The Brothers Karamazov

I'm still trying to mull this over. This is obviously a "classic" and recognized as Dostoyevsky's culminating masterpiece, and it has sat on my bookshelf for, what, 40 years now, at least since I first read "The Grand Inquisitor" in LS 52 with Kay Bethune in 1970, if not before. But whereas Ivan comes off as the protagonist in telling his "poem" as he calls it, and hence, a heroic figure for me at the time, that is certainly not the direction of Dostoevsky's thinking at. In short, Brother K may be an important book but it just didn't turn out to be an enjoyable read.

The fact of the matter is that Fyodor Pavlovich and Dmitri Fyodorovich (Mitya) are buffoons--idiots, really--and I just didn't care for them at all. And it is the trial of Mitya for killing Fyodor that is the central plot structure of the book. Ivan and Alyosha are really the only major characters in the book (well, I should include Father Zosima, but he dies early on) worth caring for, and that includes the females Grushenka, Katarina and even Lise. Nobody seems to have a clue. The first half of the book with Fyodor and Mitya furiously quarreling with each other over Grushenka, while Mitya also dumps Katarina after spending large sums of her money, is really unpleasant, relieved only by "The Grand Inquisitor" and maybe by conversations between Zosima and Alyosha. Then so much of the rest of the book is taken up with Mitya's protestations of innocence "I am a scoundrel but not a thief or a murderer" that become so tiresome after a while. I guess my real reaction to his conviction in the trial, even though we know he is innocent, is "who cares." He and his father are so led around by their dicks--the sensualist Karamazov personality that is pointedly described again and again--that if Mitya didn't kill his father, he would have sooner or later killed someone else. And neither he nor Fyodor had a clue that Grushenka was playing them all along.

It sometimes takes a shovel to beat an idea into my head, and the cover of the Norton critical edition has the "troika" of the prosecutor's speech emerging from the heads of the bothers, implying that the story of the bothers is the story of Russia: the out-of-control sensualist Dmitri, the intellectual and skeptical Ivan, and the saint Alyosha. Many commentators claim that Ivan and Alyosha represent the fight for the Russian soul. Of course, it is Ivan who says that without God, all things are possible, and hence leads directly to the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich, and so Ivan is instantly discredited. Alyosha is almost goodness itself, if quite naive and simplistic in his thinking. And since the book ends with the exclamation "Hurrah for Karamazov" I guess that means he wins in the end, especially with the exhortation of love and remembrance to the boys at Ilyusha's funeral.

This leaves out the fourth brother, Smerdyakov, and it is he who is misled by Ivan's Enlightenment philosophy and actually kills Fyodor since all things are possible. But then he ends up killing himself while Ivan goes mad (of brain fever?) after his "interview with the devil." Evil really does permeate the book and makes any kind of optimistic view of human nature impossible without the saving power of the orthodox church.

I really need to ponder and read about Brothers K some more.

Author: Dostoevsky, Fyodor

Date Published: 1880

Length: 735 pp & 34 hr 50 min

print and audio

Narrator: Davidson, Frederick

The Great American Novel

I don't know that I have anything to say about this novel. It's an early Roth and it makes me think that maybe I've kind of had my fill of Roth for a while. None of his other books have even come close to American Pastoral. Great American Novel is a total farce, but it's a joke that just went on far too long for me. Some of it was laugh out loud funny, but maybe I was expecting something else. Judging by other people's reaction to the book, I suspect that's the case. It's a book about a major league that was totally expunged from the historical record during World War II. One of the teams, the Port Rupert Mundys, set a record for ineptness and losing after they were kicked out of their home stadium for the duration of the war. Then when their beloved manager dies, a former player, Gil Gamesh, takes over the team as they begin spouting Marxist doctrine, hence the banishment of the league. Other players have similar mythological names, including the one armed right fielder, Bud Purusha, the pitcher Spit Baal, Smokey Woden, Mike Mazda, Chico Mecoatl, etc. And of course, the narrator of the story is the venerable sports writer, Word Smith. To be sure, there are good moments in the book, such as the famed outfielder who admits to his lover that he enjoys hitting triples more than making love to her, but it was just so over the top that I didn't find it all that enjoyable.

