Category: books

Title

The Brothers Karamazov

Author

Fyodor Doestoevsky

Translator

Richard Pevear

Larissa Volokhonsk

I have heard a lot of people refer to The Brothers Karamazov [worldcat.org] as Dostoevsky’s crowning work his magnum opus. And while it is a great book, I liked Crime and Punishment [confusion.cc] more.

The Brothers Karamazov is a massive book. It’s filled with Dostoevsky insight into human nature, and family and religion and much more. Dostoevsky uses the novel to attack. He attacks everything from utilitarianism to Christianity and, especially, all things “Russian” or at least those “Russian” things that Dostoevsky takes issue with.

Ivan, Dmitri and Alyosha, the titular brothers Karamazov are some of the most complex characters I’ve ever encountered. The three of them form a kind of id, ego and super ego of Dostoevsky’s Russian any man.

The Brothers Karamazov is a must read. As far as Dostoevsky’s canon, I would says it’s second only to Crime and Punishment and one of the best books ever written. It helps cement Dostoevsky’s place as one of the best novelist of all time. However, the sheer expansiveness of the Brothers K works against it for me. It’s a slog. I think the focus and length of Crime and Punishment works better, and is Dostoevsky’s best novel.

Title

Crime and Punishment

Author

Fyodor Doestoevsky

Translator

Richard Pevear

Larissa Volokhonsk

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment [worldcat.org] and Sartre’s The Age of Reason [confusion.cc] are my favorite novels after The Lord of the Rings (as a whole, all three volumes) . The writing is absolutely amazing, even in translation it flows effortlessly along carrying the reader slowly at first then quicker, eventually building to a fever pitch. Dostoevsky weaves a timeless tale of guilt in Crime and Punishment because he focuses not on the crime but on the criminal’s state of mind. Raskolnikov may be an anti-hero, but the reader is drawn to him and feels his suffering. Dostoevsky’s insight into the mind of Raskolnikov keeps the reader turning the page, wanting to know what he will do and think next. Crime is an amazing insight into the strange in irrational behavior of man.

Author

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Translator

Gregory Rabassa

This book won Marquez the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s that good. It follows the rise and fall of the Buendia family and the village, Macondo, which they founded. Along the way there is incest, gypsies, insomnia, civil war and true love. Marquez magical realism shines through and somewhere along the way the reader forgets the distinction between the magical and the real. Characters pass in and out the the narative as the world around passed in and out of Mocondo. The main conflict of the book, civil war, seams to be Marquez’s comentary on the state of his homeland, Columbia.

On Amazon.com

Author

Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man is still as powerful and elegant now as it was when I first read it in school. I understand it better now that I am a bit more mature. I understand it better reading as an outsider looking back on my homeland. I understand it better as a member of the minority in my chosen home. I understand it less and less as a human.

Less because I cannot fathom the reality that lead to the situation Ellison’s nameless protagonist finds the world in. The idea of slavery, Jim Crow and everything about it causes me to question the human race.

Why? How? To what end?

It’s not a good feeling. Because looking back at history it is obvious that, in fact and despite what we want to think, slavery, Jim Crow and segregation are the norm. Humans are vicious and brutal to everyone who is not a member of their tribe… be the tribe based on race, religion, creed, nation, gender, sexual orientation, political views, the size of ones nose, the size of ones breast or any other trait, physical, mental or metaphysical two humans might differ in.

Invisible Man does not renew my faith in the human race, it destroys it and forces me to go out and seek to rebuild it on my own. To surround myself with like minded people. To attempt to do good in the world. To live an ab-normal life.

Author

J.R.R. Tolkien

Editor

Christopher Tolkien

The Silmarillion is an essential reading for any hardcore fan of Tolkien. A true Tolkien geek knows who’s who in The Silmarillion. In this volume Christopher Tolkien collects and edits his fathers writings of the first and second ages of Arda and Middle Earth. From the creation of Arda in the music of the Ainur to the War of Wrath as the Valar take pity on the Noldor and cast Morgoth out of Middle Earth.

It is a long book, and hard, akin to reading Greek mythology, Biblical genealogy and Arthurian legend. But it is well worth the read if you really enjoyed the depth of Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings and want to know why it is the way it is. If you want to peal back a few layers of the mystery without removing the awe that is woven throughout the world of the Lord or the Rings.

The Silmarillion includes the the great stories of the first age: The Fall of Gondolin, Turin, Beren and Lúthien that provide the glory and tragedy of the world of the elves in the first age, the deep sorry that seeps through in the fading of the elves in LOTR. While also providing the backstory of the men of Numenor and the forging of the Rings of Power. So much is filled in and, at the same time, so much is left unfinished. The Silmarillion is an imperfect work like something pieced together from fragments in old libraries, half lost texts and different versions of histories. Which, in fact, is what it is. And that imperfection, like real history, makes the Silmarillion that much more authentic and great.

The Silmarillion is not for everyone. If you are looking for more of the Lord of the Rings, this is not it, if you are looking for more about the world of the Lord of the Rings, then this is for you. Most people don’t get through the Silmarillion the first time, but if you preserver you will be rewarded. For those that do find something in the Silmarillion, the road goes on; you can peel back even more layers of history and meaning in the 13 part History of Middle Earth.