Yes, yes, I know this is a blog post that is a couple of weeks late. The Empire has struck back, the protesters have been evicted from their spiritual home of Zuccoti Park, and the media has turned its focus to more serious matters like the latest round of unrest in Egypt and whether or not Kensington Palace is cursed. Beware, Kate Middleton....there be ghosts.
I haven't commented about the recent protesters because my feelings on them are rather conflicted. Half of me can't help but agree with those cold hearted folks who are just calling them a bunch of bums who would be best served by going home, getting a shower, getting a haircut, and getting a job. Oh? You can't get a job because you spent 6 years at Bernard studying Malaysian poetry? Sorry. Perhaps you should have majored in finance. How are your burger flipping skills?
But on the other hand I can see (and share in) the frustration. The failed debt deal this past week is a case in point. The Republicans may have their reasons for being so inflexible on tax increases, they may be perfectly good and they may indeed go further than a simple piece of paper someone shoved in front of them. But when the debt deal failed in part because the Republicans were unwilling to raise revenues in anyway, it certainly looked like they were going to the mat for the wealthiest 1% of Americans and regarding the remaining 99% with a cold shrug of the shoulders. How can you not feel disenfranchised by this? Taking to the streets and voicing outrage would seem to me a perfectly legitimate response.
We have a government that seems to have lost the ability to steer our nation on any kind of course.
The thing that makes this so frustrating to me is that what the Republicans are setting bayonets for doesn't seem to be worth such a desperate fight to save. The Democrats want some of the Bush Tax Cuts to expire (I would rather they all expire, personally). I had hoped to find a source out there that said if we just let the tax cuts expire, our fiscal woes would be solved, but that turned out not to be the case as a 2010 Congressional Research Report argues. Page 11 shows that under 2010 projections the overall debt to GDP ratio would only be a few percentage points less if all the tax cuts expire, and that the overall ratio would continue to increase (though I do not know how they are projecting GDP....) on a rather unsustainable path.
You may use this to argue that if it makes so little difference there is no point in letting the tax cuts expire. But I would argue that a sensible Republican Senator or Representative might say if there is no real difference, he or she would use that as a bargaining chip to gain some of the cuts to government programs that actually would make a difference over time. Yes, there may be some people ranging from the pretty well off to the totally stinking rich who will grumble over the fact that their income taxes have gone up a few percentage points, but I doubt the increase will be exceedingly painful for them. My take on it is that a rise on taxes on the wealthy, while painful, does not stand up against the pain others will suffer if vital social programs which might be protected by an increase in revenues are cut.
But I think its good politics as well. I'm sorry if you make Grover Norquist and Rush Limbaugh angry (though I really wouldn't be that sorry), but the rest of us would be happy to see a little justice, and shared sacrifice, even if it isn't really. Just the sense that we are being governed again (even if we really aren't being governed very well) I think would ease our troubled minds and maybe give us the confidence boost we need to go out and finally get that tattoo, motorcycle, or boob job we have thinking about getting for so long now. You only live once, afterall.
All kidding aside, my point is this: The Oath of Office should take precedent over any piece of paper that a lobbyist told someone to sign, or any promise that was made on the campaign trail. The faithful and sober governance of this nation should be more important than party politics and making Obama a one term president, especially in these difficult days where we are looking at a rapidly changing world and staring down the barrel of our own impending fiscal crisis. It is not up to the Republicans to decide on Obama's next term, it is up to the American People when they go to vote next November. Getting a president out of office should not be the platform of the opposing party. The platform should be to govern.
Now, you may feel that I am being hard on Republicans. I apologize for this (though I do feel that finding a sensible Republican in Congress is about as elusive as a 1963 Joe Schlabotnik baseball card), but it's quite obvious to me that they are driving the bus and setting the agenda, which is about as damning an indictment of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party that I can give. I give Obama pretty good marks on foreign policy (though I give them with some unease), but I think he's proven to be a pretty poor leader in general. But like the old saying goes: good salesmen rarely make good generals, even if you give him a shiny hat and new boots.
And like the other old saying goes: Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like attending a rally of the Bah Humbug! Glorification Society. Last year I won the look Ebeneezer Scrooge look alike contest and talent show, and I must defend my crown. GGMM, where did I leave that dang blasted top hat?
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
2012 Election Special!
So the other day I went to get a tattoo. It is something I wanted to do for a very, very long time but I just could never decide on what image I wanted to have permanently and painfully etched into my skin, nor could I decide where I wanted this as yet undefined image to be placed. Naturally, I figured I should have something positive placed in a region of my body where I could easily gaze upon it. Maybe an uplifting Bible verse on my forearm, or the name and birth date of my daughter on my shoulder.
