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Meet the Karamazov’s (Part 2 of 3) · John’s Newsletter

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everybody and welcome back to the Dead Realist Society
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: where we revive classic literature and see if those old decaying corpse
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: of authors don't have some lessons that they can still teach us.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Today we are doing part two of the Brothers I know that we are a day late,
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: but there's a lot going on in the world, so thank you all for your patience.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're really going to dive into the plot.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Last week we did the characters of the book.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't had a chance to listen to that one, go ahead and pause this one.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: It is a Dostoevsky book.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to want to understand and know who the characters are that we're talking about.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Feel free to pause this one go back to last week's listen to that one and then come back here.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, we're going to dive into the plot today.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: John I'm going to kick things over to you here in just a second but I think
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: a good way to sum up this plot that it's a murder mystery,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: but it's also an 800 page argument about God freedom guilt and love.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: So with all that go ahead and take us away.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, that's the great thing.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a ripping good murder mystery.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's so Poirot style,
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Agatha Christie,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: but with the usual Dostoevsky things about explaining how the world actually works.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to leave that part to you, John.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to plow through the basic plot outline, and we'll move on from there.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about Fedor Karamazov.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's neglected his three sons, Dmitry, Ivan, and Alexei, or Alyosha.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a fourth son, which is the irony of the title, which is very, very good.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sverdiakov.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: He was his epileptic servant and his illegitimate son, most likely.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Most likely.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's left very vague on purpose, but most likely.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Dimitri and the father are competing for Grushenko,
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: who's this earthy woman who's been left aside by an officer,
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: is good looking for the moment,
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: though they make it clear that that's a very latent thing.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to last.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're competing for her favors now, which aren't likely to last.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, Dimitri is actually engaged to Katerina, who's a very decent person.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Who he saves from ruin at this moment.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because Dimitri is nothing again.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's the id.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we get this wrong.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: The id isn't always bad.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes impulses can be good.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes impulses can be absolutely noble.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Dimitri is a wonderful version of the id because he's both good and bad.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's impulsive.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: For either way, but for the Katarina, it's probably good with Grushenka, likely not so great.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so he meets at the monastery and it's one of,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: actually, I think it's one of the funniest scenes I've ever read.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people who act like Dostoevsky isn't funny,
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: it's brilliantly amusing and it goes horribly wrong because Fedor can't help but be
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: a buffoon and blaspheme at the brothers who are actually like Kozma rather nice
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: about it, but it all goes wrong and they threaten each other.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: It falls apart as he acts the buffoon,
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: and then Dmitry actually assaults his father in his own house and says,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to kill you.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And this is part of the murder mystery.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: But there's, again,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: there's this fourth brother,
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Karamazov, Sverdiakov, and the problem with Sverdiakov is he's like Ivan, right?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Raskolnikov figure,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: the ego figure,
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: who's saying without God,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: everything is allowed,
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: everything is okay,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: but he doesn't have Ivan's background to kind of mitigate that with some form
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: of mercy.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so he later actually ironically blames Ivan,
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like you, but a lower grade version of you, basically.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why this goes wrong.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And again, from a Dostoevskyan point of view, that makes perfect sense.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: From a human point of view, perhaps less so.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: But Yvonne explains when they meet after this,
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: he explains the Grand Inquisitor,
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: which is what we're going to spend the entire next one doing.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: John, when I was a student,
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: this is one of those moments in political philosophy that mattered to me
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: and why I took Russian literature and society for a year when I could pick
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: an elective, because the Grand Inquisitor is one of the great...
