731 The Brothers Karamazov Reclaimed (#19 Greatest Book of All Time)

Summary

The History of Literature Podcast

Episode 731: The Brothers Karamazov Reclaimed (#19 Greatest Book of All Time)

Host: Jacke Wilson
Date: September 8, 2025

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Overview

In this deeply personal and resonant episode, Jacke Wilson revisits an earlier installment of the podcast (originally episode 250), exploring Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov through themes of grief, parenting, and the solace literature can offer. Sparked by a heartbreaking listener request—from a father who lost his young son—the episode eloquently blends literary analysis, personal storytelling, and reflections on tragedy and hope. The show stands as both a celebration of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece and a compassionate meditation on how art helps us face life's hardest moments.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why This Episode Was Reclaimed

• Jacke opens with the story of why the original episode was pulled ("I pulled the episode from the archive, which a part of me has always regretted doing." – [00:10]).
• He describes the massive, emotional response from listeners: many parents who have experienced similar losses reached out, making the episode difficult for him to face ("it became difficult for me even to know that this episode was out there. It was opening up something, a wound." – [01:49]).
• After a copyright claim allowed him to remove the episode, he wrestled with guilt over choosing his own emotional comfort over the needs of others. Eventually, he decided it was his duty to re-release it—especially as The Brothers Karamazov hit #19 in his “25 Greatest Books” series ("If the episode can help people at all, then let's embrace that." – [07:47]).

2. On Loss, Grief, and Parenting

• Jacke shares how becoming a parent changed his perspective on tragedy ("I used to think addiction was the scariest thing in my life...But now I know...the toughest [thing] to face [is] a parent losing a child." – [02:46]).
• Touching stories about his own son’s childhood and their rituals—especially listening to a lullaby version of the Beatles’ “Blackbird”—frame his emotional connection to the topic.
• Jacke considers his role both as a podcast host and a fellow sufferer/friend to listeners enduring loss ("I'm here if people want to reach out. I would welcome that. I can be a listener. It's the least I can do." – [07:57]).

3. Dostoevsky’s Life and Personal Tragedies

• Detailed recounting of Dostoevsky’s tumultuous biography—grief at losing his daughter, his father's mysterious death, his own brushes with death, poverty, epilepsy, addiction, and redemption through creativity ([24:18]–[41:00]).
• Jacke narrates Dostoevsky’s family as a mirror for the dysfunctional, passionate relationships at the center of The Brothers Karamazov.
  • Quote: “Dostoevsky is great at dialogue. He’s not as great at scene setting...You go to him to read about people who are wrestling with ideas, with one another and with their own demons.” – [38:40]

4. Why Read—and Why Literature Matters in Tragedy

• Jacke’s persistent self-inquiry: why do we turn to literature? He explains that literature is not merely for escapism or exercising imagination—it is vital, mysterious, and necessary for facing real life (“Literature felt like more to me. This stuff matters to me. Why does it matter so much?” – [19:28]).
• The community of readers is hungry for meaning and connection ("I get emails from people all the time, hungry for something, searching, not sure if literature is the answer, but feeling like it's close." – [22:01]).

5. The Brothers Karamazov: Themes and Structure

• Overview of the plot and the characters—especially the fraught relationships between fathers and sons, the psychological complexity, and the philosophical dialogue about faith, doubt, and justice.
  • “He was often writing for money, not just for money, but because of a desperate need for money. And he wrote fast and he poured this pain onto the page.” – [39:00]
• Discussion of key critical appraisals:
  • Virginia Woolf: “[Dostoevsky’s novels are] seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, water spouts that hiss and boil and suck us in...composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul.” – [53:15]
  • James Joyce, Hemingway, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and others—all drawn to the intensity and prophetic quality of the work.

6. The Listener’s Story and the Limits of Consolation

• Jacke responds to the father’s request for an episode, reflecting on the helplessness and humanity of witnessing another’s grief ("A beautiful, heartfelt email from a man halfway around the world. He said that he lost his six year old son four weeks ago and he's been listening to the History of Literature ever since." – [32:44]).
• Meditation on the inadequacy of words—his own, literature’s, even Dostoevsky’s—in the face of ultimate loss ("Literature can tell us how it's happened to others...but it can't tell us why. No one can." – [1:18:00]).
• Emphasis on solidarity: “You might be lonely, but you’re not alone.” – [1:24:00]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On why Jacke originally removed the episode:
  “I'll confess, maybe the sadness can take a break. You know, I love clouds. But personally, I needed some blue skies at that time to help me get through. But then I felt really bad about that because that's a really poor way to go through life, isn't it? It's not very generous of me. It's not being a good citizen or a good friend or a good host or whatever it is I am here. Exactly. It's not being a good person.” – [06:55]

• On the pain of parenting and letting go:
  “It's so hard when you have a baby with you all day long...Everything is about this bond you have with this other person...And then you close the door and the plant is on its own, breathing, rising and falling, and it's horrible to be alone.” – [34:47]

• On Dostoevsky’s agony:
  “But where is Sonia? Where is that little person for whom I state boldly that I would accept crucifixion if only she could be alive?” (Letter after death of daughter) – [29:00]

• On why literature matters:
  “There’s a path that I thought I could take…I could analyze those writers...and then why read? Why read a book? Why read at all? What do we get out of it?...If I can find an effect that a book has on me, if I can locate it…how does it work?...What strange magic is at work here?” – [19:55]

• On the helplessness of condolence:
  “I can write an email like everyone else can. ‘My condolences, my sympathies.’ And I found it...it's better to write like that unless you truly know the person, because all the other words...sound hollow and jarring, as if the writer is busy trying to write about himself.” – [1:03:00]

• On the transcendence and limits of literature:
  “Literature says you might be lonely but you’re not alone.” – [1:24:00]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro & Context for Re-Release (episode origins, copyright issues, listener reactions): [00:10]–[08:40]
• Jacke’s Philosophy on Literature and Life: [17:32]–[22:10]
• Dostoevsky Biographical Sketch & Influence on The Brothers Karamazov: [24:18]–[41:00]
• Critical Appraisals and Literary Reputation: [53:15]–[57:40]
• Listener Letter & Reflection on Grief: [32:44]–[1:03:30]
• Limits of Consolation and the Role of Art: [1:18:00]–[end]

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Tone and Style

Jacke’s tone throughout is vulnerable, reflective, and sincere—unscripted yet structured, scholarly yet intimate. He weaves together literary criticism and memoir, addressing the listener as a friend and fellow seeker.

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Conclusion

This episode stands out for its emotional candor and insight. Jacke Wilson links the existential and spiritual questions at the heart of The Brothers Karamazov with the personal realities of loss and love, ultimately reminding listeners of the power of empathy and the community that literature can create. Even as literature cannot explain or redeem every sorrow, it stands as witness and companion—the message with which Jacke closes:
“Literature says you might be lonely but you’re not alone.”

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

Hello.

