The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

Astonishing work by Dostoevsky, though it does become repetitive. Existential to a fault. ( )

Well, to me, it seems a bit ridiculous to even attempt a review of this novel. When review has come to represent observations and criticisms or plot re-hashings, there really seems to be little I, or anyone for that matter, could say about The Brothers Karamazov that isn't already known or hasn't already been said by someone wiser and abler. If I were brilliant, I could share a spur-of-the-moment haiku that appropriately captures my feelings for this story. But I'm not. Brilliant, that is. So how about this: it's Russian, it's rich and it's revered. Read it. ( )

The greatest novel ever written. ( )

The firorst tiem I triesd to reviw… Oh, I can see that typing is going tro be a problem here, and honestly I do not have the patience to fix all my mistakes right now. I just want to get these thoughts down. I can see that is going to create a slurred word/poor speech effect, but in fact if you were sitting here right now, you’d know that I am in fact NOT slurring any words, and speaking with the utmost eloquance. So let’s just agree to overlook the misspellings and whatnot, shall we? So what is the Drunken Book Review for? Is it some flight of fancy, some exercise inself-flattery that I, in my altered state, will umnshackel myself from the comventional notions of book reviewing and break through transcendently to a new plane of book reviewing, ushering in a new era of golden age of literary human history, like that little baby floating in space at the end of 2001 Space Oddyssey? Not gonna happen…. But what I WILL do is review brosn … Brothers Karamazov (to be called just BK from now on)
BUT BRIAN!!! YOU ALREEADY DID THAT REVIEW!! YOU DON’T HAVE TO DOI T AGAIN?!!
Yes, but my review from before sucked,and everybody knows it. Check it out (insert link here) [Edit: link here]

To the Brian of 2009 (B09): You love that book, and yet your review is superficial and childlike. You aren’t helping anybody, and you are making us look bad.
B09: Yes I am won’t you please fix it I am trapped int the past and no longer relevant to the modern world.
Me: I have to do everything around her.e.

Haha. I just realized I’m drunk on scotch AND I’m wearing a plaid shirt, so I have a total Scottish theme going. I just need to get throw my golf clubs (don’t have) into the back of my McClaren (don‘t have), put on some bagpipe tunes, and go out to buy a kilt! My mother’s side of the family is Scottish (ancestry) , and they even have a unique pattern of plaid that goes with their.. Whatever… clan, I guess. That always struck me as, I don’t know, very tribal.
I am going to review BK drunk because try as I might, I can’t seem to reveiw gthe damn thing sober!! That giddied book is one of my five desreet island top five picks, and I can’t even put together a decent review about it. You know what? I think BK for me is like Infginite Jest is to Greg or Flesh, because they love that book, but then (and this is no offense to you guys because you write awesome reviews( ) when you read his review, it talks about a lot of things, because it measn so many things to them, but somehow it doesn’t get into the specifics what it is about if you never heard of theat book beofe.r. Theres not mention of Hal Indaznea the whole review, which is the same as myrevfiew of BK, where I don’t mention gruashinak and alyosha the whole review! (oh god, those Russian names are gonna kill me on this) I hope nobody bgets oupste I wrote that. NOOFFENSE!! ITS because (I’m guessing) there are too many things to say, and you want to talk about them all ,and then you don‘t get around to the details.. I totally get that. I get it, so are we cool? It happepnd to me too, with BK

[Brian:BK] ~ [Greg:Infinte Jest] = Flesh singeas outinfinte jest

Ifucked that up, but you know what I mena.

(off topic) You know Star Trek? Mr. Scotty? That wasn’t very Scottish, it seems to me. Nothing specific, but I just wasn’t feelin’ it. Sorry…try again next time.