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to talk a lot about that next week, so I'm going to leave that be.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: But basically,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yvonne writes a poem about the Cardinal of the Spanish Inquisition arresting Christ,
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: knowing he's divine,
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: and accusing him of leaving mankind with the burden of free will.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's the free will that's the problem.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus has to be arrested despite being divine.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we just leave it there tantalizingly for next week.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: But moving on from this, Katerina meets Grushenko.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: This goes, again, humorously, disastrously wrong.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: They meet each other,
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: and Grushenko's earthy and looks for every tactical advantage,
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: whereas Katerina's looking for strategic advantages, and that doesn't work at all.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so then they all go to Fyodor's house.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next thing you see is that Dmitry, there's a gap in the timeline, a la OJ.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a gap in the timeline.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then Dmitry parties and wins Grushenko's hand.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's been broke and now he has 3,000 rubles.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So where did he get the money from?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: We assume he kills his father and takes the money.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is the assumption that is laid out in front of it.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: However, as it goes on, Dmitry steadfastly says, I'm not guilty.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I took the money, but I didn't kill him.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Very Dmitry answer.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guilty, but I'm not that guilty.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a very Dmitry answer.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so he said, I spent the best of the money.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: The investigators don't believe him.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: The only other person in the house was Sverdiakov.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Who has epilepsy, as did, by the way, Dostoevsky.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Convenient times to have epilepsy as well.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Convenient.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: So he's off the scene when he's not off the scene.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: So Yvonne then not buying this and being the smartest of the brothers becomes,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: in effect, Poirot.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: He goes to Sverdiakov three separate times.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: The number three is not incidental.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's biblical.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: At last,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sverdiokov confesses that he killed Fyodor and took the money because he's hated him
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: for denigrating him all this time,
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: denigrating his existence,
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: denigrating his being a member of the Karamazov family,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: denigrating his humanity even.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Sverdiokov, however, does not blame the father, ironically.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: He blames Ivan for teaching him,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: for teaching him,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: very Dostoevsky, that in the absence of God, Anything is permitted.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the one sentence that is always mentioned from Karamazov.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't believe in an established order, you believe in an unestablished order.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: You are utopian.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: You believe in Wilsonianism,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: neoconservatism, some Rousseau, some lunatic who leads you to Pol Pot.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Dostoevsky is the first person to get this right ahead of Stalin,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: ahead of Pol Pot, ahead of Hitler.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: He sees, as John, you've said before, what's coming.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's the real genius of him when all is said and done.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And in the terms of what we do,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: political risk calls,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: these are some of the best political risk books that you could possibly read.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, the ideas are woven into actual stories.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why we do the podcast,
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: because it'd be very easy to miss these themes and these points that we're talking
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: about.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: But they're absolutely there.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he's a great political analyst.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: John, we'd beg him.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: We'd beg him to work.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: We'd be on our knees.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: He'd be top of the eye.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Ironically, though,
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: when Yvonne at the trial of Dimitri for the murder explains all this,
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: it said, well, you're feverish.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: You had delirium.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're wrong.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, there's this unjust conviction.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very Russian.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Katerina...
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Talks about this, that the Dimitri, of course, has sent this letter forward to kill his father.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Both Dimitri and Yvonne have wanted to kill his father.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: They had motive, means and opportunity, but they didn't do it.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's Sverdiakov.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of reasons to want to kill Fyodor.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's a horrible human being, but only Sverdiakov did this.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so Dimitri is actually ironically convicted.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Unlike O.J., who got away with this, he's convicted of killing his father.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's sentenced to 20 years hard labor in Siberia.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Very like Dostoevsky.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very, very, very like Dostoevsky.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end, Yvonne and Katrina planned Dmitry's escape.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: From this sentence,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: so that in this time where he's getting his affairs in order,
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: as we used to say, he can go to America and get away.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And Dmitry and Katerina are actually reconciled.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what this reconciles for Dostoevsky is the id and the ego.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: They are reconciled.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's wonderful.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: The second book,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: which we never got, and a guy whose name I haven't mentioned, is Alyosha, Alexei.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: The whole second book was going to be about the superego.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Was going to be at how these three things working together work.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: This book is the reconciliation of the id, Dimitri, and the ego, Yvonne and Katrina.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Leaving the juicy plum at the top of the tree, Alexei, for the next book.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then tragically, he dies.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: What, four weeks later?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Four weeks later, yeah.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And let me say from my own writing...
