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I'm writing this review as I read. Frankly, I'm astounded by how good this is and how compelling I'm finding it. Astounded? Why should that be? This is a classic, after all. True, but it breaks just about every "rule" of fiction. The plot so far is virtually nonexistent: three brothers get together with their wastrel father and all sorts of dysfunction, including an odd love triangle involving the father and the eldest son, are revealed. The brothers aren't particular close to each other, and really not much happens except that they meet at a monastery, where the youngest son lives, for an audience with a holy man who's dying, and then they go their separate ways, except that they have kind of random meetings with each other and with the woman involved in the love triangle, and there's a vague sense of foreboding that something will happen to the father. And the characters? Not really the kinds of characters we're used to in contemporary fiction. These are characters who struggle with all kinds of philosophical issues and enjoy nothing more than debating them at length with each other. Sounds boring? Well, it's not. Not at all.

By the way, I'm reading the Ignet Avsey translation based on Kris's recommendation, and it's wonderful so far!

***

One of the things I find so fascinating about this book is how it can be both one of the most dark and cynical works I've read, and one of the most overtly spiritual and soulful. This is a true testament to Dostoyevsky's range, to how effortlessly he "contains multitudes" in this masterful work.

***

[Alert: Some Spoilers to Follow]

One of the most cynical passages I've read so far is about how, following the holy man's death, his fellow monks are all shocked when his corpse begins to smell. Because of course if he'd been a true holy man, they figured, his corpse wouldn't have smelled at all, so the fact that it started smelling makes them all begin to question whether he'd really been what they'd imagined. Soon several of them begin to remember times when he'd been shockingly and suspiciously less-than-holy, and then the pile-on really begins, as the monks begin competing to disavow him the most, with only a couple of his friends holding onto his good memory, but even they are cowed into silence by the general gleeful animosity. Oh, this Dostoyevsky really knows how to plumb all that's dark and pathetic about human nature.

***

After about page 500, the plot really picks up. We have murder, a mad dash to a woman, heavy drinking, protestations of love, and the police moving in. After the languid plotting of the opening sections, I'm almost breathless!

***

The use of the narrator here is so interesting. We have a nameless figure who lives in the place where the events take place recounting the story almost as if recounting a legend. At the same time, we get the characters' most intimate thoughts and long speeches that the narrator could not possibly have known first-hand. It all adds to the notion that this may be more the narrator's own tall tale than any faithful recitation of history--which of course is true, because it's a novel, but the way the artificial nature of the story gets highlighted makes me think it's another example of Dostroyevsky's cynicism at work.

***

All signs point to Dmitry as the perpetrator, but the way he protests his innocence just makes you want to believe him! He's having a hard time of it, though. The prosecutor and magistrate conduct a long interview of him, and the evidence is damning.

Interestingly, after Dmitry is taken away, the scene shifts radically, revisiting the young boys we'd briefly met earlier. What is Dostroyevsky doing here? In the figure of Kolya, a 13 year-old prankster wunderkind, he seems to be pointing out the limits of rationalism, the way it can be abused to wow those with slightly less knowledge and how it can ultimately come off as a big joke.

***

Now things have become complicated. Who's really guilty of this crime? We know who "did it" because he tells Ivan, but then he blames Ivan himself for his athiesm--for influencing him by the notion that nothing we do matters anyway.

***

At the beginning of the trial, we see Dostoyevsky's biting and cynical nature reassert itself, as he describes the spectacle that the event has become--the people who've traveled from far away to witness it, drawn by their desire to see the two female rivals for Dmitry and Dmitry himself, who's especially attractive to the ladies because of his reputation as a "ladies' man." The proceedings themselves seem secondary to the spectacle and the sport.

***

The trial itself is a fascinating deconstruction of Dmitry's character--how that character can be everything the prosecutor says, and yet at the same time, it's everything his defense counsel says too. We're given to long speeches about the character that are fascinating psychological studies (the lawyers themselves debate about this newfangled science of psychology--how plastic it is, how it can be used to justify and explain anything). You can see Dostoyevsky working on multiple levels here, showing multiple sides of his character that don't quite cohere, and that's exactly the point, that people are complex and inconsistent and constantly at war with themselves, so what does "character" mean? What does "a" character mean in a novel?

And just when it looks like the defense will carry the day....

***

The coda is a plan for escape and the funeral of a young boy, and yet it end on a curiously uplifting note, a statement of faith and everlasting remembrance--and a change, for the better, in many of the other young boys, united as they are in love of the lost boy, who thus becomes an almost Christian martyr, the one whose death brings love to all his friends.

And so Dostoyevsky brings to a close his massive masterpiece, and so I end these little scribbles.