I had a really tough time initially. I didn’t like it. I didn’t enjoy the characters. I hated the monastery. I felt like it would never end. Spencer kept encouraging me to keep going. I have to say, once they left the monastery it got better. Then the whole grand inquisitor part got me off track. Then all of a sudden (somewhere around page 275) I was hooked. I liked it. I could read it without long sighs. When I looked around the room for a book to grab on my way out I considered grabbing the Brothers.

Now I’m on page 545, on track to finish this month, and loving it. Keep going. It’s worth it.

http://www.katejonuska.com/2006/03/15/the-brothers-karamozov-fyodor-dostoevky/

Frankly, I didn’t have the time or energy to try it again, although it is still on my lifetime to-read list. Sigh.

i just walked over to the bookcase and pulled off my copy. [it would be embarrassing to admit how many times i’ve renewed this tome from the library.]

here’s the truth: i read 53 whopping pages of the brothers. [but, if you include the unnumbered introduction, it should shove that number into the 60s.]

first, i have to say, in response to spencer, that i found the introduction fascinating, but i do wonder about its effect in terms of conditioning us to respond to the novel and its characters in certain ways, i.e. alyosha as the hero, the narrator as unreliable. i wonder how our perception/reception of the novel alters once we have an “expert” telling us how to understand it. has anyone done any research on this? dissertation topic, perhaps?

and to justin, it’s interesting to me that you find dostoevsky’s use of a narrator to make the novel more “down to earth” than tolstoy’s. if given the choice, i would rather read tolstoy than dostoevsky. maybe it’s a function of reading translations (spencer?) but i feel like i have to pick my way through dostoevsky’s sentences while tolstoy’s novels seem to have more forward momentum. [does that make me sound uneducated? is it pathetic to like tolstoy more?]

in any case, i have a few ideas for why this book was so difficult for me to approach. [i haven’t actually read a novel in a few months–scandalous.] anyone else have any ideas for why they were too intimidated to attack it? is it the length? the russian-ness?

or [don’t admit it] do you just not like me and my book club anymore?

I was rereading this time as well and I was also impressed with the dichotomies that Doestoevsky tackles so effortlessly, often pitting two rivals against each other in gripping dialogue. Often he explains rival opinions in amusing ways, like with Kolya. I really admire his ability to see both sides of an issue. He was a devout Christian, I think, but you can see his own journey to find faith in God through Ivan especially. It’s interesting to compare the treatment that he gives to Ivan’s ideas, and then to Kolya’s.

At the end, Aloysha is obviously made to be a Christ figure. I was thinking maybe Kolya was made to be like Peter, impulsive and impetuous. Were there any more parallels to the primitive church that people noticed?