Reading the "Brothers Karamazov"

I just read Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov." It's about 750 pages, dialogue heavy, written in Russian in the 19th century. It started out as a pretty tough slog, but I've always heard how great it was and I wanted to experience it myself. It was, indeed, definitely worth the time and effort. In case anyone else decides to take the plunge on this great classic, I thought I might share a word of advice that made the book open up for me.

"The Brothers Karamazov" is divided into four parts and twelve books. Each book contains many smaller chapters, sometimes a dozen or more chapters per book. And there's an epilogue with three additional final chapters. Whew!

Shortly after I began reading the book, I read somewhere that it was originally publishes as a serial. Like the writings of many 19th century novelists, Dostoyevsky published "The Brothers Karamazov" in installments, short articles, in a magazine. The first readers would have read the book a week at a time. The whole thing came out over a period of two years.

It feels overwhelming to read the whole thing all at once. That's because it was never meant to be experienced that way. Reading all of "The Brothers Karamazov" front to back is like binge watching a decade of "Friends" over a weekend.

That analogy--comparing the totality of the book to a long-running series--was a very helpful key for me to engage. I treated the books as seasons in a series and the short chapters as episodes designed to be experienced with an integrity each in themselves designed to build suspense leading into the next one. The book as a whole, much like a dramatic series like The Sopranos or Six Feet Under, holds together much more through the relationship the reader builds with the book's complex, compelling character than it does through the plot. And the point of the book (again, much like the best dramatic TV series) is an exploration of consistent and heavy existential themes as the characters navigate complicated and sometimes crazy circumstances.

That might not help anyone but me. But if you love TV dramas and can binge watch a really good Showtime or Netflix series, I believe you could really enjoy "The Brothers Karamazov" by approaching it similarly.