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: When you get toward the end,
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: sick as you are,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: discouraged as you are,
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: tired as you are,
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: and I've written 15 of them,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: in good states and bad states, you're just in it to finish.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: You don't think of anything beyond finishing.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Your life is secondary to the work.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, and that's what I
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: love so much about,
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: especially this classic Russian literature that we're doing.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think back when talking about Fyodor finishing the brothers
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: and putting every last bit of the last little life he had into this book.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: I also think of Bulgakov in Master Margarita,
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: he's speaking the last lines of the book to his lovely wife,
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: who's writing them down for them.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then and then he, of course, so it's just it's very, very Russian to to be basically dying.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: As you're finishing your book,
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: which is but john, I mean,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: even in our work, I mean,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: that in our firm, I mean,
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: what one of our comments that you and I make all the time to each other both ways.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the work.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's just about the work.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we say that to each other every week.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're not trying to cover up for failing about the work.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we're not trying to cover up for being establishmentarian about the work.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we're trying to get it right.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: We are human.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have a 90% record, which I'm thrilled at.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: But we're human.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're fallible.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: We make mistakes.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: But we want to get it right.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the people, the dirty secret, as Dostoevsky got right.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to get it right.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Grushenka doesn't care about getting it right.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: She wants stability economically so she can exist when she's fat after the age
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: of 30, which is what Dostoevsky has said and made clear.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I get her point of view, but we care about, like Dostoevsky, getting it right.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And getting it right requires courage, downright bravery.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got to ignore an awful lot of noise.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he was the king at ignoring noise.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I reread this.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've read all these before, but I'm honestly, john, this has been great for me.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think much as I love crime.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Notes from the Underground, I think this is magnificent.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: It leads all into it.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And back to what we've said last week and in the past,
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we'd have the same appreciation for brothers
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: that we're having right now if we didn't start with Notes from Underground,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Crime and Punishment, because it's building up to this world.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's these ideas that you see Dostoevsky developing over time,
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: and that's what's so enjoyable about the writing.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Great work builds on itself.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's true what he does, or what we do, it builds and builds and builds.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with being wrong,
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: like Bremer,
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Ferguson,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Tina Fordham,
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: whoever, is you don't build, you're always explaining away why you're wrong.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you build, you actually get somewhere, you move on to the next step.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way to get somewhere and touch the face of God.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what creativity is about.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the good lord took Dostoevsky a little early so that he could read
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: the second part of the brothers before everybody else.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you feel cheated?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's got to be a copy up in Heaven's Library somewhere.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: But to get kind of into some of the main themes of the book,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: there's three main themes that I took out of the plot
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: that I think are somewhat relevant to today's age.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: First is freedom, faith, and doubt.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's really Ivan's story summed up.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'll leave that one a little bit more alone because that one really ties into
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: the Grand Inquisitor.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: But basically...