[Jack Wilson]

An unusual episode. Today we're returning to an episode that I recorded years ago. It was episode 250, which seemed pretty high, like a pretty high number at the time, but that is already almost 500 episodes ago. I pulled the episode from the archive, which a part of me has always regretted doing. I'm returning it now, releasing it back into cyber waters where it can swim like all the other little episode fish in the History of Literature pond. It's the Brothers Karamasoff episode. It hasn't been available for years. I'll tell you why I'm bringing it back now in a slightly modified format that's coming up today on the History of Literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. So. So, so where to begin? This episode is a bit heavy. It's about parenting and it was initiated by a parent who had lost his child tragically and requested an episode on Dostoevsky's great novel the Brothers Karamazov. And I connected all that to some parenting stories that I had, and in particular my reliance on and love for a version of Blackbird by the Beatles, which I had taken from a CD called Bedtime with the Beatles. And the episode, I. I have to.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

Say, it touched a chord.

[Jack Wilson]

It resonated. And I got so many emails from people who had experienced tragedy and who had lost a child themselves that it became difficult for me even to know that this episode was out there. It was opening up something, a wound.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

It felt.

[Jack Wilson]

Look, it's probably the hardest topic imaginable. I used to think addiction was the scariest thing in my life. I'd see shows of people wrestling with alcohol or drugs and I almost couldn't watch.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

It's one of the reasons Dostoyevsky has.

[Jack Wilson]

Always been a hard read for me. Incidentally, his characters, when they're addicted to gambling and wrestling with demons, are not always in control of themselves. And I thought, this is. Well, this is it. This is just my thing. Watching a loved one go through addiction or going through it oneself, it's the hardest thing imaginable.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

But.

[Jack Wilson]

But now I know now that I'm a parent, I know a parent losing a child, that grieving process, the shock and the horror and the life changing aspects of that experience, that's the toughest, the toughest to face. So released, that's where I was with this show. I released the episode and then I opened up something in people and.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

I.

[Jack Wilson]

Was trying to Move on, to put myself in a better place, to face an increasingly difficult world with optimism and hope, trying to keep my own head above water. But there was a pandemic. But that episode was there. And the emails kept coming. And I confess, I just was not up to the task.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

I tried.

[Jack Wilson]

I did my best for months, even years. And then something happened that looked like a bit of an escape hatch. Once in a while, I receive copyright challenges for different music I've used in the show. And that's fair. Sometimes it's not fair. Let me give you an example of when it's not. My old theme song, which you'll hear again today, later, for those of you who might be nostalgic for it. It was a copyright free version of, of a classical music piece that's several hundred years old written by Handel. Others have recorded that. Many different people, orchestras have recorded that and their versions are copyrighted. So they challenge their algorithm or whatever it is that's determining these things. Challenge my use of the song, because they hear that it's similar and the computer spits out a thing saying, let's challenge this. They're assuming that I'm using this, their version of the song. It's really annoying and it's one of the reasons why we switched. And I'm so happy to be using a new theme song that our friend Gabriel has composed for us. But there are also times, so that's a challenge that I disagree with. And I've actually talked to the people at our podcast host and I've said, this is what's happening. And they said, we'll put in a thing and hopefully I won't get those challenges anymore. Sometimes. Sometimes three or four different recording companies would all claim it, claiming that it was the version that was recorded. You know, oh, this is the Chicago Symphony version. This is the London Philharmonic version. They all claim that it's a different version. Sometimes they claim that they own two of that. It's like, well, it can't be both. So it's not very smart, this artificial intelligence, if that is what is doing it. So anyway, that's a poor use of the copyright challenge. But others I say, well, okay, okay, fair enough. I was using a snippet of that song under the fair use doctrine, and maybe I used 20 seconds instead of three. And it gets challenged and I just pull the episodes and I say, later on I'll change, I'll swap the music out, fix it up and re release it. Or maybe I won't. Maybe that'll just be one that we just pull and say we could. We've got plenty of other episodes in the archive. 700. So when the Brothers Karamazov episode was flagged, I felt a little sting because that had been such a powerful episode for so many people. But I also thought with some relief. I'll confess, maybe the sadness can take a break. You know, I love clouds. But personally, I needed some blue skies at that time to help me get through. But then I felt really bad about that because that's a really poor way to go through life, isn't it? It's not very generous of me. It's not being a good citizen or a good friend or a good host or whatever it is I am here. Exactly. It's not being a good person. A good person doesn't shy away from helping others when there are people in need of help. And it always nagged at me that I took that episode down and that I felt all that relief when I took it down. I thought, oh, good, now people won't listen to this and I won't have to deal with it. But the sadness can take a break. That's what I told myself. But sadness doesn't take a break, does it? Not really. It can hide, but it's still there. And if the episode can help people at all, then let's embrace that.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

Let's just. Let's have it.

[Jack Wilson]

We're gonna have it back. And I'm here if people want to reach out. I would welcome that.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

I can be a good person.

[Jack Wilson]

I can be a listener. It's the least I can do. So then I saw. So that was my plan. We'll re release this one at some point. And then guess what? We started doing the 25 for 25, the 25 greatest books of all time. And there it was, sitting at number 19 on our list of the greatest books of all time. The Brothers K. So here is what we are planning to do. I'm going to rerun the old episode because I was going to reread the script and just try to recreate what I did. I kind of worked from notes and I thought, well, I could just go back to those notes and probably get.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

Pretty close to what I had said before.

[Jack Wilson]

And we'll do that. And I can just edit out the parts where I refer to the song Blackbird and I can just use different music and all of that. And then I listened to the episode and I thought, I could never do that. This was a particular place and time and that's where I was. My voice Sounds different to me. I don't know if it's because I was younger or because I was quieter, because I couldn't wake up the family. You know, it used to be lighter sleepers.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

I do these.

[Jack Wilson]

Record these things in the morning.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

The kids were sleeping. They had to. Didn't want to wake them up too early. They had to go to school.

[Jack Wilson]

So what I decided to do. It's a little bit odd, but hopefully you stick with me for this. I'm going to rerun the old episode with all the commentary, and I'm just going to replace the music with some music that Gabriel has composed for us, which is also beautiful. But the only thing about it is you might hear me say things like, that's Blackbird, or you'll likely recognize that song. It's a vers version of Blackbird. But it won't be Blackbird. You'll just have to imagine that you've been listening to Blackbird, or just accept the incongruity, please. I thank you for that. Seek out Blackbird by the Beatles if you'd like to listen to it and remember how beautiful that song is. Or you can seek out the version in particular that my kids grew up with as their bedtime song, which was Blackbird by Jason Faulkner on a CD called Bedtime with the Beatles. It's a beautiful version and it really is made for golden slumbers. A lot of music that claims to be for kids with lullabies. They are. And maybe a song is, but then the next song will be a little up tempo or it'll have drums and cymbals suddenly, and you just think, whoa, they're gonna fall asleep and then this is gonna jar them. It's gonna wake them back up. And bedtime with the Beatles is not like that. Everything is perfect. It's just dreamy music. My kids listen to it for years at night, and I loved it when I would go into the room and hear it. So then in the original episode, I think I talked about a Billy Joel song, which is Lullaby Goodnight, My Angel. But I'm gonna. Not only will I, I take that song out, I'm not even going to. I'm not going to repeat the ending so you won't hear that song. You'll just see. We're going to end with the old theme song, I think so anyway, I encourage you to seek that song out on the Internet as well. Billy Joel Lullaby. It's beautiful, sentimental. But as I. As I say in the episode, sometimes sentimental is okay. And just like sometimes nostalgia is okay. And sometimes cynicism is okay. And somberness and joy and love and regret.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

It's all grief.