But then one day I was in the local Barnes and Noble, browsing for nothing in particular when I came across Jergen Van Bergenshlabotnik's second Christmas Book: The Christmas Sweater My Great Grandmother Knitted for Me with Yarn Spun From My Late Great Grandfather's Santa Suit That He Wore While Giving Out Candy To Poor Kids During the Great Depression While Working Two Shifts at the Scrapple Farm During The Year We Almost Didn't Have A Christmas But My Mom Also Bought Me A Puppy From Saving The Dollar Bills Wealthy Oil Men Stuffed Into Her G-String While Dancing at the Crazy Horse III That She Should Have Used To Pay Her Way Through College But Of Course They Always Say That About Dancers So You Don't Feel So Bad About Being At the Club But It Turns Out To Be Rarely True: A Sentimental Christmas Journey.
Now, there is something you must understand about Jurgen Van Bergenshlabotnik: He and I are sworn enemies. It all stems from the fact that in the 7th grade he made first chair bass clarinet, which made me angry because the only reason I chose bass clarinet in the first place was that no one wanted to play the damn thing. I already had my eyes set on Harvard, and I figured being a first chair bass clarinetist would look really great on my application. They would never have to know that I was first chair in a section of one. But then there is Jurgen, this new kid from Lower Krakosia, and he's fucking up all of my carefully laid plans.
To make matters worse, he was really, really good. His father, Miroslav Van Bergenshlabotnik, was like the Yo-Yo-Ma of bass clarinet players. Naturally he pushed his son very hard in that lazy sort of Eastern European way to follow in his footsteps.
I went into damage control mode. I first cast about for something else I could do really, really well, but I was too slow for sports, too rigid for art, and my baking skills needed serious work. My only choice was to buckle down, learn my scales, and challenge Jurgen for the first chair spot. I worked hard at it for three months. At last I felt I was ready, but was was undecided about what day I should set the challenge for. Then I remembered that in history class we had just learned that before the battle of Trenton Jesus had appeared before George Washington during his morning quiet time and reminded George that the godless Hessian soldiers loved alcohol and Christmas, and dropped a hint that if he was going to hit 'em the day after Christmas may be apropos.
I felt that I did not have the help of our Lord and Savior because I lusted dreadfully for Mary McTitavic, who had confusingly blossomed over the summer, but I did take the history lesson to heart, and chose Saint Krispin's Day for my challenge. Despite the fact that the Bergenshlabotniks were well on their way to American citizenship, they were still very much Lower Krakosian, and a brief survey of the culture noted that on the the day before Saint Krispin's Day the festival of Shlivovitz is celebrated. During the festival friends and family gather to light candles, exchange gifts, throw plum brandy at the ceiling, and sing the patriotic hymns of the Lower Krakosian Eastern Orthodox Church for a period of 24 hours in the hopes that the family, flock, and wheat will be protected from the ghost of Napoleon Bonaparte. Therefore, on Saint Krispin's Day Jurgen would be tired, his throat would be shot, and his embouchure would be critically weakened.
My calculations proved correct, but even so I barely took the first chair. Jurgen immediately set up a counter challenge for two weeks later, and that kicked off a running set of epic Bass Clarinet duels that lasted all the way through senior year of high school.
They became major events by the time we were in high school. On challenge days the shops would close early, the citizens of Blacksburg would pack the bars tight, get drunk, and parade to the Blacksburg High School auditorium under the banner of either me or Jurgen, their chosen Champion (and everyone in Blacksburg had to make a choice). The auditorium would be overflowing with people, waiting with electric anticipation for the duel to start, and then we would both take the stage to thunderous applause and try to outdo each other in a two hour competition in which the man with the most virtuosity, boldness, and dexterity would win the day.
At the end of senior year I was just on the cusp of realizing my dream of getting into Harvard and studying late 18th century French Literature, but the admissions officers were predictably nervous about the fact that for about half of my time in high school I had been a second chair bass clarinet player. They agreed to attend the final duel, in which both Jurgen and I would play bass clarinet concertos of equal length that we had written and rehearsed with the Brussels Chamber Orchestra. Jurgen was first chair at the time, I was the challenger, and he had the right to either go first or defer and go second. That crafty bastard chose to defy convention and go first (indeed, the knowledgeable crowd gasped when he announced he would go first, rather than second in symbolic defense of his position), because he knew something I did not.
A romance had developed between the Jurgen and Konstantina Von Brugge, the brilliant 20 year old principal violinist in the Brussels Chamber Orchestra, and at long last the night before the challenge the romance was consummated in a daring tryst on top of the desk of the Commandant of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets. During the love making Konstantina had received a paper cut from some loose papers left on the desk to her middle finger on her left hand. Konstantina may have lacked propriety and judgement, but was still an honorable person and explained her misgivings over the next days performance. She said she could maybe struggle through one piece, but the quality on the second would suffer.
