interesting character.  His bitterness is paradoxically deep-rooted and superficial....

*Page cuts will be added, should any posts in this series involve major spoilers. Previously: Book I , Book II In the previous installment, we saw the Karamazov family and friends bickering at Alyosha's home, the monastery.  Now we see the Karamazov family feuding in its natural habitat, and as what the father Fyodor and the son Dmitri call themselves, half-proudly: "sensualists." Book III really gets inside these two Karamazovs' heads, where depravity reigns over whatever better side they may (or may not) have.  Dmitri is engaged to Katerina Ivanovna, but he is also part of a lust-triangle involving his father and a young woman named Grushenka.  We are also introduced to Smerdyakov, a young man who, according to rumor, is Fyodor's fourth son.  Alyosha, as usual, is caught in the middle and ends up being the one to suffer most.  He is grateful to return to the monastery as soon as he can. Why had the elder sent him "into the world"?  Here was quiet, here...

*Page cuts will be added, should any posts in this series involve major spoilers. Previously: Book I Oh, yes, I am still reading this book.  It's a quick read; I simply haven't been reading very frequently. Case in point: book II is almost entirely the dialogue that takes place when the Karamazov family comes together at (of all places) the monastery.  Dialogue is to Dostoyevsky what narrative is to Kafka.  Characters talk on for paragraphs, and it starts out sensibly enough, only to end in a vastly different topic.  That's the beauty of it, though: it sets the cogwheels of your mind turning so you're never quite bored. By the way, I am loving this translation (Pevear/Volokhonsky).  Translation is such a wildly disputed topic, too much so, perhaps.  I enjoyed the Alan Myers translation of The Idiot , and Constance Garnett's Notes from Underground was quite good.  What really shines in Pevear/Volokhonsky is the emotional subtext.  That is, the nar...

(A number of bloggers I follow write their thoughts on lengthy books as they go along.  In fact, I believe one of them did this for The Brothers Karamazov in the last year or so.  Credit to them for the good idea!) For years, I've wanted to read this novel.  I enjoyed The Idiot and Notes from Underground , and people only say good things about this one.  Coinciding with o's Russian Literature 2014 challenge, it seemed high time to put it off no longer! The Brothers Karamazov is divided into 4 parts or, if you like, 12 books.  I do like this format.  If I'm to read a long book, short chapters are preferable.  ( Moby-Dick is similar, except that there are no parts or subdivisions.)  Anyways - I plan to write a post for each book.  Because "book journalling" inherently requires talking about plot twists, many of these posts will be spoilery. I'll add page cuts when I get to those parts. In book 1 we jump right away to meeting the main cha...

At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept thinking that if I walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours … But afterwards I thought one might find a wealth of life even in prison. Dostoyevsky has been on the brain lately, which means his unhappy character Prince Myshkin is always in the background, too, somewhere.  I can understand his wish for "walking straight on" without stopping, trying to escape reality, his illness and eccentricity which separate him from the world.  It's the last line that makes it, though - finding life and liberty "even in prison."  And I think there is something even stronger than Stoicisim in those words, because he doesn't just say life , but a wealth of life . Does Myshkin find this wealth in the prison of his life?  I don't know, but hi...

© Yanis Chilov [ CC-BY-SA-3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons My introduction to Fyodor Dostoyevsky was through (surprise!) Crime and Punishment .  Unable to swallow its psychopathic elements, I gave up just when the story was picking up and could not, in fact, bring myself to finish it.  Fast-forward to summer/fall 2011 - I was taking History of Russia and the USSR, picked up The Idiot because it seemed timely, and found it almost as equally disturbing but vastly more fascinating than C&P.  Now, after several people have (independently of each other) inadvertently recommended him to me this year, I've returned to Dostoyevsky via Notes from Underground .   "I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased."  The anonymous narrator's self-deprecatory sense of humor is strangely charming, at least initially.  A retired government official, he lives now in seclusion in the "Underground" (or underworld) of St...

Russia, mid-1800s.  When Prince Myshkin returns to his native country, he is young, naive, and not fully recovered from the physical and mental illnesses that had sent him to Switzerland.  A sudden inheritance plunges him headfirst into the Russian aristocracy, and he is unprepared for its gritty reality.  Torn between the woman he loves and the woman he pities, Myshkin must face the world for the first time in his life, to either rise above prejudice or be forever labeled "the idiot". This was my second Russian lit read, after Eugene Onegin .  I was taking the "History of Russia & the USSR" this fall, so it seemed a good time to read some more Russian lit.  I was drawn to The Idiot , moreover, due to its being Dostoyevsky and because of its "saintly" hero, which, according to the back cover, is the reason why Dostoyevsky wrote it.  Overall, I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars .  Recommended?  Not sure. While not necessarily a saintly hero, Myshkin ...

I am getting very close to finishing this book, and so far, it has been both fascinating and (to my knowledge) truly original.  I have a feeling it's going to end badly--but then again, the plot has not been predictable.  It keeps shifting from scene to scene, focusing on specific characters and their problems, with no continuous plot except the day-to-day life of Prince Myshkin, a very noble character. There is the common theme of searching : each character is looking for something, and no one has found it yet.  Rogozhin, the anti-hero, is trying to win the love of Nastasya, a mistreated and embittered woman.  She, in turn, is trying to escape from her past and find real happiness.  The middle-aged Yepanchin couple tries (unsuccessfully) to be conventional, and the youngest Yepanchin daughter is looking for independence.  Even Lebedev, a wannabe lawyer, makes it his business to hunt around for gossip.  And Myshkin?  He searches for st...