[Jack Wilson]

That's all part of being human. Ignorance and hate are not okay.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

But that's a different story for another episode.

[Jack Wilson]

And we're going to do this without advertising interruptions. Why not this little podcast when the ship is sinking anyway? Why not enjoy some time together up here? And why not? Why not open, you know, if the Titanic's going down and you're the captain, wouldn't you just open up the bar.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

And say.

[Jack Wilson]

Drinks on the house? Here we go. Drinks on the house before big drinks in the house. Anyway, do I need to tell you that our.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

Oh, sorry.

[Jack Wilson]

I do need to tell you, even though we're not doing any promotions, we won't interrupt the the podcast. I need to tell you that our trip to England, our podcast tour, still has some spots open. We're doing this in May 2026. And the but the signup period runs through the end of the month, September 2025. So I would love to see you in May. And you know what good guests we've had here on the podcast, how many of them have been based in London and Oxford elsewhere? And I can tell you that a whole host of them are standing by ready to, well, help host us. So if you'd like to spend some time next May with me and a group of your peers, your fellow lovers of literature, as we travel through the English countryside and the city of London, the city of Oxford, seeing some sights, taking some special behind the scenes visits, talking to experts, generally having a good time with one another, eating, drinking, staying in nice hotels, stretching our souls together along with our legs, riding trains, enjoying life, that special thing that we all get, but not forever. Well, please do check out the links, which [e-mail] or you can go straight to John Shore's Travel, where their website is standing by, ready to show you the itinerary and give you some information about how to put down a deposit to make sure that you don't miss out. And with that, let's go uninterrupted into an unusual episode. You can listen, but you also have to use your imagination a bit as we hear old Jack Wilson from almost 500 episodes ago, wrestling with the brothers Karamazov, number 19, the list of greatest.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

Books of all time.

[Jack Wilson]

I hope you enjoy it.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

Hello, this is Jack Wilson. You may recognize that song. I'm sure you do. It's Blackbird by the Beatles. It's a special version of the song for children from a CD called Bedtime with the Beatles. It's an important song to me as I will talk about today. I'm connecting some dots here, people. This one is likely to be all over the place. I have to approach today's subject from many different angles. If you just hang on, hang in there with me, maybe you'll see why. Or maybe not. The truth is that this is our 250th episode of the History of Literature podcast. This show has gotten easier and easier for me to do. I can crank these out now. I don't agonize anymore as I did in the beginning. The first few were rough. Not anymore. Now I feel like I know exactly what I'm doing. I know how it works. I know what I can do. I know what I should do. I am very comfortable coming to this studio, sitting in this chair, speaking these words. I'm not always comfortable in life, but I'm always comfortable in this chair with this microphone and with you. This episode is different. I'm not comfortable at all. I'm terrified. I will do my best. We're talking about literature and life today. Dostoevsky's the Brothers Karamazov. I'm just going to see where this one takes us. I'm glad you're here. It's the history of literature. Okay, here we go, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. Let me tell you a little more about that CD that we're listening to at the beginning there. I was a young parent when I found it. I should back up and tell you that I'm too young to know the Beatles in real time. They broke up before I was born, but they were in the air. Throughout my childhood, some of my best memories were my experiences with their music. Either it was in the background, or I was actively seeking them out and listening to them. I had a recording of a documentary that I watched over and over. I was obsessed. I was obsessed. And this is not to tell you that they're the best band of all.

[Jack Wilson]

Time or that their music is better.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

Than anything else you like, or that you should like them or anything like that. I get it. People. I know people who are obsessed with Elvis. And I smile and nod and feel excluded. I'm not part of that. I know people who are obsessed with the Ramones. Same thing. I like a few songs. That's it. And people say, ah, the Beatles. That's not for me. That's granny music or whatever. Fine. I don't need to hear it. I'M not arguing with you. It's my music, I like it. You don't have to. That's fine. It's not really the point of this show. What is the point of this show? That's a great question. I ask myself this all the time because, as you know, it's called the History of Literature. And in some ways that's the most boring title I could possibly have chosen. It's completely misleading in some ways. I always think there must be people who sign up for the show and think, oh great, the BBC will march us through the History of Literature or some professor.

[Jack Wilson]

This is a professor of literature.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

It's going to take us through one thing after another, like flipping through an encyclopedia, a nice literary encyclopedia. Safe, reliable, predictable. And the idea of actually doing a show like that makes me want to go running outside and scream my head off. No, no, no. I don't want to listen to a show like that, let alone make one. On the other hand, I don't really like navel gazing shows either. Why should anyone care about my personal preferences? Who cares? But there's a middle ground there, I think. There's a path that I thought I could take. I thought I could talk about books, the greatest books, the greatest authors, the most powerful fiction and poetry and philosophy and maybe some film and music here and there. And I could analyze those writers, who they were, what they were trying to do, what their project was. Why did those fuckers pick up a pen? What compelled them to do that? Some of them got rich, most didn't. Most didn't. What were they after? And then why read? Why read a book? Why read at all? What do we get out of it? It's been so important to me. I wanted to explore why I have a limited time here on this planet and so do you. And we can be entertained in so many ways. Twitter can do it. I can exercise, I can eat, I can cook. There are a lot of ways to fill my day. Listen to music, play music. So why pick up a book? And it's so easy to just say, well, you're using your imagination, or, oh, you're exercising your brain. There's so many easy and obvious answers that people use when they talk about books. Oh, reading is good for the soul, right? Right. That annoying voice people get. It's like mansplaining, but it can come from any smug person. It's not about gender, smug splaining. Well, you read books to explore other worlds. And that wasn't the answer. That wasn't good enough. I don't want to explore other worlds. I don't want to use my imagination. Or maybe I should say those answers just don't go as deep as I want. Literature felt like more to me. This stuff matters to me. Why does it matter so much? Why? What am I getting out of it? Why is it at all relevant to my life? What am I doing here on this earth? And why am I spending time reading when I could be doing so many other things? And not just why, but how? If I can find an effect that a book has on me, if I can locate it, if I can isolate it and analyze that effect, how does it work? How does literature work? What does it make me think and how does it make me feel? And why does any of this happen in the first place? What strange magic is at work here? So, 250 shows in. I feel like I have fewer answers than I did at episode number one. But I do know this. I know now that I'm not the only one. I am not the only one. I get emails from people all the time, hungry for something, searching, not sure if literature is the answer, but feeling like it's close, like maybe it is or maybe it can be. And they appreciate the show for taking the same approach. Once in a while, I get someone.