And indeed it did. The end of my concerto was a lovely and poetic interlocking of melodies between my bass clarinet and the principle violin, but Konstantina's paper cut, aggravated by two 20 minute concertos, was finally getting in the way. She tried to substitute different fingers to compensate on the final bars because she could simply not take the pain any longer, our timing got thrown off, and as I began to panic my bass clarinet let out a horrifying and ugly squeak, which had not happened for 5 years. Bedlam broke loose in the auditorium as Jurgen was crowned the undisputed champion.
The aftermath was hard to bear. Harvard decided I was obviously just Princeton material, and I was denied admission. Because I was such a great Bass Clarinet player I did get a music scholarship to Berkley, but the fact that I never made it into Harvard always rankled me. Often, as I toured around the world playing with the greatest orchestras and sleeping with the most beautiful and sophisticated of women, I wondered how my life would have played out differently if I had only gotten into Harvard. To make matters worse, Jurgen not only dashed my dreams but appropriated them for himself. Harvard decided Jurgen Van Bergenschlabotnik was indeed Harvard material, and while he was there he fell in love with late 18th Century French Literature, and became a writer of historical romances and, now, sentimental Christmas books.
It all just seemed a bad coincidence until I got a letter from Konstantina Van Brugge's lesbian lover many years later, who in a strange twist of fate turned out to be none other than Mary McTitavic. She said one morning they were at a Waffle Haus eating their customary breakfast of waffles when suddenly Konstantina just broke down into tears. She related to Mary the whole, awful story, about how she once fell in love with a young bass clarinet player, sustained her injury, and let it slip that she was concerned over her ability to get through the two concertos she would have to play the next day. She felt that this information obviously led the principal bass clarinetist to make the unusual decision to play first in the challenge, and that she was responsible for the challenger losing in such spectacular fashion.
She had never told anyone, because she was so ashamed of her behavior and feared that a scandal would cost her her position in the orchestra, and she had carried the guilt with her for years. To make matters worse for her, the paper cut had not healed cleanly but rather had scarred, making it a permanent reminder of her dishonor. She did not name names, but Mary McTitavic knew exactly what she was talking about because she was there, in the second row, and she remembered how watching Konstantina Van Brugge ploy her violin had stirred feelings in her that she had never felt before, especially for another woman. Konstantina knew nothing about this, because Mary was a CIA agent who was undercover, trying to infiltrate a ring of hot European librarians with advanced martial arts skills who were assassins for hire. To tell Konstantina that she had been at the epic final challenge would blow her cover. Unfortunately, the librarians found Mary first. The CIA disavows any knowledge of this, but I know the truth.
Mary did risk her cover, though, to tell me the shocking news, that Jurgen had cheated. And since that day Jurgen Van Bergenshlabotnik is no longer my adversary, but my nemesis. And when I saw his book in the Barnes and Noble I felt the hatred rise up in my throat. But I had an epiphany. Who says a tattoo has to be a positive thing?
So I bought the book, and took it to the tattoo studio, and got the tattoo artist to tattoo the dust jacket photograph of Jurgen Van Bergenschlabotnik, who has his glasses off and is smiling bemusedly and intelligently for the camera, onto my stomach. And now, as I get older and my skin there inevitably grows more distended and wrinkly with each passing year and each case of Coors, the face of my nemesis will become more and more distorted and disfigured. And when I die and my body rots away, my hate will finally die with me.
The tattoo artist thought it was an unusual choice, but after deciding I wasn't drunk went ahead with it. As she was working she remarked "Hey, are you the writer of Miscellaneous Marickovich?"
I told her that I was, but asked her how she knew. "Not to many Marickovich's in the world, are there?" she said, as she filled in Jurgen's inquisitively cocked eyebrow with black ink.
"No, I suppose not." I replied. "Hey, do you think you could add some devil horns to Jurgen's fat fucking face for me?"
"You got it buddy." She continued working for a bit, and then continued speaking in a soothing, sweet voice which you would not expect from someone who has tattoo sleeves of Satan covering both her arms. "I really like the Blog, by the way. Only, I wish you did more political commentary."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I always thought you had some really interesting thoughts, and with the 2012 presidential election getting underway so soon, I know I would really be interested in hearing what you have to say about the candidates. I imagine other people would be as well."
So, Kat, I have decided to take your advice, and I will now write about what I think of each of the Republican candidates, with a note on the chances I give Obama as well.
Though you know, it took a really long time to set this post up. I mean, I know I usually open with a few paragraphs of nonsense (I got that from the Simpson's, by the way), but this was a bit much. My hands are kind of tired, and the tattoo on my stomach really hurts. I think it might be infected. So maybe I will save politics for another day.
Sorry folks.
Ouch. This tattoo really, really hurts.
