Book Report. Or: I've Come A Long Way From Charlotte's Web
A couple of quick notes before I dive into what I'm going to dive in to here. Savor these tidbits as the rest is going to be largely undigestable junk.

First, the rumor is that they're planning layoffs (again) at Mrs. Pops' place of employ. Figures range from 15-35% of the workforce, but that's rumors for you. We're feeling a little exposed. Mrs. Pops recently made a lateral transfer with the promise of lots of work. Then both of the projects she was in line for went away due to budgetary constraints. So now she's not actively attached to anything and low-woman on the totem-pole in her group since she newly transferred in. A little freaky, to be honest.

Second, yay baseball. Any time the Yankees are humiliated is a good day for all Americans. Red Sox-Cardinals and people (besides just me) seem to care again.

Now the meat of the post and the bad news: I've decided since it's Friday and blog traffic is way down on weekends (thanks Sitemeter for the wisdom you bring), I am going to get this out of the way with minimal annoyance to my regular audience.

I'm going to write about Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. It's 1,000 pages of 19th-century Russian in block text with virtually no paragraph breaks. I want to write about it completely for my own benefit. I am not operating under the delusion that anyone else should be interested in what I have to say about it. I simply know that if I don't write it here, I won't write it anywhere (the pull of ego on the part of the brain in charge of motivation is powerful) and if I don't write it anywhere, all the information currently residing in my brain will leak out my ears while I sleep over the next few weeks until I forget every single thing about it.

Wow. Even the warning was long and boring. This should be fun. For me, anyway. If you're still reading, God help you.

First, let me say that I don't know nearly enough about 19th century literature to discuss this in any kind of proper context, which is troubling, but can't be helped. If anyone happens on this piece and does know something about it, then I apologize for my abject ignorance. Wait a second, no I don't. This is my blog. Fuck off, Judgey McJudgment, I'm writing here.

About the text itself, the most obvious observation is the complete, 100% absence of any semblance of a plot. If I were Roger Ebert reviewing the latest Hillary Duff movie, this would be withering criticism, but here Dostoyevsky has 1,000 pages to cover for that small omission. He fills it up, let me tell you.

There is one event in the book, one central, crucial event, but the fact that it occurs is always--always--less important than the ramifications of it with regard to the deeply, deeply, deeply analyzed and constructed psychologies of all the characters involved.

Most of the time I felt like I was hopelessly lost in Subplot Hell.

The central event is a murder, but it's almost beside the point. The "mystery" of it only lasts for about 200-250 pages and even then it's secondary. When it is spelled out, it's done matter of factly and completely in service to the larger themes rather than driving the story itself, as it would do in a modern novel.

Speaking of themes, Dostoyevsky's central idea has to do with this complicated matrix of guilt and morality, especially as informed by religion--very forcefully, particularly Russian Orthodox Christian religion--versus European positivist, socialist-ic, anthrocentric "new thinking". Guilt as Dostoyevsky explores it, blooms and spreads like a drop of blood in a water glass; the focus is less on establishing and proving direct blame for specific acts but rather on complicity in a practical sense, yes, but also (and more importantly) in a moral and metaphysical way, extending into a character's responsibility to his family, friends and neighbors but also--more abstractly--as a member of a morally-accountable society where the rash act of an individual creates a cascade effect of consequences that is devastating, touching vast swaths of the population.

Conversely, while acting outside the bounds of basic Christian morality has causes catastrophic social harm, for Dostoyevsky the greatest act of healing is to assume the guilt of others onto oneself. The obvious, un-subtle exemplar is Christ himself, vaguely alluded to once or twice throughout, who selflessly assumed all of the sins of all mankind, throwing open the doors of heaven or whatever.

This example is taken up directly twice in the story with vastly different results.

The first is in the case of the Elder Father Zosima, a secondary character who nevertheless dominates the first half of the book. He is the monk who mentors the youngest Karamazov, Alyosha (more on him later). Like every single other character, Dostoyevsky reconstructs the entire psychological life of this character in painstaking detail, page after page after page, in order to show us how the great epiphany of assuming the guilt of others (something he first realizes when suggested by someone he acknowledges later to be totally batshit insane) in the name and service of the Orthodox version of God leads to a life of inner peace, great wisdom and insight, unfathomably deep reserves of personal calm and the general acclaim of everyone you meet. It's no guarantee against your corpse stinking up the whole town as it decomposes, however (that's actually in the book... it's a whole chapter, I swear).