[Jack Wilson]

Who says, ah, I just want the facts.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

Usually it's, thank you, Jack. You helped. You saved me. I needed this. And I don't know exactly what to say because that's not really something I ever anticipated. I didn't expect this to happen. I thought I was the only one. I thought I was a lost and lonely soul. You know, when I started this early, early days, I went on vacation and something went wrong with the podcast host with the stats. It disappeared for a while. And I emailed the company and I said something like, what's happening? I'm in Iceland, but I think I can get to a computer if I need to. What's wrong? And it was some hiccup or something, some temporary glitch, but I remember because I was getting something like 50 downloads a day. I was used to seeing 50 downloads a day. Maybe that was on the days when new episodes released And I had one scheduled and it only showed 10 episodes, 10 downloads. And I thought there was a crisis. 50 downloads a day. I couldn't believe there were that many people out there listening. And I felt obligated. I felt bad. What happened? Did they all leave me at once? Are they not getting the podcast? Those poor subscribers, those stalwart 50? And, you know, I was trying to get to a million downloads. That was my goal. It's like, how can I get to a million downloads if you're cutting my 50 down to 10, 50 downloads in a day? We get a hundred times that now. Most days more. I think we're doing very well. I'm very thankful. So thank you all for that. Remember, started out saying I'd do this until I hit a million downloads or made enough money to quit my job. Well, we're approaching 3 million now, so there's that goal met. I never thought this would happen. I need to get to my main point today, but I'm stalling because I'm not sure I can talk about this. I'm not sure I can do it justice. Let's go back to Blackbird. My point before I wandered off was that the Beatles meant something important to me. I think it was the idea that you could come from a working class background and create something. You could be a creative person, you could live a creative life. That was pretty much it. That's what I admired. The success, the fame and fortune. None of that really appealed to me. In my small town in Wisconsin, it all looked a little fast. I didn't want the cars or the women or the drugs. I didn't want a rock and roll lifestyle. I didn't want to go on tour. But that moment where those guys, young guys, songwriters, where they have an idea and they write some words down on a piece of paper and they sing it to each other and they improve it, and then they go into a studio and turn it into a real song that people will listen to the actual song, that's what I wanted to feel. That moment of creativity. That's what I admired. And then because I was poor and because I didn't know how to go about it, I dropped it. I went to college, got a job, roamed around for years. I knew what to avoid. I knew what I didn't want to be. I knew how to sabotage everything that would lock me into a life I didn't want. But I didn't know how to enter any life I really wanted. I didn't know how to go into those places I wanted to go. I was struggling to get by. And I read books. I was living a kind of wild life, traveling to 30 or 40 different countries, moving, grabbing jobs wherever I could find them, meeting people, falling in love, doing all that. But as a total vagabond and reading books. I read a book a day for many years. That was my goal. It was my habit. I'd Wake up and start reading. And by the time I went to bed, I had finished the book and had usually started another. It was a way of squeezing more out of life, I think. I couldn't slow my brain down. Books helped. It's like being on a ship in a storm. Books were the way I was able to steady my craft. And then I started to head toward parenthood. Another thing I always wanted to do. And it blew me away. Both the joy that it brought and the anxiety and the feeling of being responsible for this little creature. I was reading to my son before he was born. I read A Wrinkle in Time. I remember that one. All kinds of books. My wife would lie in bed reading a book of her own or just closing her eyes and listening while I read to the baby. And somehow it worked out. He emerged as a little me. He had my temperament and my sense of humor and my logical side. I could recognize so much of myself in him. He's better than I ever was, which is not something I would tell him. Luckily he won't hear this. I want to keep him humble. But it's true. He's better than I was. And when he was little, he was happy. Go lucky. He enjoyed life. He wanted to read too. I don't need to rave about the miracle of a two year old. You all know what they're like. They're awesome. Babies are awesome. Children are awesome. We all get it. You have a child or a grandchild and you know the feeling. You know the feeling because it's a human feeling. You know what it's like to gaze in wonder at a child that small and that precious and that adorable. I haven't mentioned Dostoevsky yet. I did an episode on Dostoevsky and didn't mention that he lost his infant daughter and it destroyed him. This is from his biography. Quote. Dostoevsky and his wife left Russia for Western Europe in April 1867. So just to add a note here, Dostoevsky was about 45 years old. Back to the report. Let me just read it. Dostoevsky and his wife left Russia for Western Europe in April 1867, and they remained there for the next four years. While in Geneva, Anna gave birth to a baby girl named Sophia. But the great joy that the child brought the couple was cut short by the infant's sudden death in May 1868. Dostoevsky's immense grief is evident in a letter he wrote shortly after the event. And now people tell me by way of consolation that I'll have more children. But where Is Sonia? Where is that little person for whom I state boldly that I would accept crucifixion if only she could be alive? Those are the feelings we have as humans. We have the joys, we have the grief. I spent the first 20 or so years of my life having never attended a funeral. I was lucky. That's just how things worked out. I was too little to go to the funerals of my great grandparents. My parents didn't take me to those. And I didn't have anyone else die on me until I was in my 20s and my father in law heard that my grandfather had died. And he said to my wife, it is sad, it is life. Which stuck with me. It put things in perspective. It stung a little bit. My grandfather was probably my favorite person in the world. I missed him. I still miss him. And I hated knowing he was gone. I was grieving. I hated all the things I wouldn't get to tell him and that he wouldn't get to meet the children that I hoped to have one day. And I didn't want to hear, it is sad. It is life. It seemed kind of flippant, but my father in law was right. It's the perspective of someone in their 60s, as he was. Everyone he knew had lost their grandparents. They were all beloved. And now the parents were going and they were beloved too. It's part of life. It's part of getting older. But Dostoevsky says, fine, that may be fine, we know that. But what about the abnormalities? What about sons who kill their father? That's the subject of the Brothers Karamazov, as we're going to be talking about today. What about people who kill for no good reason? That's not life, is it? Is it life? Can we say it is sad, it is life. Do we say that about Dostoevsky's life? Where he was taken to a firing squad and told he's about to be shot, only to be told that no, he's going to be sentenced to a labor camp instead? Is that life? Is that life? Who says that has to be life? Monstrous leaders. Who put them in charge? Who put them in charge of us? And if we're pointing fingers, what about God? Where is he in all this? Couldn't he stop the son from killing his father? Couldn't he stop the horror of being forced to face a firing squad? To be made to believe that you were going to be executed? Couldn't he stop an infant from dying? It is sad. It is life. I came to appreciate those words when it came to the sadness of disease or the finality of death. But sometimes those words don't mean anything. They don't do enough. I feel like I left a loose end hanging here. We have the Beatles. We have Blackbird, what it meant. So let's take a quick break. I'll explain why I started with that song, then we'll come back. It's all connected, people. I know it is. It must be connected because there's nothing else on my mind today. We will get there. Hang on. So here's me, a great fan of the Beatles and a new parent. I took a leave of absence from my job. I told them I'm going to be.

[Jack Wilson]

Out for a month, which is my vacation.