But then one day I was in the local Barnes and Noble, browsing for nothing in particular when I came across Jergen Van Bergenshlabotnik's second Christmas Book: The Christmas Sweater My Great Grandmother Knitted for Me with Yarn Spun From My Late Great Grandfather's Santa Suit That He Wore While Giving Out Candy To Poor Kids During the Great Depression While Working Two Shifts at the Scrapple Farm During The Year We Almost Didn't Have A Christmas But My Mom Also Bought Me A Puppy From Saving The Dollar Bills Wealthy Oil Men Stuffed Into Her G-String While Dancing at the Crazy Horse III That She Should Have Used To Pay Her Way Through College But Of Course They Always Say That About Dancers So You Don't Feel So Bad About Being At the Club But It Turns Out To Be Rarely True: A Sentimental Christmas Journey.
Now, there is something you must understand about Jurgen Van Bergenshlabotnik: He and I are sworn enemies. It all stems from the fact that in the 7th grade he made first chair bass clarinet, which made me angry because the only reason I chose bass clarinet in the first place was that no one wanted to play the damn thing. I already had my eyes set on Harvard, and I figured being a first chair bass clarinetist would look really great on my application. They would never have to know that I was first chair in a section of one. But then there is Jurgen, this new kid from Lower Krakosia, and he's fucking up all of my carefully laid plans.
To make matters worse, he was really, really good. His father, Miroslav Van Bergenshlabotnik, was like the Yo-Yo-Ma of bass clarinet players. Naturally he pushed his son very hard in that lazy sort of Eastern European way to follow in his footsteps.
I went into damage control mode. I first cast about for something else I could do really, really well, but I was too slow for sports, too rigid for art, and my baking skills needed serious work. My only choice was to buckle down, learn my scales, and challenge Jurgen for the first chair spot. I worked hard at it for three months. At last I felt I was ready, but was was undecided about what day I should set the challenge for. Then I remembered that in history class we had just learned that before the battle of Trenton Jesus had appeared before George Washington during his morning quiet time and reminded George that the godless Hessian soldiers loved alcohol and Christmas, and dropped a hint that if he was going to hit 'em the day after Christmas may be apropos.
I felt that I did not have the help of our Lord and Savior because I lusted dreadfully for Mary McTitavic, who had confusingly blossomed over the summer, but I did take the history lesson to heart, and chose Saint Krispin's Day for my challenge. Despite the fact that the Bergenshlabotniks were well on their way to American citizenship, they were still very much Lower Krakosian, and a brief survey of the culture noted that on the the day before Saint Krispin's Day the festival of Shlivovitz is celebrated. During the festival friends and family gather to light candles, exchange gifts, throw plum brandy at the ceiling, and sing the patriotic hymns of the Lower Krakosian Eastern Orthodox Church for a period of 24 hours in the hopes that the family, flock, and wheat will be protected from the ghost of Napoleon Bonaparte. Therefore, on Saint Krispin's Day Jurgen would be tired, his throat would be shot, and his embouchure would be critically weakened.
My calculations proved correct, but even so I barely took the first chair. Jurgen immediately set up a counter challenge for two weeks later, and that kicked off a running set of epic Bass Clarinet duels that lasted all the way through senior year of high school.
They became major events by the time we were in high school. On challenge days the shops would close early, the citizens of Blacksburg would pack the bars tight, get drunk, and parade to the Blacksburg High School auditorium under the banner of either me or Jurgen, their chosen Champion (and everyone in Blacksburg had to make a choice). The auditorium would be overflowing with people, waiting with electric anticipation for the duel to start, and then we would both take the stage to thunderous applause and try to outdo each other in a two hour competition in which the man with the most virtuosity, boldness, and dexterity would win the day.
At the end of senior year I was just on the cusp of realizing my dream of getting into Harvard and studying late 18th century French Literature, but the admissions officers were predictably nervous about the fact that for about half of my time in high school I had been a second chair bass clarinet player. They agreed to attend the final duel, in which both Jurgen and I would play bass clarinet concertos of equal length that we had written and rehearsed with the Brussels Chamber Orchestra. Jurgen was first chair at the time, I was the challenger, and he had the right to either go first or defer and go second. That crafty bastard chose to defy convention and go first (indeed, the knowledgeable crowd gasped when he announced he would go first, rather than second in symbolic defense of his position), because he knew something I did not.
A romance had developed between the Jurgen and Konstantina Von Brugge, the brilliant 20 year old principal violinist in the Brussels Chamber Orchestra, and at long last the night before the challenge the romance was consummated in a daring tryst on top of the desk of the Commandant of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets. During the love making Konstantina had received a paper cut from some loose papers left on the desk to her middle finger on her left hand. Konstantina may have lacked propriety and judgement, but was still an honorable person and explained her misgivings over the next days performance. She said she could maybe struggle through one piece, but the quality on the second would suffer.