Author: Roth, Phillip

Date Published: 1973

Length: 14 hr 37 min

Narrator: Daniels, James

The Evolution of God

Wright tackles much of the same ground that Karen Armstrong covered in History of God, mainly the conception of god as it expands and grows--evolves--from the earliest hunter gatherer tribes through the three Abrahamic religions. And it pretty much comes down to this: "Cultural evolution was all along pushing divinity, and hence humanity, toward moral enlightenment." Man's conception of god has grown to include more and  more peoples and ideas  as he has come into "non zero sum relationships" with them. A win-win philosophy underlies our developing sense of humanity and the extension of our moral compass and compassion.

"the births of all three Abrahamic religions were exercises in large-scale social engineering. With ancient Israel, once-autonomous tribes drew together, first into a confederacy and then into a state. The birth of Christianity saw a second kind of social consolidation, not of tribes but of whole ethnicities.…With the birth of Islam both of these thresholds—the conglomeration of tribes and of national ethnicities—would be crossed in short order"

While Wright begins with chapters on hunter-gatherers, kingships, and early middle eastern states, the heart of the book really focuses on the development of god and moral compassion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Perhaps the best part of the book for me was the growth of Yahweh from a small-time Canaanite deity in the court of El (There is no evidence for the whole exodus story and the conquest of Canaan by Joshua et. al--The Israelites seemed to have coalesced as a people in the late Bronze age) and taking on more characteristics of the other gods in the court--especially Baal--as he grew in importance and influence. Josiah and his main man Hilkiah--he who miraculously found the Deuteronomic  Code in the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem--enforced monolatry on the people of Judah, forcibly destroying the temples and the priests of the other gods in the region, as reflected in the famous showdown between Elijah and the priests of Baal. This allowed Josiah to consolidate power in Jerusalem and consolidate the ethnic identity of the ancient Israelites. This monolatry was eventually pushed into monotheism by the time of the second Isaiah. Eventually, Philo pushed the idea of god to the intellectual conception of the logos, or as the creation and design of the universe.

Wright picks up with the story of Paul, here. He really doesn't have a lot to say about Jesus, for he maintains that there really isn't much to say. Jesus burst upon the scene proclaiming that the kingdom of god was coming very, very soon, but it was really up to his followers to establish a religion. Paul was the winner here,  bringing the message to the gentiles and hence transcending ethnic boundaries and enlarging the conception of god again. Wright does a good job of deconstructing Paul's message, especially his message of brotherly love that appears in his letters to some of the churches he founded, primarily as a means of consolidating his control over those churches after he moves on. It is a message of how church members should treat one another, not for mankind in general. But the gospel of John picks up on this and extends the idea with Philo's logos.

Wright is less convincing in his treatment of Islam. He maintains that Mohammed pushed the idea of god further than Paul and John as his worship of Allah grew beyond a small sect worshipped in Medina into a multinational empire controlled by religion. Mohammed's treatment of non-believers then also vacillated between intolerance and tolerance depending on how much he needed alliances with other peoples.

Finally, Wright seems to speculate this this growth in the conception of god might even present a good argument of the existence of god. "The existence of a moral order, I’ve said, makes it reasonable to suspect that humankind in some sense has a “higher purpose.” And maybe the source of this higher purpose, the source of the moral order, is something that qualifies for the label “god” in at least some sense of that word." It seems a bit far fetched to me to jump from talking about win-win strategies between people based on "non zero sum" relationships to assuming some kind of moral order and higher order to the universe.