[Jack Wilson (older or reflective voice)]

Days I'm going to use up, and then I'm going to be out for two more months after that so I can raise this little child. I'll take those days unpaid. And my supervisor said, okay, thanks for letting us know. And apparently the boss of the place came down hard on the supervisor and said, hey, what's Jack Wilson doing? He can't just say what he's going to do. He has to ask our permission. And I just laughed in his face. Not literally, but I just laughed when I heard that he had said that. I wasn't going to ask. I was going to tell. I'm not asking, I'm telling. I've got a little baby. If you try to stop me, I'll just leave. I was lucky. I was in a position to do that. I knew they needed me more than I needed them. But I was ready. Nothing was going to stop me from spending those months with that little guy. And I sat with him and did all the things that parents do. We had a good time. He was happy all the time, which was amazing. He loved books. He would sit in my lap for hours as I read him things. And we'd read the same books over and over. And he got to the point where he could point at the word two years old and he could tell me where on the page we were. But reading wasn't the important thing. It was the time we spent together, just being together, just overlapping our energies. It calmed me down to be with him. It made me happy and it made me proud. And it made me excited about the future, about his future. And we'd go to the grocery store together, him strapped into his little car seat, and we'd listen to the Beatles. And he'd sit in his crib and I'd play the Beatles on guitar because I was going through a little Revival of my own. I hadn't listened to the Beatles in 10 years or so, but the songs were like my oldest friends. The feeling to the feeling of creation. What would that be like to be John and Paul just cranking out new things, having new ideas, turning them into beautiful art? I was as fascinated by that as ever. And at night, it was hard for my little guy to sleep. Nothing worked. He felt lonely. He missed the day. He cried. And I would hold him or sit with him or feed him or walk around with him. Parents know how this is. And I would listen to music to help him drift off to sleep. And sometimes he could do that without me there too. And what you find is that either you can play one song over and over and over. Well, you know what? It's probably all different now. Now you could just make a playlist of all the songs that work. But I was working with CDs and every CD, whether it's classical or children's songs or whatever I could find, they would have these beautiful lullabies. And then they would have a song at some point that was up tempo or had a cymbal crash or a drum roll or something. And I'd hear that part come in. I'd be in the other room, that part would come in and my little guy would wake up and he would start crying. That would do it for him. And I'd curse the cd, it says lullabies. Why is there this crescendo? Why is there a March song on here? It was awful. And then I found this one. Bedtime with the Beatles. I could listen to it for hours. Thinking of the actual songs didn't bother me. Some people thought it sounded like elevator music, but actually Paul McCartney himself endorsed this one. And it didn't bother me. I loved it. It was soothing. Those melodies were so beautiful. They filled the room with their softness. And my little guy in his crib would fall asleep so gentle in there every night. We'd wrap up our day, take a bath. I'd put him in the crib, put this music on. I would close the door. It's a beautiful feeling, but it's also hard. It's so hard when you have a baby with you all day long and you're connected and you're just in that zone where your body isn't really yours. Time doesn't belong to you. Everything is about this bond you have with this other person. It's like being in love. But it's more than that too. It's a complete self sacrifice. Except you're not a martyr. You're also gaining from it. It's like you're growing a plant and you're the soil and the sun and the shade and the water. You provide everything, all the conditions that this little plant needs to grow. And then it does. And everyone who looks at the plant doesn't say, oh, look. Look at the sun and the shade and the water and the soil over there. They say, look at that plant. That's what you get out of it. As a parent. You get the pride of knowing what you've made. You admire the plant more than anyone. You never knew that before the plant came along that you were just dirt and some light and some water. You've created something. You're nurturing something. It's miraculous. And then you close the door and the plant is on its own, breathing, rising and falling, and it's horrible to be alone. It's a horrible feeling. You might be glad to. Hey. Oh, I can finally check email, see what the wife is doing, take a shower, cut my fingernails, think, read all these things, grab some food, sleep. But you're alone now in a way that you weren't before. You didn't know how alone it could feel to not have that baby on your hip or in your arms. To not see that baby stare and smile and laugh and grow. The toddler, when he thinks he's playing a joke on you, when he's making himself laugh and you see a side of him that you didn't teach him, but he's figuring it out on his own. And babies, when they dance and when they eat ice cream for the first time, there's just nothing better. And you subtract that from your day. You might want to stay in that room with that baby, just sitting in a chair while he sleeps. But you know the baby has to learn to be independent, too, and to grow. And you get to the point where I am with my son and he's independent. He's a teenager. He's admirable. He's a young man. We don't hug anymore, though we're still very close. Psychologically, we're so similar. But that door closes and I would have this feeling. You're in good hands, my son. You have this music. It's not going to scare you. It won't shock you with a sudden drum roll or a cymbal crash. I trust it. It's gentle. It's going to be my substitute for a little while. You're safe. You're okay. I'll see you soon. And you close the door knowing that you've done everything you could. So here's why all this is on my mind. I'm wrestling with something now, with myself as a parent, with myself as a podcaster, with myself as a reader, with myself as a human being. Because I got an email a week or two ago. It was devastating. I won't read it out of respect for privacy, but it was a beautiful, heartfelt email from a man halfway around the world. He said that he lost his six year old son four weeks ago and he's been listening to the history of literature ever since. He's found it helpful and he was hoping I could do an episode on Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. So that is what we're going to do. We're going to talk about that book today and I am going to do my damnedest to try to find some hope coming out of all this, to make some sense of it. We will take our last break and then we'll talk about that book, brothers. And some more about Dostoevsky and some more about literature and some more about life. Okay, Brothers Karamazov, a quick reminder of who we're talking about here. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, John Lennon to Tolstoy's Paul McCartney. A guy who lived like he was on fire. Like someone had set him on fire and he was burning. He was born in 1821 in Moscow and died in 1881 in St. Petersburg, just shy of his 60th birthday. And in between he lived a hell of a life. And I mean that, both in the sense of it being an incredible life and in the more literal sense of his life being a kind of hell. His mother died when he was 15. In his 20s he wrote a novel, Poor Folk, which made him a literary star. The impact of his book, of that book. His friends came and woke him up when they read, Let me tell you the story. Dostoevsky was already miserable even before he wrote the book. He was living beyond his means and addicted to gambling. Those are problems that chased him all of his life. He was betting on billiard games, but really it was his personality. It was his addictive personality. So he thought he'd write a novel to try to raise some funds. Had to get himself out of his jam, and the novel was his only hope. If I fail in this, he told his brother, I'll hang myself. He gave the manuscript to a friend who suggested that he give it to a poet that he knew who was about to publish an anthology. So Dostoevsky gave it to the two men and went home. Soon afterward, his doorbell rang. It was the two friends. They had read the first 10 pages and were ready to declare him a genius. The next Gogol. They had to stop reading, run to his house, ring his bell, wake him up, congratulate him. That's how good they thought it was. Everyone important in Russia read that book. And Dostoevsky became a celebrity, a literary celebrity, but it was kind of. He was kind of a dangerous one. It was called a social novel. It was about human beings and their suffering. Those are always dangerous to people in power, poor folk. The title itself. He wrote another book called the Double. He was having seizures now. This had haunted him ever since his father had died. He was a Christian, too. He was running in socialist circles. He was trying to help, trying to make change, trying to push for reform. The czar didn't like it. Dostoevsky and a few others were rounded up, accused of reading and circulating works that