And indeed it did. The end of my concerto was a lovely and poetic interlocking of melodies between my bass clarinet and the principle violin, but Konstantina's paper cut, aggravated by two 20 minute concertos, was finally getting in the way. She tried to substitute different fingers to compensate on the final bars because she could simply not take the pain any longer, our timing got thrown off, and as I began to panic my bass clarinet let out a horrifying and ugly squeak, which had not happened for 5 years. Bedlam broke loose in the auditorium as Jurgen was crowned the undisputed champion.
The aftermath was hard to bear. Harvard decided I was obviously just Princeton material, and I was denied admission. Because I was such a great Bass Clarinet player I did get a music scholarship to Berkley, but the fact that I never made it into Harvard always rankled me. Often, as I toured around the world playing with the greatest orchestras and sleeping with the most beautiful and sophisticated of women, I wondered how my life would have played out differently if I had only gotten into Harvard. To make matters worse, Jurgen not only dashed my dreams but appropriated them for himself. Harvard decided Jurgen Van Bergenschlabotnik was indeed Harvard material, and while he was there he fell in love with late 18th Century French Literature, and became a writer of historical romances and, now, sentimental Christmas books.
It all just seemed a bad coincidence until I got a letter from Konstantina Van Brugge's lesbian lover many years later, who in a strange twist of fate turned out to be none other than Mary McTitavic. She said one morning they were at a Waffle Haus eating their customary breakfast of waffles when suddenly Konstantina just broke down into tears. She related to Mary the whole, awful story, about how she once fell in love with a young bass clarinet player, sustained her injury, and let it slip that she was concerned over her ability to get through the two concertos she would have to play the next day. She felt that this information obviously led the principal bass clarinetist to make the unusual decision to play first in the challenge, and that she was responsible for the challenger losing in such spectacular fashion.
She had never told anyone, because she was so ashamed of her behavior and feared that a scandal would cost her her position in the orchestra, and she had carried the guilt with her for years. To make matters worse for her, the paper cut had not healed cleanly but rather had scarred, making it a permanent reminder of her dishonor. She did not name names, but Mary McTitavic knew exactly what she was talking about because she was there, in the second row, and she remembered how watching Konstantina Van Brugge ploy her violin had stirred feelings in her that she had never felt before, especially for another woman. Konstantina knew nothing about this, because Mary was a CIA agent who was undercover, trying to infiltrate a ring of hot European librarians with advanced martial arts skills who were assassins for hire. To tell Konstantina that she had been at the epic final challenge would blow her cover. Unfortunately, the librarians found Mary first. The CIA disavows any knowledge of this, but I know the truth.
Mary did risk her cover, though, to tell me the shocking news, that Jurgen had cheated. And since that day Jurgen Van Bergenshlabotnik is no longer my adversary, but my nemesis. And when I saw his book in the Barnes and Noble I felt the hatred rise up in my throat. But I had an epiphany. Who says a tattoo has to be a positive thing?
So I bought the book, and took it to the tattoo studio, and got the tattoo artist to tattoo the dust jacket photograph of Jurgen Van Bergenschlabotnik, who has his glasses off and is smiling bemusedly and intelligently for the camera, onto my stomach. And now, as I get older and my skin there inevitably grows more distended and wrinkly with each passing year and each case of Coors, the face of my nemesis will become more and more distorted and disfigured. And when I die and my body rots away, my hate will finally die with me.
The tattoo artist thought it was an unusual choice, but after deciding I wasn't drunk went ahead with it. As she was working she remarked "Hey, are you the writer of Miscellaneous Marickovich?"
I told her that I was, but asked her how she knew. "Not to many Marickovich's in the world, are there?" she said, as she filled in Jurgen's inquisitively cocked eyebrow with black ink.
"No, I suppose not." I replied. "Hey, do you think you could add some devil horns to Jurgen's fat fucking face for me?"
"You got it buddy." She continued working for a bit, and then continued speaking in a soothing, sweet voice which you would not expect from someone who has tattoo sleeves of Satan covering both her arms. "I really like the Blog, by the way. Only, I wish you did more political commentary."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I always thought you had some really interesting thoughts, and with the 2012 presidential election getting underway so soon, I know I would really be interested in hearing what you have to say about the candidates. I imagine other people would be as well."
So, Kat, I have decided to take your advice, and I will now write about what I think of each of the Republican candidates, with a note on the chances I give Obama as well.
Though you know, it took a really long time to set this post up. I mean, I know I usually open with a few paragraphs of nonsense (I got that from the Simpson's, by the way), but this was a bit much. My hands are kind of tired, and the tattoo on my stomach really hurts. I think it might be infected. So maybe I will save politics for another day.
Sorry folks.
Ouch. This tattoo really, really hurts.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Books You May Not Like --- The Brothers Karamazov
Phew.
I finished Dostoevsky's masterwork The Brother's Karamazov on Sunday, 11/6/11, at 6:54 AM. And while I do indeed feel more culturally enriched by the experience, I mostly feel relief.
