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As I trudged through The Brother’s Karamazov, I began to contemplate God. God is infinite and so it seems are the words in this novel. Yet it made me pause for some self-reflection.
People are swept along with the trends of the time. Things that are fashionable achieve not only legitimacy but achieve a foothold in the mind. They become sought after; they become the focus of a person’s desires. In fact, the individual is so influenced by these cultural trends that such a person convinces himself that this is truly what he wants and what would make him happy. Take for example golf. As a child, I had no interest in putting such a ball around and neither did any of my friends. But sure enough when country-club-awareness manifested suddenly everybody loved golf. The doctors and lawyers loved it so much they couldn’t get enough. I suppose after a while anything can grow on you but my point is that these people in all likelihood convinced themselves that they liked golf and so they ultimately did. I am not the type that specifically rejects the popular culture whether to make a bold statement of individuality or to play the rebel. If I like what is trendy I follow and if not I don’t let societal trends hold sway over me.
I bring this up as a self-check with respects to my choice of literature. I have read some very intriguing ideas from Richard Elliot Friedman where he incorporated concepts from Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. Those ideas led me to read The Brother’s Karamazov. I have already mentioned how insufferably long the book is yet I began convincing myself that I must like it because those I respect like it and because the literati consider it a masterpiece. There are certainly grand ideas I do appreciate but it’s too damn long. If you can’t get your point across in 5 minutes, you have lost your audience (or at least me).
So why did these authors write soooo much? 100 years ago before TV or the Internet, people must have had way too much time on their hand. To eliminate the rampant ennui, Dostoyevsky and Dickens and whole cadre of others generated works of fiction grossly disproportional to what was necessary to expound plot and idea. Perhaps, people read the books over weeks at a time, chapter after chapter acting in much the same manner as we watch the long-running mini-series we now so look forward to. This drawn out process allowed for reflection on ideas and discussion with peers. Oh, how the reader must have eagerly anticipated another super-sized novel with their yet to be super-sized fries.
Then again, maybe the authors were paid by the word or perhaps possessed verbal diarrhea. And now, we are all made to suffer the results.