criticized Russian political leaders. Dostoevsky said, I am a man of letters. I was reading these for literary purposes. Have my finger on the pulse. Need to know what's going on. I wasn't trying to overthrow the government. But the men, Dostoevsky and others, were sentenced to death by firing squad. And guess who headed up the Investigative commission? I mean, other than the Tsar himself. It was a general named Ivan Nabokov, who, as it happens, was one of the ancestors of the progenitors of the famous writer of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov. I think it was his grandfather, his great grandfather's brother. Nabokov hated Dostoevsky. It's one of Nabokov's blind spots. He had a few of them. He was kind of a snob, and I don't mean in a literary way. He looked down on people much of the time. Some of his criticism of Dostoevsky reeks of that, but some of it is valid and insightful. He said something like, dostoevsky is the world's greatest playwright, stuck in a novelist's body. Which is kind of true. Dostoevsky is great at dialogue. He's not as great at scene setting. You don't go to him to read about the sky or the dew drops on the wings of the butterfly. You go to him to read about people who are wrestling with ideas, with one another and with their own demons. They're thrown into circumstances that would tear anyone apart, and they themselves are tormented. And they talk about it. They laugh. At odd moments, their personalities come bursting out of them, mainly through Their words. It's mesmerizing and sometimes claustrophobic. Hemingway said, how can such a great writer be such a bad writer at the same time? And that's often said to be stemming from Hemingway's jealousy and his ego. But he might have been talking about something similar, about this dependence on dialogue, verbosity. John Updike said of a verbose writer once that he wrestles with his strengths the way other writers wrestle with their weaknesses. Strength being a facility with words. Updike could see the writer trying to keep that in check, so it didn't get in the way. Dostoevsky is different. He was often writing for money, not just for money, but because of a desperate need for money. And he wrote fast and he poured this pain onto the page. His need for answers, his search for hope, his attempts to make sense of everything. His anger, his bitterness, his recriminations. You wouldn't say he was wrestling with his strengths or his weaknesses. He doesn't write like someone trying to write a great novel. He writes like someone trying to survive. Where were we? The firing squad. They were lined up ready to be killed. But it was all a trick. They were just put in that position to terrify them for sport. The Tsar commuted their sentence and instead of being executed, Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor in Siberia, a 14 day sleigh ride away. His mock execution was the day before Christmas Eve. He arrived in Siberia in the new year 1850. Here's his description of his living conditions. In summer, intolerable closeness. In winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick, one could slip and fall. We were packed like herrings in a barrel. There was no room to turn around. From ducks from dusk to dawn, it was impossible not to behave like pigs, fleas, lice and black beetles by the bushel. End quote. Keep in mind that this is a man already viewed as a great novelist in his time, a genius. The next Gogol, sentenced to prison for what amounted to a First Amendment violation, as we would call it here in the States. There was no First Amendment protection under the Tsar. Dostoevsky wrote a book about the experience in his experience in Siberia called the House of the Dead. He came out of it, returned from his exile and wanted to read Kant, Hegel and Kant. He's trying to make sense of the world. He had the New Testament with him all through his imprisonment too. He was reading Dickens, looking for answers. And when he came out, he was writing. He got married, he took trips to Europe where he lost his money gambling. His brother and his wife died, and Dostoevsky was the only one who could support his stepson and his brother's family. He needed money. He started a magazine, which failed, and he kept gambling. And relatives and friends started funneling money his way to keep him afloat. And then he wrote Crime and Punishment and the Gambler and the Idiot. In two years, those three books, he got married again. He finally had a successful business, releasing his book Demons on his own through the Dostoevsky Publishing Company, which brought in some money. He had children, including a son, Alexei, who was also epileptic, as Dostoevsky was. They had seizures that were not well understood. We are now about 20 years after Dostoevsky had been released from prison. He's becoming famous again, the novelist of his era, a literary landmark in Russia and a guest in the salons of famous people. His health was failing. He was in demand. They wanted him for conferences and speeches and to serve on literary committees. He couldn't do it. He was too sick. But he had one more book in him, one more masterpiece. He started writing it, a story about a father and his sons. He had some demons to work out there, too, with his own father. All this life is going into this book. All of his themes, all his major passions, his views of the world, his views of Christianity, his views of God and Jesus, his views of religion and his questions about all of it, his demands. And it all starts with this father. This is the plot of brother Scaramazov, this father, who has three, maybe four children. One of them is illegitimate but rumored to be his. It starts with the father. Dostoevsky's own relationship with his father is in there too. Let me read from the University of British Columbia's website in their history of Dostoevsky's father, Fyodor Dostoevsky's father, Mikhail Andreyevich dostoevsky, died in 1839 while Fyodor was away at St. Petersburg's Military Engineering College. There were three conflicting accounts of the cause of his death, and the true cause remains unknown. The first explanation is that he was killed by his serfs. The second is that he began drinking heavily after his wife's death and lost his life to alcoholism. And the third and official cause is that he had a heart attack. Although his death is shrouded in mystery, it is clear from his son Andre's writing that Mikhail began to quickly deteriorate after the death of his wife Maria. Mikhail was a doctor at Moscow's Marinsky Hospital for the Poor. And after the Birth of his two eldest sons, Mikhail and Fyodor, he was promoted to collegiate assessor, which raised his legal status to that of nobility. He was a devoted parent and a well educated and caring man, but he had a hot temper and could be stern and distrustful. Mikhail was also an extremely religious man, and he and Maria raised their children in the traditional Orthodox way, which was characterized by fear, rigidity and obedience. In 1837, Maria died of tuberculosis, and it was after this that Fyodor's younger brother Andrew, noted how his father began to change. He states that when Mikhail became a widower, he began to speak out loud to himself, as if he were imagining that he was having a conversation with his wife. Andrei cites a letter that his father sent to Fyodor several days before his death as well, in which Mikhail's writing was filled with the anguish and sadness that festered, then grew after his wife's death. He states that Mikhail's loneliness nearly drove him mad, that he started to drink and his drinking eventually became alcoholism. Of the three possible causes for death, Andre makes it clear that he believes that Mikhail's serfs murdered him. He claims that Mikhail, being ill tempered, lost control and shouted at his serfs in such a way that one of the serfs rallied a group together and they attacked and killed him. Andre then goes on to say that when the police came to the scene, they were bribed by the group and the serfs went unpunished. While the official cause of Mikhail's death was determined to be a heart attack. The true cause of Mikhail's death has never been identified, but it is evident that the mystery surrounding it and the loss of his father had a profound effect on Fyodor's worldview and writing. Freud argues that the way in which Dostoevsky's epilepsy developed is directly related to how he internalized and understood the death of his father. Epilepsy is a theme in his work, and it is particularly important to the idiot. Parricide and the relationship between fathers and sons are also important themes for Dostoevsky, especially in the Brothers Karamazov, in which the guilt for the death of their father is marked by conflict between his sons. End quote. It's like a template for the Brothers Karamazov, the work that was the pinnacle of Dostoevsky's life. His longest book, the one he was building up to. It's like Shakespeare's Lear. It's about generations, it's about deep movements and currents. It's about that point when you get to the end of your life. And you reflect back and you think about your own parents. I told you about my grandfather and how important he was to me. We knew he was dying. We went to the hospital. I stood at his bedside. You could see his eyes fighting and fighting and fighting and trying to hang on. But you could see his eyes reflecting too. Remembering, trying to make sense of a life. And I had this relationship with him for years. We'd talked about it. He remembered when