(back to BK) The following reasons includes (but is not limited to) the reasons why :
1) it’s too big (TWSS)
No, I don’t mean that there are too many pages. I’m saying it is too broad. There’s so much nuance,a nd so many details, and so many reasons why it is wonderful. On every single page. And the CAHARCATERS! Like probvably everybody eehere, I have tried my hand at creative writing, and you knonw what? I can’t make charatgers, because they are all too much the same. They’re all basically me (that is not an original idea, but I don’t know whatere it comes form right oww, and anyhow, that’s what happens. It’s like “that’s old man Brian“, “that’s Mexican brrian“, “that’s whatever… robot/farmer/ crackwhore brian“… I can’t make those characters different enough. But dysoktaoikvky (Oh God, I’m never going to spell that right. I should cut and paste it, but I’m I just don’t see that happening. From now on, I’m going to call the author Big D) Anyhow, BigD can make all those characters different and separate individuals, and I really admire that. I can’t do that. (hey, this is correcting some of your mistakes)

This isn’t even what I wanted to talk about. Yes, Ctridwern said this would happen, and youre right. Talking about other things I didn’t thingk agout before. When I said it’s too big, I meant that any review of BK is bound to be like a review of the Grand Canyon. Think about it… how would you review the Grand Canyon if you were talking to somebody who never heard of it? “It’s really deep? There are many wonderful different colored rocks? It’s really pretty when the sun setting on it?” Those descriptions are such a joke. They are pathetic If you’ve ever SEEN the Grand Canyon, you’d know how short hthose descriptions frall from the actual experience of seeing it in real life. If you’ve actually BEEN THERE standing on the edge at Bright Angel, looking out onf the magnificence of it- the vast expanse of sky above you, and the hideous intense raw beauty of ten thousand geologic eons screeming along your optic nerves and biting into your brain , engulfing you like the deepest void of outer space on the blackest night, transcending and completely dwarfing the entire bucking and shuddering drama of human history, reducing it to a barely perceptible quivver, and extending out beyond the furthest light have ever reached until you are completely humbled by the infinitude of it all. Then why would you even TRY to review something like that? Because you would look like a DUMBASS!!! It’s like “Oh, I’m a piece of plankton,and I’ve decided that I’m going to write a review of all of the life in the ocean, with all the complex little ecosystems and niches, and the complex interractions and the dependencies and interdependencies and the food web of the food chain, DNA, evolution, the moon effecting the tides, and modern technologies nuclear submarines at the bottom of the ocean. I’ve got my pen ready! I’m going to find some paper! I’m just about to get started! Here I go! It’s going to b e chapter one… OH WAIT! I’m a plankton, with a little plankton’s brain, and I could nevrer comprehend what’s even twenty feet away from me.. I don’t even know that I myself am alive or exist! So maybe I better think twice about my grandiose plans to cataloge every last organism in history and the entire ocean and its contents with all of the inner workings and everything contained within. Don’t you really think that would be a better idea, maybe to just keep floating here and go where the tide takes me??

BUT HERE’S THE SURPRISE TWIST YOU WEREN’T EXPECTING (AND neithener did I until I just realixed it)… Now I HAVE TO reveiew it, or else I become guilty of the FAKERS FREE PASS EFFECT (FFPE) which I fought against valiantly my whole life, particularly it seems (but not exclusively) in high school, where so much drama happens and kids have time to waste thinking about that kind of shit.
WHATES THE FFPE BRAIN? WE NEVER HEARD OF THAT- PLEASE TELL US HWHATISIT?
I MEAN WHAT IS IT? WHAT COULD IT POSSIBLY BE?
As follows:
There are some great things, like Shakespeare, (Or likle Mozart for music) which areso widely appreciated that it is common knowledge to everybody that they are great. So then you run into the cases where people who don’t know shit and didn’t even read it except the Cliff notes KNOW that they can get by just praising it without being too specific, and they when they don’t have an opinion and BRING NOTHING TO THE TABLE BUTt hey know nobody will ever challenge them, because hey! Who can argue with saying that Shakespeare is great? You can’t. so it’s like a free pass. That’s the lazy student’s way. That’s the faker’s free PASS And it used to get me so pissed off. In twelft grade English class was the height of this, I knew some people were doing this, so I took the position that Shakespeare was overrated (even though Romeo and Juliet is fun, and Julias Ceasar is obviously cool, and after high school I read Othello and he was the shit too) just to give people a hard time if I thought they were using FAKERS FREE PASS, and we’d get into arguments that I didn’t even believe myself… which is dumb, because of course the teacher never wanted to agree with any of my points, even though I WAS DOING HIS FUCKING JOB FOR HIM, because that’s what he was supposed to do, right? Make them work for it, don’t just say “yeah, you get an A because you said “Shakespeare’s mastry of imagery and beautiful language” without giving any examples. He thought I was an idiot, and I actually LIKED those plays.

