Not My Favourite Book

I know now why this was a book that appealed to my friend Erv. I finally got up the courage to read it and found almost from the start that it was steeped in philosophy and theology. It is supposed to be a masterpiece of modern day literature, but it was not my 'cup of tea'. What I found most annoying, was not the content, that is the ideas and arguments put forth, but the style.

 Let me attempt to give you a small sampling of the style while telling you a bit about the story, in my own words.

Fyodor Karamazov, a self admitted sensualist and clown, who, by the way, was a sponger who was tight with his money and refused to give his sons their inheritance when they came of age, had three sons by two wives, Ivan, Dmitri, and Alyosha, each quite different in appearance, temperament, and philosophy, though by no means stupid, although Ivan, who, like his father, was a sensualist, which lead him into trouble when he and his father fought over the same woman, and who also believed that if a man was an atheist, that is denied the existence of a deity, and therefore also denied an eternal existence, should not have to be under the churches moral law or the states laws regarding anything at present illegal, even including murder, because there were no eternal consequences, and should be only responsible to oneself and ones own self interests, but at the same time respecting those citizens and clergy who thought otherwise, for the sake of some semblance of social order.

Yes, run on sentences and rabbit trips are abundant and it is most difficult to concentrate and hold to an idea that you thought the sentence or chapter was going to be about. It is one of those books where you read and re-read a sentence, or a page, and you still don't 'get it'.  There are small nuggets here and there, but overall the task of finding them was too daunting for this simple minded reader.