The second is in the case of Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov, the middle of the three Karamazov brothers. Ivan is Dostoyevsky's paragon of New Thinking, the godless intellectual who views religion with not only disdain but open hostility. In the course of the story he is hammered over the head with the revelation that his father (the murder victim) was killed as a direct result of something he said to the murderer. Even though he himself was not actively involved, his unwitting complicity in the central-event parricide--and without the aid of religion to soften the blow--completely annihilates him to the point of total insanity and (it is hinted at the end) fever and death. It is no accident that agnostic Ivan's delirious hallucinations as he realizes and marinates in his perceived guilt take the form of the Devil, a personfication goaded into existence by what Dostoyevsky sees as the basic truth of the religious position with respect to crime, guilt and punishment.

In direct disputation with Ivan in the very beginning of the book, Zosima say "if Christ's Church did not exist at present there would be nothing to restrain the criminal from his wrongdoing, nor even any punishment to follow it... genuine punishment, the only effective kind, that deters and pacifies... is conained in an awareness of of one's own conscience." (this is page 87 of the David McDuff translation for Penguin Classics) Flogging, incarceration, mutilation, torture, execution... no punishment meted out by a secular State has any chance (or even intention) of reforming the criminal and pales to the point of disappearance next to the tiny, cramped, unescapable cell of the human conscience informed by religious morality expressed concretely in the form of guilt.

Those are the two most dramatic examples, but every character--all of them--is a slave to the ravages of conscience in all matters petty and grand.

I don't know if it is the style of 19th century Russian literature to have their characters be so over-the-top dramatic in every conversation they have, but the spikes and prickling of conscience drive everyone to speak and behave erratically. Emotionally everyone is all over the map when speaking, steaming out their ears one second, laughing maniacally the next, tearing up with love in the next. Maybe the instance of dialogue were so few and far between amongst the giant 100-page blocks of backstory and profiling for every single character that Dostoyevsky just wanted to get as much emotional resonance in as possible in every exchange. The result is that everyone comes across as half cracked.

Speaking of that, another thing I noticed is that people tend to go quite insane very easily in Dostoyevsky's Russia. Two people crack up completely in the course of the story, another is crazy from introduction and a score of others have their sanity temporarily set aside for the purpose of melodramatic effect.

The one exception is the maddeningly even-tempered Alyosha, the youngest brother. As a student of a monk, he's all charged up with unassailable truths about life and the universe, even though he is the youngest and least worldly of all the characters. He's a Kierkegaardian Knight of Faith in a land overflowing with Infinite Resignation. I once heard Dennis Miller describe the kinds of roles he used to get when he still did movies: he said he always played the "expositional eunuch", the guy who came in to drop some information, move the story along and never got laid. Frustratingly, this is the central role of the central character Alyosha. He personally does almost nothing. He doesn't have to. He walks into a room and people vomit out the deepest darkest secrets from way down in the heels of their souls and thus handily move the story (such as it is) along. In a work that is structured more as a gradual collecting of information than a linear progression of events, I suppose this is necessary. But it sure makes for one dull character.

By far my favorite part of the book was the rampant anti-Catholicism. I had read the excerpted chapter The Grand Inquisitor in a college philosophy class many, many moons ago, so I saw it coming, but man, it's full-on, kick-ass, take-no-prisoners anti-Catholic. Not only do we as Catholics reject "true" religion, not only are we in league with the Devil, we actually worship the Devil. We draw believers in with cheap miracles, physical protection and the promise of a crust of bread. People flock to us because those are things they want and they're lemmings who really don't know any better. So we build this huge worldly apparatus of the Catholic Church to serve our un-Godly purposes and subjugate all of mankind, filling his belly while starving his soul. Not only that, but if Christ were to come back visit Catholics (the premise of The Grand Inquisitor mini-story) the clergy would plan to burn him at the stake as a heretic since his very presence would challenge established Church-supported truths and the crowds would cheer. It's really an electric piece of reading in a sea of heavy exposition, but I really have no other analysis of it than to say Damn, Dostoyevsky don't fuck around, does he?

That's it. For being long winded, it's a shallow examination of some of the bits and pieces of an enormous work of a great, disciplined mind. The consistency of thought and theme over such a large space is what holds the giant piles of information together into a cohesive whole, a monumentally impressive achievement, especially as translated from Russian.

As physically taxing as the whole thing was, finishing it was immensely rewarding. It's a lighter read than I think I've made it out to be, but anything this size requires effort. I think the book is about 5 pounds heavier than when I started for all the red-ink notes and underlining.

Amen.

If you've read this far, you're a disgusting masochist whose time would be better spent putting cigarettes out in the palm of your hand or something.

But there, it's done and it needn't be done again.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0 (second time in a week! But I did warn you...)


Pops

- posted by Pops @ 12:00 AM