So to ward off any suspicion of FAKERS FREE PASS I must prodceed tpo review the BK, which I am in no fucking shape to be doing., and which in a round about way drunk book review was kind of a strategy to avoid doin g int the firtst place because I could have NOT talked about the book and then blamed it on”I was drunk” but that’s not my way, and I want to set a good example for the children, finishing what I started and not turning back just because things have become difficult for me in a turn of events which nobody could have expected,and which cannot be rightly laid on my doorstep as a consequence of which I am solely responsible.

First of all, every one of those characters has their own motivations. The family is totally dysfunctional, but in a way where they are each acting rationally (well that’s how it always is, isn’t it?) even though the father is mostly an asshole. I don’t know why this fascinates me so much, because my family was for most part got along well, and my parents were pretty good to me and my sister. My Dad wasn’t like the father in BK at all. My sister did her own thing, and I we fought some when we were younger, which is normal but basically got along okay when she got more mature and could see how right I am about everything (just ikidding) But the only time I saw anything in my family like the dysfunctional family in BK was once… and I’m not going to air dirty laundry here, but just a legal matter involving all the siblings of my grandparents (I’m trying to be vague here- it‘sn to important) , and you could kind of see both sides of it, and each person wanted to press their point and get their way, and if it wasn’t in the family it would probably be like all-out war, but since you kind of have that gravity of familial bonds pulling people back in, that keeps people from acting out in a way that can’t be repaired, so not only isthere all of this inter-person tension, but then EACH person has a tenstion inside them which they are also wrestling with, which is an added layer of complexity, and that is a hard thing to even get your heard around in real live, but BigD WRITES ABOUT IT in fiction and makes it seem so real, and believable. (Goddamn, I’m drunk but that actually kind of came out sounding not too bad! Or will I wake up tomorrow and it doesn’t make sense, like when people trip out on LSD and paint something they think is a masterpiece but the next day its total garbage? I used to paint a lot for a hobby, and some of it was kind of surreal and trippy, and once this friend of minewas looking at what I painted and she started talking about how great LSD is, and all these trips she had, and I was thinking like “Why is she telling me all this?” and then I found out that she just assumed I was big into LSD because ofmy paintings! I never took it though.

Oh, this is a good place to start talking about Grushenka! Grushika is just like Mildred from Sommerste Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage”- just a miserable person, yet she’s the focus of farther ahdn son competing for her affections… why? What do they see in her? So first of all, it’s “like father like son” right? I mean we see our parents and say “I won’t make the same misktakes as them” but you’ve got their dna AND they raised you, so you’re fighting NATURE AND NURTURE trying not to be like your parents. And why settle for trash like Grushenka anyway? Because she really is kind of miserable. But you kind of have to take it symbolically, like it doesn‘t matter who or what she is, but if the older Karomrazov wants her, then so does Dmitry, just because she‘s there and he wants what his father wants and doesn’t want him to get her. But look at her… it’s not much of a life. Why not try for something better? Well, the fucked up thing is that Dmitiry actually has something better- Katrina, who loves him and wants to marry him. So what does he do? Borrow some money from her and spend it on grushenka… then try to get his brother to get Katrina to break up with him. That’s pathetic. Look at this whole family- they are miserable, and instead of inspiring and helping each other achieve a better life, they jealously hold each other back and fight over the little scraps when it should be intuitive to even the most casual impartial observer they could be having a feast if they helped each other get ahead… which, by the way, what the fuck is a family even FOR if it isn‘t to help each other in a world which has many dangers and people who would like to take advantage of you? It should be like the one safe place. The father doesn’t want to give dmitry his inheritance, just out of greed (to spend it on booze and women), and partly out of spite/vanity (don’t want to see his son use it to achieve a better life). But isn’t it obvious that Dmitry is intelligent, and if he took that money in his youth and struck out to make a name for himself, and if he met with success, he’d take care of his father in his old age? Maybe he’d have a place in the city where the father could meet some woman (symbol for a whole lifestyle) ten times hotter than Grushenka, chick who was actually NICE, like Katrina who has some substance. And that goes for all the brothers. Okay, this is complicated…. It isn’t like Grushenka is as bad as you think at first either. It‘s been a while so I don‘t remember everything but there are some things revealed…she has some emotional baggage and other things going on, so by the end of the book, you don‘t dislike her, you just feel sorry for her. There’s something else I wanted to say here about ---- the bastard son (the one with the complicated name) who the father is keeping as a servant. That’s fucked up.. Like the father, who is whoring around, drinking his kids’ inheritance, dragging the family name through the mud… now all the sudden he’s worried about what the neighbors would think that he had a kid out of wedlock? So you treat him like a fucking second class citizen instead of your own flesh and blood. Who’s that racist senator who had a black daughter out of wedlock, and then denied her his whole life? It’s probably in Google. Fuck him- if there’s a hell, he needs to be burning in it. But you know? After he died, she came out and said "I'm his daughter" and she was the sweetest old lady (now) and he always shunned her and never got to really know her, but she was such a wonderful person he denied himself knowning, and that is a kind of hell too- that he made for himself. Or not hell, but punishment. It’s a microcosm of the whole human race- we could be advancing together and everybody benefits, but instead we’re like the crabs waiting in the tank at the restaurant, and when one crab tries to get to the top, the other ones below pull him back down. They all get cooked in the end (by international bankers building a police state) but it wouldn’t have to be that way. Anyhow, later the father was murdered, and it was a big mystery who did it, and looked a lot like (Smerdy? Was that his name?) did it… and I was like “fuck yeah, who can blame him?” The way the brothers interacted was very complex though. (examples?)

