“My son has a long way to go until he’s reading The Brothers Karamazov, but hopefully not so long that he forgets about Stinking Lizaveta before he gets there. I hope I’ll be near at hand, or only a phone call away, when he discovers that the funny name we used to whisper to each other is actually a very sad character in a great novel, and that the line between life and art is arbitrary, if it exists at all.” Kevin Hartnett, on reading The Brothers Karamozov and using literature to make his toddler laugh.
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“My son has a long way to go until he’s reading The Brothers Karamazov, but hopefully not so long that he forgets about Stinking Lizaveta before he gets there. I hope I’ll be near at hand, or only a phone call away, when he discovers that the funny name we used to whisper to each other is actually a very sad character in a great novel, and that the line between life and art is arbitrary, if it exists at all.”

Kevin Hartnett, on reading The Brothers Karamozov and using literature to make his toddler laugh.

Source: themillions.com

The modern element in “Notes from Underground” is Dostoevsky’s exultation in human perversity. You can read this book as a meta-fiction about creating a voice, or as a case study, but you can’t escape reading it also as an accusation of human insufficiency rendered without the slightest trace of self-righteousness. If you begin by grieving for its hero, he upsets you with so much truth of our common nature that you wind up grieving for yourself—for your own insufficiency. “Notes” is still a modern book; it still can kick.
David Denby, “Can Dostoevsky Still Kick You in the Gut?“ For more contemporary readings of Dostoevsky, see Rob Goodman’s recent article on forensics, The Brothers Karamazov and the death of the courtroom drama.
What if the characters could answer with certainty? What if it were simply a matter of solving the case by dusting for the right fingerprints? Could Dmitri’s trial, transplanted into our century, possibly bear the weight that Dostoevsky wants it to bear?

Actually, we don’t have to speculate. Online, I discovered a new classroom activity [pdf] for high school students: “Integrating Forensics, Civics, and World Literature: The Brothers Karamazov.” The exercise, sponsored by the University of North Carolina, asks students to retry Dmitri in a modern courtroom. Here are some of the guidelines…
CSI: Karamazov (The Ghettoization of Courtroom Drama) by Rob Goodman
“What people really crave, the Grand Inquisitor says, is someone to rule them. This is what the Catholic Church provides he says — an absolute authority, a sanctuary from freedom — and he tells Christ to leave town immediately, lest he disrupt the essential edifice the pontiffs have built the last 1500 years. My youngest son Wally is seven-months-old and still occasionally needs to be walked back to sleep at night. The night I read “The Grand Inquisitor” he woke up a little after 2am. As I paced him back and forth in his downstairs room, I thought about the pages I’d read earlier that evening. It occurred to me that the Grand Inquisitor’s interpretation of the Temptation of Christ effectively describes the power I hold over my two sons.” — Where Parents Get Their Power: Evidence from The Brothers Karamazov by Kevin Hartnett [Image]
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“What people really crave, the Grand Inquisitor says, is someone to rule them. This is what the Catholic Church provides he says — an absolute authority, a sanctuary from freedom — and he tells Christ to leave town immediately, lest he disrupt the essential edifice the pontiffs have built the last 1500 years.

My youngest son Wally is seven-months-old and still occasionally needs to be walked back to sleep at night. The night I read “The Grand Inquisitor” he woke up a little after 2am. As I paced him back and forth in his downstairs room, I thought about the pages I’d read earlier that evening. It occurred to me that the Grand Inquisitor’s interpretation of the Temptation of Christ effectively describes the power I hold over my two sons.”

— Where Parents Get Their Power: Evidence from The Brothers Karamazov by Kevin Hartnett

[Image]

Source: themillions.com