Aren't those Karamazovs a HOOT!

I'm still slowly pushing my way through The Brothers Karamazov -- I'm around page 230 of my 900-page translation, which means that I'm roughly one quarter of the way through. (For those who are really wondering, Alyosha just tried to befriend some poor kid who reciprocated by biting his finger and chucking rocks at him.)

I don't have any real insight at this point, but as of this moment, The Daughter is watching some kind of American-ized anime program on FOX, and a male character just said something like this:

I'm a lit student, majoring in Russian novels. Those are really long books about poor, sad people in tattered overcoats living hungry through very cold and long winters in old, ramshackle houses. It makes me a really cheery guy to be with!

Other than leaving out the insular and judgmental clerics in their icy monasteries, he pretty much nailed it!