So I'm reading Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky right now and
for the love of God I thought the book was supposed to be a murder trial but I'm almost halfway through the book and the victim is STILL alive
and thus, conveniently and due to my abnormally high tendencies for cognitive dissonance, I've concluded that the story isn't about the murder, it's about the characters.
Shocking, I know. Who would have thought that the author would do something like this.
I noticed that I've been reading the novel with the mentality of can I read into the clues and figure out the murderer before it's revealed and, of course, the hints of Ivan being the culprit jump out off every page. Except that the murder hasn't taken place yet. So let's rephrase: hints of Ivan becoming the culprit, aka showing signs that he has placed himself on a path that will inevitably lead him to patricide.
(Then there's the "From the Author" part of the book, before the novel begins, that declares that this is a story more about the author's hero, Alyosha, than any other villainous and thus more dramatic character.)
But Dostoevsky has never failed to impress me, and while Karamazov doesn't yet seem as good as Crime and Punishment, I'm confident that, once I get to the end, I'll love this novel forever.
RK
P.S. I saw a video clip a while back in which Jordan Peterson and Lex Fridman talk about their favorite Dostoevsky novels. Lex said his was The Idiot because he saw himself in it. Jordan said Crime with the exact same reason. I found that interesting.