I was little, how he'd take me golfing and he'd let me drive the cart. And how my sister talked him into letting her park it in the shed and she drove it right into the back wall. And how angry he was when that happened, but how loving he was too. All those memories of his life, the way they overlapped with my life, that's what I could be there for. That's what I could participate in. I held his hand at his bedside and hoped that he remembered all those good times of being a grandpa, being my grandpa, what a good grandfather he had been. And what it was like for him to watch me grow up and become an adult. And there was some of that. But that was only a part of his life. It was only the last 20 years of his life. He also looked deeper, to a place where I wasn't. And he said, where's my mother? Where's mother? And then he answered his own question. Oh, she's in the grave. And all I could do was hold his hand and cry with him about it. Because I knew his mother, my great grandmother, and I loved her too. But I was not there with him as a boy, as a five year old boy with his mother. I was not there for that. He was the only one left who could remember it. He was the only one who knew how important that was to him. I knew him as a fully grown man, an intact person on the verge of retirement. A golfer, a man around town, someone who went fishing and watched the Packers. I did not know him as a small boy in need, being taken care of, not being the caretaker. I loved that small boy. My imagination of that small boy, because I loved him. But it was his memory to work through. Dostoevsky is there. He's writing his masterpiece, the work of his lifetime. He's sick. He's putting everything he has into this book. And then his three year old son dies. He puts that in there too. He publishes the work. Everyone raves about it. It's the highlight of his life, the culmination. And then at the height of his fame and Prestige. He dies and the world has his novels. This wild life, this hell of a life and the wild writings of a near madman are what we have from Dostoevsky. It's a testament to greatness, plus panicky energy in a culture where writing novels was seen as the proper outlet. In another era, maybe he'd have been a rock star or a gonzo journalist or a filmmaker. Instead, he wrote novels. Virginia Woolf said she wrote that Dostoevsky's novels are, quote, seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, water spouts that hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills, we are drawn in world round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. End quote. James Joyce praised Dostoevsky, said, he is the man, more than any other, who has created modern prose and intensified it to its present day pitch. End quote. Nietzsche said that Dostoevsky was one of the happiest discoveries of his life. He said, quote, do you know Dostoevsky? Except Stendahl, no one was such a nice surprise for me and no one delivered me so much pleasure. He is a psychologist with whom I find common ground. Hemingway said that his. Well, Hemingway's attitude is reflected in a movable feast. We had part of this already, but here's the full In Dostoevsky, there were things believable and not to be believed, but some so true they changed you as you read them. Frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness and the insanity of gambling were there to know, as you knew the landscape and the roads in Turgenev and the movement of troops, the terrain and the officers and the men and the fighting in Tolstoy. Sartre said that Dostoevsky was the starting point for existentialism. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a fan. Haruki Murakami, another Kafka, viewed him as his spiritual cousin. And it's the Brothers Karamazov that continues to fascinate, to impress, to draw people in. Faulkner reread it once a year. Orhan Pamuk said the first time he read the Brothers, his life was changed. He felt Dostoevsky, through his storytelling, revealed completely unique insight into human life and nature. Walker Percy, the great philosophical novelist, said, I suppose my model is nearly always Dostoevsky, who was a man of very strong conviction, but his characters illustrated and incarnated the most powerful themes and issues and trends of his day. I think maybe the greatest novel of all time is the Brothers Karamazov. Which almost prophesies and prefigures everything, all the bloody mess and the issues of the 20th century. End quote. Hermann Hess agreed. He said that Dostoevsky wasn't a poet but a prophet. James Joyce, in another place, said Tolstoy admired him, but he thought that he had little artistic accomplishment or mind. Yet, as he said, he admired his heart. A criticism which contains a great deal of truth. For though his characters do act extravagantly, madly, almost still, their basis is firm enough underneath. The Brothers Karamazov made a deep impression on me. He created some unforgettable scenes. Madness, you may call it, but therein may be the secret of his genius. I prefer the word exaltation. Exaltation, which can merge into madness. Perhaps in fact, all great men have had that vein in them. It was the source of their greatness. The reasonable man achieves nothing. Philosopher. The philosopher Wittgenstein read the Brothers Karamazov so often he knew whole passages of it by heart. Heidegger had a portrait of Dostoevsky on his wall and said the book was the source for his own work, Being and Time. Freud called it the most magnificent novel ever written. He wrote an essay about it called Dostoevsky and Parricide. He thought Dostoevsky's epilepsy wasn't a natural condition, but the physical manifestation of Dostoevsky's own guilt about his father's death. He thought this was Oedipal because Dostoevsky was like all sons, wishing for their father's death because of latent desire for their mother. He noted that Dostoevsky's epileptic fits began the year his father died. We don't have to go as far as Freud to see the power of Dostoevsky's father's death on him, on his life, and to see how those feelings made their way into Dostoevsky's book in this intensified way, as Joyce put it. Intensity here, I think, means no holds barred. You write like you're burning, like the people you know are burning. Everyone who's in love is caught up in a kind of madness, and everyone who's angry is caught up in a kind of madness, too. Resentment, religious fervor, poverty, anger, ambition. We are driven by demons, all of us, and we're spinning out of control. And there's no place for not feeling all that. There's no room to sit on the sidelines. There's no place for not jumping up and confronting these forces and trying to wrestle them to the ground. It's kill or be killed psychologically speaking, if you don't take them on, let them emerge. They will seek you out and haunt you. You'd better fight your demons or they'll kill you in your sleep. Now, the plot of the book Brothers Karamazov is long and convoluted in some ways, but it has a framework that's simple too. I won't spoil it here, but it's a slow motion murder mystery. The father, Fyodor, dies and it's not clear who's killed him. He has three sons with two different wives, Dimitri with the first wife, and even Ivan. I say Ivan. It's Ivan, Ivan and Alyosha with another, who all have different personalities. And then there's a fourth, Smerdyakov, who is probably the father's son as well. Fyodor, the father, is a sponger and a buffoon. He's a schemer, a lot like Dostoevsky's own father. One suspects Dimitri, the eldest son, is probably the closest in personality to his father. He's a drinker, a ladies man, and he goes into debts too. He fights with the father, they fight over a woman and they fight over Dimitri's inheritance. Ivan is the next oldest. He's a rationalist, he's brilliant, he's a thinker. He thinks his father and Dimitri are repulsive in some ways. Their dissolution makes no sense to him. It's disgusting, a waste. The father is more afraid of Ivan than of Dimitri. Dimitri will fight. His heart's on his sleeve. This sounds a little bit like the Godfather to you. With Sonny as Dimitri and Michael as Ivan, it's kind of like that. At least their personalities. But don't push the comparison too far, because the third child is definitely not Fredo. He's Alyosha, who's kind, gentle, spiritual. He's beautiful and very likable. He wants to be good. He is good. He's a Christian, with sincerity, with faith. Unlike his brother Ivan, who's an atheist. And then there's Smerdyakov, whose mother was called Stinking Lizaveta, a mute woman who lived in the streets. His name, Smerdyakov, means son of the reeking one. Fyodor's servant brings him, brings him in and it's rumored, or brings him up and it's rumored that Fyodor himself is the father. Smerdyakov has epilepsy. He's morose and brooding and always kind of irritated, sullen, I guess you'd say. When he was a kid he collected stray cats so he could hang them and Bury them. He likes Ivan. He admires his atheism. So those are the four, the brothers. There are some other great characters too. There's a few women. One of them, Grushenka, is lusted after by both Fyodor and Dmitri. She torments them both. She's playing with them. She has a fiery temper and also a need for independence. She's strong willed, but she's a little softened by Alyosha too, as most people are when they encounter him. There's also Dimitri's fiance, Katerina. Katarina is beautiful and proud. This novel is so good, people. Can I just say that. Go read it if you haven't read it, or