The Art of the Train Wreck Metaphor

[Spoiler Alert: This post covers Book Three and the Sept 8 post will cover Book Four. So "compulsively readable" is this novel (Donald Fanger), that we can't help but overrun our deadlines! -- Howl]

"It is hard enough to keep your billion character-oviches separate in our minds. How dare you, Mr. Dostoevsky, ramble for pages," wrote my colleague, Howl. But what Howl doesn't understand is that Mister Dostoevsky's greatest achievement was realizing that losing control was actually a pretty effective Literary Device. "What? What!" you may say, "Stop rambling, chum!" But follow me.

On page: 24, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov mutters my favorite lines from The Brothers Karamazov Thus Far screaming at his son the monk: "I think, that the devils will forget to drag me down to their place with their hooks when I die. And then I think: hooks? Where do they get them? What are they made of? Iron? Where do they forge them? Have they got some kind of factory down there?"

I could go on, quoting his gorgeous, rambling speech about the length and the depths of Hell, figuring out the theological problems of the Drunken Atheist. But instead of trying to figure out the traditional Sunday-School cutesy theological problem: "How many angels can fit on the head of pin?" No, good old Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, this mixed-up father figure who fathered so many mixed-up sons, he doesn't screw around with sappy metaphorical problems, he's trying to figure out a whole different kind of metaphysical riddle: How many demons it will take to peel off my skin in Hell?

That's my favorite part about The Brothers Karamazov Thus Far—that we have characters so blasphemous, on the one hand, and so poetic, on the other hand, that even the Damned Father Figure is wrestling with religious conundrums so thick that there is no Literary Device to describe what the Author has achieved. So I am inventing a Literary Device to describe it. When the crazy Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov rambles poetically about the ceilings and the hooks of Hell, Mister Fydor Dostoevsky is utilizing the Literary Device: The Train Wreck Metaphor.

Ah yes, The Train Wreck Metaphor. It's as if traditional religious and philosophical and literary rhetoric had a drunken orgy with surrealism; it's a metaphor that jumps the tracks and goes flying through the air spitting steam and gears, spiraling out of the writer's control; it's a mad mad metaphor and there's nothing you can do about it. If I take any lesson away from The Brothers Karamazov Thus Far, it is that Dostoevsky loved Train Wreck Metaphors, when the sentence careened off into some new place. If you pay attention to these strange passages, it seems as if Dostoevsky had fathered an Illegitimate Book within this Classic Novel, a book that he wouldn't even acknowledge, just like the birth of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov's possibly illegitimate son in the garden on page 99—nobody knew how the boy's mother ended up in Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov's garden, but there she was, giving birth to a son who will later challenge everything the father took for granted about his bourgeoisie lifestyle.

And so then, that particular Train Wreck Metaphor grows up and becomes Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov, the servant in his drunken father's house who ends up delivering some of the most devastating atheist theology of The Whole Book Thus far, this line, this out of control Train Wreck Metaphor that literally makes his father proud on page 130: "in the Scriptures it is said that if you have faith even as little as the smallest seed and then say unto this mountain that it should go down into the sea, it would go, without the slightest delay, at your first order....if I'm an unbeliever, and you are such a believer that you're even constantly scolding me, then you, sir, try telling this mountain to go down, not into the sea (because it's far from here to the sea, sir) but even just into our stinking stream, the one beyond our garden, and you'll see for yourself right then that nothing will go down, sir"

The kid talks just like his alleged father. So much so, that Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov calls him "Balaam's ass." Balaam's Ass—the faithful donkey that tried to warn the misguided prophet Balaam about the giant angel blocking the road. Balaam couldn't see the angel that was about to kill him, but Balaam's Ass could—what a fabulous Train Wreck Metaphor for a hateful man to call his possible son. Let us jumble our metaphors henceforth, following the terrible example of a wicked father. Henceforth, celebrate the Train Wreck Metaphor. Write, write, write like you are knocking down a mountain or being speared by devils in Hell; write as if there is an angel in the road, prepared to smote you, an angel that nobody else can see except for you.

Henceforth, for all these aforementioned reasons, call me Balaam's Ass. Utilizing the authority of my new office, I recommend the next poster posts something before September 8...