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Dostoevsky gives Ivan one of the best arguments against God
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: that you could possibly have in this character,
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: and then we get to see Dostoevsky's response to those arguments later on,
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: and that's really told to the Grand Inquisitor and that story of love there.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: But guilt and shared responsibility,
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: that's one I really want to dive into,
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: because all three of these brothers that we're talking about have some sort of hand,
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: some sort of malice in their heart,
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: some sort of responsibility that That led to this murder.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think Dimitri even realizes that,
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: that he knows that he's not the one who actually killed his father,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: but he knows what was in his heart.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: He understands that shared responsibility.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Ivan has this realization that his own radical And I think of kind
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: of our fringe brother,
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: as the fringe of society, the people that do really latch on to
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of brothers to consider there when we talk about
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: who is truly responsible.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we know who
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Pulled the trigger when it came to attempting to assassinate the president.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: We know who pulled the trigger that killed Charlie Kirk.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: But what about the ideas that led to taking that action?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: What about the mainstream media news networks that after these things happen,
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: they're always kind of like Ivan and Dimitri,
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: where they where they're like, oh, no, this is not exactly what I wanted to happen.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: We need to turn down the temperature and all these things.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think we as a society should sometimes sit down and say,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: OK, who who Who really shares the guilt in these sorts of things?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Who shares the guilt in decline?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Who shares the guilt and radicalization of people and what those radicals do?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the person themselves are responsible for their action.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to at all.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: But what leads them to that, right?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And what sort of responsibility do those people share?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: we can't have any Dostoevsky book without some sort of theme that is redemption
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: that comes through suffering.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So those are kind of the main themes that I took out of the plot,
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm really looking forward to talking about The Grand Inquisitor next week
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: because that's the heart, the soul, the book, and really Dostoevsky himself.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And what I love that it's building,
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: and I will use a Beatles analogy, he's moving up to Rubber Soul.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you love the Beatles, you've got to look at the work before, which is really, really good.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, they came out of Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then suddenly they're doing Hard Day's Night, which nobody's ever thought of before.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Then they do Help, which nobody's thought of before.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then they do Rubber Soul, which nobody's thought of before.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Then they do Revolver.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's step by step by step.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And every year in their case,
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: which was quite amazing,
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: like Dostoevsky,
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: in this very limited period of time in 12 or 13 years,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: he goes from getting out of Siberia to giving us five or six or seven novels
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: that last forever.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And at the apex of this.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to do the devils down the road,
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: which I think would be the other one I would list,
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: the rubber sole revolver, the two great rebels.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll do this after the Americans.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: But this is the logical rubber sole lead up to everything we've done with notes,
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: crime and punishment.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this follows logically next.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's getting better and more comfortable.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: I remember being there when I've written.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'll ever write another book, John, after what we've done.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: But you get more comfortable as you go.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: You figure out how to write a book.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds odd, but it takes tremendous amount of time.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've written 15.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: by the 15th,
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm better at writing a book than the beginning when I'm in the dark,
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: not into things.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Dostoevsky,
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: by the time we get to brothers,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: knows what he's doing,
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: knows the things he's working with, knows how to make everything here fit.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he makes this work all at once.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why this is a miracle.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think of the ones we've done.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm interested to reread The Devils, which I haven't read in 25 years, which I loved.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I think at the moment, rereading it, this is the absolute rubber soul.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is the best that he's done.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is a master in full command of every single thing he wants to talk about.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Thematically, character-wise, the focuses, it's really something else.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: just the amount of themes that are just snuck in there into a murder mystery,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: of all things.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: A great one.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: A great murder mystery.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we're going to get into this entire discussion about God,
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: what is God,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: suffering,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: free will,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: the difference between free will and security, what people, it's quite a bit.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of people look at the book,
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: and I know,
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: and I know,
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: you look at a book like this,
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: and the letters are nice and small, and it discourages a lot of people.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: I completely get it, especially in an age where reading's not really completely encouraged.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: And not every 800 page book has payoffs.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: This one, Brothers Karamazov, it's absolutely worth the work that you have to put into the book.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: You do have to put work into the book, absolutely.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's not an easy read, but you will be rewarded for it.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're picking books for the community that we think are worth it
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: because we understand your time is valuable, but you want to do more.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you're bothering with our community, you want to do more.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that means we're going to give you stuff that will actually make your time spent worth it.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're offering you because we understand you're busy.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're busy.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: I love the Dead Realist Society and I'm thrilled it's doing so well.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And John, we will keep them coming.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: We'll do one more on Dostoevsky and then head off to America and
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: then we'll come back again to Europe and probably Dostoevsky.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, everyone, for listening.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Please do like, subscribe, restack, and share this podcast and all other podcasts.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's the algorithms, the algorithms, the algorithms.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: You as the listeners is what drives the algorithms.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: You all drive our success.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you all so much for listening.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're really looking forward to next week's Grand Inquisitor episode.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: But John, have a great rest of your week.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Listeners, you do the same, and we will see you soon.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Take care, John, and see the rest of you very, very soon.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.