Author: Wright, Robert

Date Published: 2009

Length: 567 pp & 18hr 27 min

electronic print & audio

Narrator: Morey, Author

The Breast

What a bizarre book. Try to explain to anybody that the narrator has been turned into a 155 pound breast and then tries to tell what it feels like. He pays homage to Kafka, obviously, and Gogol, but beyond that, what to say. The narrator is David Kapeesh, however, whom I last saw as the narrator in the Dying Animal, so that lends more meaning to it. At least I know that he does not remain a 155 pound breast forever. Funny that he did not mention this episode in Dying Animal, though. The most touching parts of the narration come when David is trying to deny what has become of him and convince the doctors that it is nothing more than a psychotic episode that he will eventually snap out of. He's also concerned about keeping hold of his old life, especially as a professor of comparative literature and ponders the departmental politics of his predicament. He also dwells at length on the sexual feelings aroused in him by touch and the fact that he can only be aroused and not climax. It is outrageous and funny enough, but somehow it just never got around to making a point. It's a great exercise in style and narration, but little else that I can see.

Author: Roth, Phillip

Date Published: 1972

Length: 1 hr 50 min

Narrator: Colacci, David

Big Rock Candy Mountain

I really wanted to put this book down and abandon it in the first half of the story. I first tried listening to it with Sara, and it went nowhere with either of us. It was primarily about Elsa's leaving home and hooking up with Bo, up to the point after they got married and tried to make a go of it in Washington with a small cafe. Elsa seemed too much of a self conscious cypher and Bo was just Joe Jock who wanted to make a bundle of money. Neither of them seemed all that interesting and the plot was going nowhere.

Then I tried to finish listening to it by myself, while Bo and Elsa separated--or should I say after Bo ran away after abusing Elsa--and then Bo reached the point of bankruptcy with the farm in Canada after he persuaded Elsa to come back. I just found Bo intolerable. I couldn't feel anything for him and his travails as he convinced himself of one get rich quick scheme after another and dragged Elsa--and now the boys Chet and Bruce--along with him. I couldn't understand why Elsa allowed herself to go back to him, although her only options were to settle into a quiet life of conventionality and boredom in Minnesota. Especially in the audio format, I just found Bo suffocating, much as Elsa found herself smothered by him, especially as he began to bully his way around people, whether at the old Swede's farmhouse or with the bartender's family in North Dakota during his first bootlegging run during the flu epidemic. His character really began to deteriorate under the pressures of making money, showing itself with the mocking attitude toward the old British couple in Canada and then shooting the bird in front of Bruce and Elsa who were shocked by the brutality of the act.

I thought I'd give the book another try as a print novel, and that seemed to make all the difference. Also, Chet and Bruce were beginning to make a difference with the narration of the novel and the tensions in the family, rather than Elsa worries and sorrows and Bo's scheming, and the book became akin to Look Homeward Angel. I can't imagine that Stegner didn't have Wolfe in mind when he wrote the book for the parallels are too great--dysfunctional family trying to make it in the early 20th century, told from various points of view in the family, finally settling on the youngest son to have the final say in the book. It is Bruce that has some of the more interesting thoughts and experiments in narration (as in the car ride back to Nevada after his first semester in law school) and it's hard not to wonder whether great stretches of the book are autobiographical.

In short, I grew from loathing the book--or maybe more particularly, loathing Bo--to thinking that it was a very good, if not great, novel of American life. Having seen it through to the end and looking back on it as the history of a family, especially the family of a bootlegger during prohibition, and ending up in Salt Lake City, no less, gives the book a perspective that borders on insight into the human condition, what great literature is supposed to do. The final parts of the book, with Elsa dying and Bruce taking care of her--then reflecting on her and the rest of his family--contain great writing, even in the scenes where Bo reflects on his own situation and becomes desperate for money. He is even less likable than earlier in the book, as his needs and wants become even more hardened and self-centered. But as Bruce reflects, Bo had been very capable and even showed tenderness at times. It's almost as if Stegner asks: How does a bootlegger become as he is? What drives him? What becomes of him? And make no mistake, it is Bo's book. He is the center of its universe, and when he shoots himself finally, it brings a fitting end to his story and gives the book a finality and impact that was unexpected. 

Author: Stegner, Wallace

Date Published: 1943

Length: 563 pp & 25 hr 38 min

print & audio

Narrator: Bramhall, Mark