Yeah, I wanted to say something about the justice system too- because the father wants to go to the monistarya to get the old priest (I forget his name) to arbitrate about the matter of the inheritance, because the church has respectability, but then when he gets there he starts acting like a total douche. Why? Garuneteed every time when someboy is acting like an asshole, it’s either because: (1) they are irritable because some need is not being met (sleep, hunger, etc) or (2) out of insecurity or weakness, feeling of vulnerability, or (3) psychopath (but this is very rare) Well, it turns out that was exactly the reason. The father got the notion that maybe the old priest won’t arbitrate IN HIS FAVOR, then he goes on to deny the legitimacy of the church, religion, the priesthood, etc etc etc. Not exactly the best guest in a monistary. It’s like every social contract is essentially self-interested, which on one level I completely understand, but then if you abandon the foundational principles when it suits you, and deny legitimacy of these things, it shows that self interest is the ONLY thing you have… all the institutions, philosophies never meant anything, because they were just a means to an end, and the entire industry built up around supporting those things have either been a complete waste of time, or worse yet, they are exploitive… because if somebody else out there is supporting it, what’s their angle, and why are they supporting it, and what are they getting out of it? In that regard, maybe the only virtuous person is somebody with nothing to lose and no investment in society, like homelss people, and the biggest criminals are the people behind our institutions, and at the positions of leadership… and I can’t always believe that either, because look at people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson who were wealthy, but obviously had higher ideals. Washington was offered kingship and turned it down. Jeffernson wrote the Declaration of Independence, at great personal risk to himself, in the service of ideals. So obviously SOME important people DO actually believe the lofty principles… the question is how many people believe, and how many people are just parasites using the sytem only for personal gain? Alyosha The priest is the character those questions reveolve around because the priesthood was houw you got ahead in those days. Only the church and the the landed aristocracy had any good life. You had to be born into the aristocracy, but if you were smart, you could make it into the church.. But then what kind of people do you get in charge ofr the church? Social climbersand ambitious people who want the money and power of the church, but fuck if they believe in the morality the church is supposed to stand for. (I will come back to this part- I want to saysomethign about the other brother0

