Kalinka, kalinka...
Mitya, Ivan, Alyosha.
Three brothers I’ve spent more than 900 pages reading about, and oh how I wish I had just as many left! Those who shy away from books slightly thicker than origami paper don’t know what they’re missing. I think of all these people my age who are stuck in a world of ultramodern technology - completely void of literature - and I seriously feel like weeping. To think that they’ll never watch pre-90’s films willingly, and thus never get to meet the Marx brothers, see Alec Guinness play Fagin in “Oliver Twist”, or be thrilled by the “Secret Army”… To think that they’ll miss out on “The Karamazov Brothers” too! Biggest shame ever, really. I wish there was something I could do to entice them, but who am I, and my dusty 19th century novels, to compete with Kingdom Hearts?
The thing is, though, “The Karamazov Brothers” is more modern than any video game I’ve ever come across. It’s a simply thrilling feeling to me, when I’m so shamelessly outwitted, fascinated and captured by something written 131 years ago. Could any modern work do a better job of describing a character as unconditionally loved by just about everyone he encounters (a trait that normally makes the reader loathe them right from the start), and then still have you adore him the way you do Alyosha? Could any virtual world offer more realistic eccentric nutcases than Ivan and Mitya, and with so much humour? Could Darth Vader even dream of playing in the same league Fyodor Pavlovich when it comes to crazy fathers? I honestly wonder…
Yes, I have fallen head over heels for this book. I know I should probably wait before tackling the next one in line - “The Idiot” - but with both “Crime and Punishment” and “The Karamazov Brothers” having this effect on me, it’ll take a lot of willpower not to race through the rest right away!
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky, you are a marvellous, marvellous man. In whatever afterlife you are right now, I hope that you’ve had time to complete “the second novel”, like you wished to do in this world. And that it’ll somehow find its way to me, someday.