I'm not saying it was a bad book by any means, but it was a really tough read. It was like watching a tightly wound, tense soccer match between two excellent teams: a tough slog with occasional flashes of sublime brilliance. Some days I could barely put it down, but then there were times were I could only read 6 pages a week.
For those of you who haven't read it, I'll set the scene: This is a book basically about a double love triangle between Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and two of his four sons: Ivan and Dimitri (aka Mitya), where Dimitiri is sort of the hinge. On the one hand, Fyodor (a moderately wealthy landowner) and Mitya are competing for the favors of the vivacious, cunning, and reputedly rather wicked Grushenka. On the other hand, Dimitri is already engaged to a wealthy young woman, Katya Ivanovna, who Ivan secretly loves. It's a mess.
Karamazov has two other sons. One is Alyosha, who is a very spiritual and religious young man who when the novel opens is about to enter an Orthodox monastery. The other is the "lackey" Smerdyakov, who is reputedly the offspring of Fyodor and a wandering, homeless mystic, Stinking Lizaveta, who Fyodor essentially rapes on a bet between him and other wealthy gentlemen. Smerdyakov serves as a cook to Fyodor, after being raised by his two servants.
As you can tell, Fyodor is not really a stand-up guy. He is little more than a buffoon, given to drunkenness, debauchery, depravity. He is good at making money, but that is not exactly commendable. As to the others, Dimitri is a sensualist, a hedonist who knows no restraint, who nonetheless possesses a keen and absurd sense of honor. Ivan is a rationalist, an atheist, and though we don't know it at the start of the novel also possess a Karamazovian lack of restraint for his passions as witnessed by his love for the engaged Katya.
As we discover the love triangles, the plot unfolds. At the beginning of the book all the brothers are in their hometown, and we witness the simmering tension between Dimitri and his father Fyodor which is only kept from boiling over by the presence of Ivan. Alyosha is on the scene, but his family is a secondary concern (and perhaps to an extent an embarrassment) compared to his religious pursuits, especially as his mentor's health is ailing.
The mentor Zosima does finally die (after a really, really, really long speech) and Alyosha suffers a crisis of faith when the corpse of Zosima, lying in state, is corrupted (i.e. it starts to stink. I guess when a holy man dies he does not stink). He goes with a friend to Grushenka, who has reportedly promised to whip his cassock off of him and, I can only assume (though its not explicitly said in the book...it was 1880, after all), fuck the bejeezus out of him. But when he arrives she doesn't seem that interested, she and Alyosha have a conversation of a spiritual nature that I can't really remember, and he goes off, his faith intact but changed. He no longer fears the world, he has mastered his Karamazovian appetites. He leaves the monastery and goes out into the world, as his mentor instructed him to do.
At the same time, Ivan resolves to leave for Moscow in spite of the ongoing strife. The next day, Fyodor is killed and three thousand roubles, which he had been using to entice Grushenka but Mitya always claimed was rightfully his, is stolen.
Dimitri is the prime suspect, of course, and indeed he is captured the next morning in the next town over while having a drunken spree with Grushenka, funded with a sudden and suspicious influx of cash.
The rest of the book concerns the investigation and trial, and its really interesting, but I don't want to discuss it too much because that is when the book really picks up. It's a shame that Fyodor isn't killed until over halfway through the 726 page book.
There are two things that make this book hard to read. First, its kind of like Moby Dick in that the plot is quite interesting, but there are many asides and long speeches that are really more philosophical in nature. Some of them are very interesting (notably the Grand Inquisitor, which I think I will examine in a different post later), but some of them are less so.
But the other thing that makes this book so hard to read is that people say its one of the great books, and that its about everything, and so you examine every sentence for meaning, looking for it in places where maybe it just isn't. There are many things in the book that are probably more about Russia in the late 1800s than anything else, and not knowing much about that time they just don't seem to matter much one way or the other.
But naturally, in a book with this kind of density and this kind of length, there is still a lot to take away, even if we set aside the Grand Inquisitor. As I have already written so much, I will leave you only with a comment on Alyosha and his faith.
At the beginning of the book, the narrator (who is sort of an omniscient citizen of the town in which all the action is set) states that Alyosha is the hero of the story, or at least that is certainly the sense that you get as we are introduced to him. But at first blush Alyosha seems very unheroic. While Ivan is desperately trying to keep his brother from killing his father Alyosha is at the monastery, and he really does nothing to help Ivan. he is a nervous young man who is afraid of his passions, that they might overtake him, and he does his best to seclude himself from temptation and his family. While his faith is admirable, he is something of a coward.
After his mentor dies he does realize that his faith has overcome his lustful, Karamazovian nature, and given him the power to live freely in the dangerous world, outside the monastery. So he is no longer a coward, but rather now a very brave man, going out into the world that he once so feared.