It’s perverse because its supposed to be like the most powerful institutions with the most resources would be able to get the best people to keep the institution going, and to make it more vital, but then exactly because the institiution has all those resources, it becomes a pathway to power, and they people you get in it are intelligent but warped, fucked up self-loathing social climber sociopaths who don’t give a fuck about the institution or any of its ideals, but they know how to ACT like they do… they know all the right buzzwords to say, and how to solemnly nod at the right time and sound reasonable and passionate defending the church… but they do that because their comfort and vanity and powrer depend on it. So it eats away at the institution from the inside.. Literally the seeds of itsowndesturuction… look at BigD’s view of the church in “The Grannd Indquiottiyr”. Obviously he hates it, and with good reason.. And look at how it plays over and over again, as if notbody cat see the patern. These days you make big money and get power by going into public office or investment banking on Wall Street.. So of course every psychopath who would kill his own mother to make his stock portfolio grow and extra 1% next quarter goes into investment banking… so what do we get?? A derrivatives meltdown with a public bailout, and everybody says’Oh dear,how did this ever happen? We had such good minds working on it and it still failed!” No it didn’t fail, it worked EXACTLY THE WAY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO, and if you trusted any of those motherfuckers to manage your portfolio honestly, or trusted anybody in the Fed or the SEC to work “for the public good” then you fucking deserve everything you get, because the whole point of our system of government is that your are supposed to MISTRUST THEM and hold them to account, so when they came asking for a bailout, we should have said "no", but people want to “trust the experts”. When GM executives wanted a bailout, Congress said "you flew here in private planes"... but didn't the bankers fly there in private planes? Of course they did. Fuck that- give me a trustworthy nonexpert and we’ll figure it out even if it isn’t pefect.

I forget what I was talking about, but another great thing about BK is that it is a murder mystery. So the father gets murdered, and of course any one of them could have a reason. I hardly ever read those. I started one aathgeha crystie book, and I had to quit like less than half-way through. I was like “Yeah, I think I know who did it, but maybe I’m wrong, but you know what? Who even gives a fuck, because the whole story is about who did what, without developing any good characters. I don’t know any those people, so who gives a fuck if the traveling sealesman tricked the widow into signing over the orphans inheritance to the crooked cop who paid the gravedigger to put the wrong body in the coffin, blah baalh blah blah ablahy I don’t even fucking care about ANY OF THOSE PEOPLE, so I don’t even care what the answer is. You know what? Put them all in the wrong coffin and tell the corrupt judge to forge the fake passport so the pedophile priest can skip twon with his take his crackwhore girlfriend to frame the black market organ harvester with the stolen murder weapon. Blah blah blahn it just keeps on going, and you just have to put that book down and say “Enough is enough”. I will admit I like Sherlock Holmes, because those are short stories, which is about the dose I can take that kinds of thing.
Wherwas I ? Oh, but BigD makes a great murder mystery, because you actually care about all those characters, and you want to know how it all happened. First you care about the characters? I don’t think this is an ureasonable request. This book is not even really famous for being a murder mystery yet it is a great murder mystery. I should say something about Ivan, this is getting too long, and believe it or not I erased a whole paragraph about random shit that was completely off-topic and just too long. I should wrap this up and go to bed. I’m starting to loose it, and this is getting too long, so I will just close with a few closing thoughts :

I don’t think there can be true greatness without humilty. Alexander and Ghengis Kahn rose to great power and sttaus without humility, but caused a great deal of human sufferering which has a cost, even if it sin’t recorded in our history, and that has a sort of price..like opportunity cost… how the world could have been so much better if those people who died or causesd to suffere could have contributed in some postitive way? Maybe some way we could all benefit together? Now we’re all the less for it. Trueyly great people like Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, continue to touch people in a positive way even after they are gone from this earth. I didn’t forget about BK, I think the image of alyoseshia at the end relates to this. And it even applies to my own life… I’m not trying to be high on my horse here. So many times I could have acted with more humility, and it would have been better for everybody. I really regret that.