if it's been a while. These characters are so vivid. They have their own desires and needs and they're all in this kind of wheel of pushing and pulling one another in different directions. There are other characters too. Father Zosima, who's kind of Alyosha's mentor, his elder, and there's a schoolboy, Alyusha. But the main plot, the main mechanism of the plot is this murder and investigation. There's a trial. There's a very famous chapter called the Grand A story within a story. It's referred to as a poem that Ivan tells, but Alyosha interrupts him, so they have a kind of dialogue. In the story, Christ comes back to earth during the Inquisition. He performs miracles, but he's arrested and sentenced to death by burning. The Grand Inquisitor comes to visit him in his cell and tells him that the church no longer needs him, no longer needs Jesus. And then he explains why. He tells Jesus why his return to earth is interfering with the mission of the Church. It's a fascinating story within this story. It will make you think, and it's one that you can read separately from the rest of the novel. Maybe we'll do an episode just on this chapter at some point, but I want to turn to something else now, because I can't get it out of my mind. This poor father, my listener, who lost his child and who has found some comfort in the History of Literature podcast and whose favorite novel is the Brothers Karamazov. I read the email and I did not know what to say and I did not know what to do. I can write an email like everyone else can. My condolences, my sympathies. And I found it. In general, it's better to write like that unless you truly know the person, because all the other words that you try to come up with sound hollow and jarring, as if the writer is busy trying to write about himself. Oddly, it's not a time to avoid cliches. Cliches are fine when they're heartfelt. And so we say, my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family, because they are. They are. It's important to say that. But this was a little different. It made me reflect on my own experience as a son and as a parent. I've known people who have lost their children, and it is awful. It is the worst thing in the world. Doesn't matter what age it happens. Dostoevsky put it the best. I'd volunteer for crucifixion if she could live. I think most parents feel that way. Seen parents at their child's funeral and it's an indescribable sadness and agony. I've seen them hitting the coffin with their fists, howling at the injustice. I've heard a wife describe the moment when her husband found their child in his crib after he had died. And she said, it's a sound that she did not know a human being could make. It's chilling, it's terrible. It's just beyond what any human being should be asked to endure. We have these things like this. Sometimes they're created by humans. The Holocaust, torture, war, atrocities, murder, a mother killing her children. They're outside the realm of human understanding or human endurance. Literature can take us right up to that point. Literature will show us the reality of it. The heartbreaking reality will let us confront it, but it won't explain it, because nothing can. Nothing can capture the truly inhumane actions, the havoc that they wreak when psychopaths are in charge, when people with no empathy are willing to rip families apart. No one can really explain the horrors of slavery. They can show us the consequences. They can show us the effects. They can show us the how and the what and the what happens. They can't show us the why. And it's the same for tragedies that are not human created when it's an accident or a disease or just something that happens. We can see the what. We can see the how. We can't see the why. We see the stone arriving in the lake. We watch it disappear, and we can see all the ripples. But the stone falling in the lake has no explanation. We don't know from where it was thrown. It's as if it fell from the sky and now it's gone. That's where literature can't go. Life can't go there either. There are mysteries that are beyond human understanding. And this is one of them. The death of a child is one of them. I told you about my son, how much time we spent together in those early years. We ate and we told stories and we laughed and we sang and we danced. We listened to the Beatles. Once we were at a grocery store, at a Trader Joe's and a song came on Drive My Car. And I said, do you know who's singing this? And my son told me and I laughed because he was three at the time. And I realized I was turning him into a little version of myself. And the cashier heard my question, but not my son's answer. And he said, oh, did he know it's the Beatles? And I smiled and said, actually what he said was, it's Paul. And it was around then that I was thinking, my son is my best friend. There's no one who gets me like he does. And of course I know that as he gets older he'll have his own friends, which is important and he needs me as a dad and not as a friend. But it's that feeling, that closeness, that deep connection that struck me at the time. And yet how small he was. How small and still, still learning, still on his way. He knew so many things and yet there was so much he didn't know. Didn't know because of a lack of experience. He could feel love for me, for his mother, for his younger brother when his younger brother came along. But of course he didn't know what it's like to fall in love the way that a teenager or a grown up might know. That's the funny thing about knowledge. Kids know all the Beatles songs or all the dinosaurs or all the Thomas the Train characters or all the planes used in World War II, but the knowledge like my father in law had, my father in law who had lost all of his relatives in a war, who was separated from his siblings and his family members and everyone who survived. And who could say it is sad, it is life. That's the knowledge he had. That's knowledge too. And that's the knowledge that a three year old doesn't have. Smart as they are, they don't have it. And so we are in that world where on the one hand my son was smarter than me, wiser, more patient. Once I flew off the handle and he said, dad, are you two years old? Comparing me with the two years old he saw at the playground, putting me in my place. That's how he's been, observant like that, shrewd. And at the same time he was tender and Vulnerable. He wasn't yet jaded. He wasn't yet scarred. And he would have trouble sleeping. He didn't want to be alone because none of us want to be alone. So I played the Beatles for him. Bedtime with the Beatles. I can't always be here. I can't be here every minute. Sometimes you have to be alone. You have to be in this bed by yourself. Even though it's dark. You need to sleep in here. Because sometimes you have to be alone. That's what I was teaching him. But here, I don't want you to be lonely. I want you to have some comfort. I want you to have this warm feeling from this music which might remind you of me. Or it might just be your companion for a while. It's from the Beatles, and it's their gift to the world. And now it's my gift to you. So you put on the music, and with a heavy heart, you leave the room. You leave that little guy in the bed, and the door closes and your heart breaks every time. I needed that music as much as he did. And those days are gone now. They're in my memory. That's where they live. And they're in whatever imprint they made on my son's mind at the time, on whatever they did for his life and his development. And you start to get sentimental as you get older. And you start to appreciate simple things like ice cream cones and rainy afternoons. And being able to get together with the family for Thanksgiving. Those things start to seem like occasions to cry with happiness. Because life goes fast and there's a lot of pain. Those days disappear. They're gone. The door closes. And for this listener of mine, the door closed with more finality than anyone should have to bear. No one should have to endure it. I can't imagine enduring it. I felt lonely enough when the door closed. And I knew that in a few hours it would open again. And life would continue. And the day was lost. But a new one had begun. My son would be a little older, and he'd be changed. Innocence would fade. Wisdom, life, wisdom would settle in. And it has. He's different. But that's part of it. That's part of the door reopening every morning. A new chance for a new day. And for some of us, sometimes that door doesn't reopen. And that feeling of loneliness isn't temporary, but permanent. There are no more days. They are all in the past now. I can't explain it. Literature can't either. Literature can tell us how it's happened to others what exactly happened and the effects that it had, but it can't tell us why. No one can. And that's all we can do is to say that others have gone through it too. Dostoevsky went through it twice. We can all share in the feelings. We can all share in the empathy. We can all share in the anger and the grief and the confusion and the bitterness and the healing if it comes, when it comes. We are all here for that because we are all part of the human condition, the ups and the downs, the joys and the heartbreaks. We are all here for it. We can't escape it. We're here. And that's what literature can do, just like that's all that I can do, just like that's what the music could do when I had to leave behind my child, my son in that room. Literature says you might be lonely but you're not alone. Sa it.