But even then, as things unfold, he doesn't really act the hero. He can't set anything to rights. All his belief in God and all of his prayers cannot keep the lives around him from unraveling. And his family, while a grave matter, still seems like a secondary concern to other things. Even after the murders, when his brother Ivan is ill and his brother Mitya is in jail, he seems to be more interested in saving the life of a young peasant boy who is obviously (in a heart wrenching Tiny Tim sort of way) beyond help. Sure, he visits his brother in jail and touches base with those who need to speak with him, but he really puts much more effort into comforting this little boy, his family, and a small platoon of the little boy's friends (who once teased him).
So Alyosha is not a hero in that he can keep bad things from happening. But I think there is something heroic about how he lives his life. Everyone else has all these hang ups, have drunken deeply of the times in which they live. Mitya embodies the sort of seedy underside of the 19th century and a belief in a ludicrous sense of honor that still hadn't faded from European life. His appetites and sense of deep offense pave the way to his destruction. Ivan embodies a sort of out of control rationalism in which anything can be justified through thought, even war and the non-existence of God. It has a hand in leading him to madness. There is one minor character that spouts nothing but what the liberal Russian press was writing at the time the book was written (or so it says in some of my edition's footnotes), and another minor character flits around from one idea to the next, from faith to atheism, from pastoralism to modernism.
But Alyosha? As everyone else spins around him like a drunken top, as people are killed and sent to jail and go mad, as the town becomes a sensational scene for a sort of celebrity trial of the day, as lives are ruined, only Alyosha can maintain his course. Only he is really....not calm, but steady...in the midst of all that goes around him. He's not necessarily happy. In no passage does he suddenly whip out a guitar and sing "I Can Only Imagine", but at the same time his faith allows him to move through a difficult time in a difficult and changing place without he himself being destroyed. He loves others. He alone has the ability to act positively, thoughtfully, and gracefully to the dark and troubling world he finds himself in.
And if his prayers are wasted on the adults, the little boy's friends he has met through helping little Tiny Tim (I can't remember his name...Illyusha? Something like that) seem to have undergone a positive change. One of the more bombastic seems humbled. One of the more shy ones seems more confident. Alyosha has given them an onion that one day they might grasp onto in their own struggle for salvation; a bittersweet memory of a good and worthy deed, of providing comfort to one who so desperately needed it, that one day may save them all.
What does that stuff about the onion mean? Well, my dear friends, you'll simply have to read the book.
I finished Dostoevsky's masterwork The Brother's Karamazov on Sunday, 11/6/11, at 6:54 AM. And while I do indeed feel more culturally enriched by the experience, I mostly feel relief.
I'm not saying it was a bad book by any means, but it was a really tough read. It was like watching a tightly wound, tense soccer match between two excellent teams: a tough slog with occasional flashes of sublime brilliance. Some days I could barely put it down, but then there were times were I could only read 6 pages a week.
For those of you who haven't read it, I'll set the scene: This is a book basically about a double love triangle between Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and two of his four sons: Ivan and Dimitri (aka Mitya), where Dimitiri is sort of the hinge. On the one hand, Fyodor (a moderately wealthy landowner) and Mitya are competing for the favors of the vivacious, cunning, and reputedly rather wicked Grushenka. On the other hand, Dimitri is already engaged to a wealthy young woman, Katya Ivanovna, who Ivan secretly loves. It's a mess.
Karamazov has two other sons. One is Alyosha, who is a very spiritual and religious young man who when the novel opens is about to enter an Orthodox monastery. The other is the "lackey" Smerdyakov, who is reputedly the offspring of Fyodor and a wandering, homeless mystic, Stinking Lizaveta, who Fyodor essentially rapes on a bet between him and other wealthy gentlemen. Smerdyakov serves as a cook to Fyodor, after being raised by his two servants.
As you can tell, Fyodor is not really a stand-up guy. He is little more than a buffoon, given to drunkenness, debauchery, depravity. He is good at making money, but that is not exactly commendable. As to the others, Dimitri is a sensualist, a hedonist who knows no restraint, who nonetheless possesses a keen and absurd sense of honor. Ivan is a rationalist, an atheist, and though we don't know it at the start of the novel also possess a Karamazovian lack of restraint for his passions as witnessed by his love for the engaged Katya.
As we discover the love triangles, the plot unfolds. At the beginning of the book all the brothers are in their hometown, and we witness the simmering tension between Dimitri and his father Fyodor which is only kept from boiling over by the presence of Ivan. Alyosha is on the scene, but his family is a secondary concern (and perhaps to an extent an embarrassment) compared to his religious pursuits, especially as his mentor's health is ailing.
The mentor Zosima does finally die (after a really, really, really long speech) and Alyosha suffers a crisis of faith when the corpse of Zosima, lying in state, is corrupted (i.e. it starts to stink. I guess when a holy man dies he does not stink). He goes with a friend to Grushenka, who has reportedly promised to whip his cassock off of him and, I can only assume (though its not explicitly said in the book...it was 1880, after all), fuck the bejeezus out of him. But when he arrives she doesn't seem that interested, she and Alyosha have a conversation of a spiritual nature that I can't really remember, and he goes off, his faith intact but changed. He no longer fears the world, he has mastered his Karamazovian appetites. He leaves the monastery and goes out into the world, as his mentor instructed him to do.