There is something like Karma., or it is karma, or “what goes around comes around’… some cosmic balance if you want ot be mystical about it, or whatever you want to call it. But it exists and you don’t respect it, it is at your own peril. Im tyringnot to go off on a tangent about how it ihink the world works and all that, but it is related to that… and to the humility (above) Also, it’s in Bk. And I’m talking about general things, but also talking about intent more than results. Alyosha is intent, even though he didn’t get results. It’s kind of the fight that counts…. You know? The first Rocky movie he gets his ass handed to him, but he put up such a fight, it doesn’t much matter that he lost? But lets go back to intent… and not just intent (“I’m going to achieve XYZ”) but also EXECUTION…how you go about doing it. Not “the ends justifies the means” (you can control the means, not always the ends). But sometimes it is less dramatic than that. Look at Bono… no-talent pop singer, gallivanting around the globe, telling world leaders where to spend their cournty’s money: on all his pet projects. I don’t care if it is for a good cause, you know what? You arent’ a citizen here, but you have more access to our leaders than we do. Don’t tell us how to spend our goddamn tax money. If you care about it so much, spend your own money (an amount that affects your lifestyle). So maybe some good comes from his whatever projects, but I don’t consider that sort of self-congratulatory strong-arming/exploiting money out of citizens who have no voice in the process to be good karma. If he wants to go over to Africa and personally build a house or dig a ditch, that’s one hand, but if it’s getting some photo op shaking some politician’s hand and getting a commitment to spend money that really belongs to you and me? That’s not charity. But again I have to stress that this applies to my own life for sure. Karma? Defintely. I am truly sorry for all the times I acted in ways that caused anybody pain, (even on GR, but I don’t think so) whether it was intentional or not. (and sometimes it was, but not on GR) I’d really take it all back if I could. Maybe I’d end up much worse off materially, but better in my heart and mind… not to glamorize economic hardships because I know life is very hard for most people in history and on the globe living right now. I have some time left, and I want to make it better. It would be nice if I could go back, knowing what I know now, but alas..

Where was I? Karma is very much in BK… the father’s death. Maybe what happens to Father Zossima(?), certainly the emotional stress the characters cause each other, and in turn suffer at each others’ hands. That is all in there. Oh, this got away from me here a bit, but this and many more things are in BK, and even if this sucked on some level, I DID at least talk more about the book than any of the other times iI tried to review it. Some books just have too much going on. You can only stand on one side of it, never take it all in at once.

No more drunk bookr evgiews. This is not the way to do it. I did it once now- this is not a good idea.

I think I should stop now. ( )

Brothers Karamazov is an exceptionally tricky and intricate book. It's also an exceptional pain in the ass. I might have to create a new shelf for it called "I'd Have To Read It Again To Get It But I'd Rather Just Not Get It." Tristram Shandy can join it there. The first problem is when a speech is so long that it reminds you of Atlas Shrugged. The second problem is that when I finished it just now, the words that unconsciously escaped my mouth were, "Well, fuck you Karamazov."

Here's a game I made up during the interminable ramblings of Elder Zosima: Zosima or Baz? Guess whether each boring platitude below is from the Elder Zosima or Baz Luhrmann's 1998 novelty hit, "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)":

a. Don't be reckless with other peoples' hearts; don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
b. Keep company with yourself and look to yourself every day and hour, every minute.
c. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth.
d. Cherish your ecstasy, however senseless it may seem.
e. Love children especially.

Answers at end of review

Okay, I almost never had a good time reading this book. Why'd I give it four stars? One reason: cowardice.

Listen, I know this book's smarter than me. Its inventiveness is impressive. Watch how careful Dostoevsky is with words: how each character, including the narrator, uses and misuses them, repeats them, throws them to each other. Check out how the stories - Ilyusha and Dmitri, Katya and Grushenka - intertwine. Feel how the word "Karamazovian" implants itself in you: you wouldn't be able to say what it means, maybe, I probably can't, but you'll know it when you see it from now on. Debate whether the whole thing is a comedy or a tragedy.

Before I read them, I used to think Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were probably more or less the same, y'know? Like, old Russian guys who wrote crazy long books, how different can they be? But they're not the same at all. Tolstoy is exceptionally controlled. Dostoevsky is pure virtuosity. I don't mean to say he doesn't know what he's doing; actually, Karamazov is more tightly structured than War & Peace is. But the energy behind it is more or less insane.

Four stars because I know this book is good; if I give it two stars, it would be like admitting that I let a brilliant masterpiece escape me for the prosaic reason that it's incredibly fucking boring. Y'know?

Four stars, dude. A brilliant masterpiece.

Introduction note: You can and should read the first section of Pevear & Volokhonsky's intro, up to p. xiv. It gives you great background. Get out quick after that though - right after "transforming them finally into a universal human drama" - 'cause they're gonna blow the whole plot in the next paragraph.

Quiz Answers: Fuck you, Karamazov. ( )