I took on one of literature’s heavyweights: The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky.

Why did I do it? Well, I’m a Jordan Peterson fan. And I’m a book list fan. And it’s on Peterson’s list, meaning it contains great pearls of human wisdom.

My copy promised that the translators achieved “the musical whole of Dostoyevsky’s original” and, if that doesn’t sound promising, I don’t know what does.

It’s a hefty book, so I tackled it in five-page increments. Is this comedy, I wondered here and there, because I don’t think life in Russia was ever very funny. Or, She’s sobbing. A minute ago, she was dancing. What did I miss?

Eventually, I sat down to power through another five pages and admitted that there were sixteen other things I would rather do than struggle on through this story full of human wisdom, most of which I managed to miss.

Maybe there’s a movie? I wondered.

There is. Yul Brynner, William Shatner, Claire Bloom, 1958. Thank goodness for Hollywood scriptwriters. They may have cut out “the musical whole of [the] original,” but this is a novel that bears cutting. And thank goodness for subtitles, too, because . . . Well, I just need them, that’s all.

And I still don’t get it. Perhaps Great Works of Literature should not be undertaken without a notepad and pencil at hand. Or Venn diagrams, for keeping track of who’s in love with whom (Man A loves Woman B while stringing along Woman A, who is loved by Man B. I think.) or whose rubles belong where (This one stole from that one, who borrowed from another one, who claimed it was inheritance, who gambled it away, who needed to pay it back before Thursday . . . I think.). The dancing woman still sobbed without warning.

The only thing the movie cleared up was that the father of all these boys is the reason we invented therapists.

So, maybe there’s some Cliff Notes?

The bookmark remains where I left off, in case my ambitions revive.  Gotta say, though, that reading is supposed to relax you. If your idea of relaxation is swimming while barely keeping your nose above water, then this is the book for you.

Photo credit: poppet with a camera on Visualhunt

Share of the week: Two men from opposite political camps discuss wokeness.