At the same time, Ivan resolves to leave for Moscow in spite of the ongoing strife. The next day, Fyodor is killed and three thousand roubles, which he had been using to entice Grushenka but Mitya always claimed was rightfully his, is stolen.
Dimitri is the prime suspect, of course, and indeed he is captured the next morning in the next town over while having a drunken spree with Grushenka, funded with a sudden and suspicious influx of cash.
The rest of the book concerns the investigation and trial, and its really interesting, but I don't want to discuss it too much because that is when the book really picks up. It's a shame that Fyodor isn't killed until over halfway through the 726 page book.
There are two things that make this book hard to read. First, its kind of like Moby Dick in that the plot is quite interesting, but there are many asides and long speeches that are really more philosophical in nature. Some of them are very interesting (notably the Grand Inquisitor, which I think I will examine in a different post later), but some of them are less so.
But the other thing that makes this book so hard to read is that people say its one of the great books, and that its about everything, and so you examine every sentence for meaning, looking for it in places where maybe it just isn't. There are many things in the book that are probably more about Russia in the late 1800s than anything else, and not knowing much about that time they just don't seem to matter much one way or the other.
But naturally, in a book with this kind of density and this kind of length, there is still a lot to take away, even if we set aside the Grand Inquisitor. As I have already written so much, I will leave you only with a comment on Alyosha and his faith.
At the beginning of the book, the narrator (who is sort of an omniscient citizen of the town in which all the action is set) states that Alyosha is the hero of the story, or at least that is certainly the sense that you get as we are introduced to him. But at first blush Alyosha seems very unheroic. While Ivan is desperately trying to keep his brother from killing his father Alyosha is at the monastery, and he really does nothing to help Ivan. he is a nervous young man who is afraid of his passions, that they might overtake him, and he does his best to seclude himself from temptation and his family. While his faith is admirable, he is something of a coward.
After his mentor dies he does realize that his faith has overcome his lustful, Karamazovian nature, and given him the power to live freely in the dangerous world, outside the monastery. So he is no longer a coward, but rather now a very brave man, going out into the world that he once so feared.
But even then, as things unfold, he doesn't really act the hero. He can't set anything to rights. All his belief in God and all of his prayers cannot keep the lives around him from unraveling. And his family, while a grave matter, still seems like a secondary concern to other things. Even after the murders, when his brother Ivan is ill and his brother Mitya is in jail, he seems to be more interested in saving the life of a young peasant boy who is obviously (in a heart wrenching Tiny Tim sort of way) beyond help. Sure, he visits his brother in jail and touches base with those who need to speak with him, but he really puts much more effort into comforting this little boy, his family, and a small platoon of the little boy's friends (who once teased him).
So Alyosha is not a hero in that he can keep bad things from happening. But I think there is something heroic about how he lives his life. Everyone else has all these hang ups, have drunken deeply of the times in which they live. Mitya embodies the sort of seedy underside of the 19th century and a belief in a ludicrous sense of honor that still hadn't faded from European life. His appetites and sense of deep offense pave the way to his destruction. Ivan embodies a sort of out of control rationalism in which anything can be justified through thought, even war and the non-existence of God. It has a hand in leading him to madness. There is one minor character that spouts nothing but what the liberal Russian press was writing at the time the book was written (or so it says in some of my edition's footnotes), and another minor character flits around from one idea to the next, from faith to atheism, from pastoralism to modernism.
But Alyosha? As everyone else spins around him like a drunken top, as people are killed and sent to jail and go mad, as the town becomes a sensational scene for a sort of celebrity trial of the day, as lives are ruined, only Alyosha can maintain his course. Only he is really....not calm, but steady...in the midst of all that goes around him. He's not necessarily happy. In no passage does he suddenly whip out a guitar and sing "I Can Only Imagine", but at the same time his faith allows him to move through a difficult time in a difficult and changing place without he himself being destroyed. He loves others. He alone has the ability to act positively, thoughtfully, and gracefully to the dark and troubling world he finds himself in.
And if his prayers are wasted on the adults, the little boy's friends he has met through helping little Tiny Tim (I can't remember his name...Illyusha? Something like that) seem to have undergone a positive change. One of the more bombastic seems humbled. One of the more shy ones seems more confident. Alyosha has given them an onion that one day they might grasp onto in their own struggle for salvation; a bittersweet memory of a good and worthy deed, of providing comfort to one who so desperately needed it, that one day may save them all.
What does that stuff about the onion mean? Well, my dear friends, you'll simply have to read the book.
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