The Brothers K

I’d been told for years I needed to read this book, and subsequently it had sat on my shelf for a long time, waiting for me to get around to it. Big books like this, though, you have to be ready to come to them. You’re not going to make it if you’re in a sprinting mood. You’ve got to be ready for the marathon, and I for one pick my marathons rather selectively.

But boy am I glad I finally read this one.

Brothers K steals its title from the great Russian novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. There’s always a bit of hesitancy for me when I come across a work that references a great classic, especially so blatantly. A finer writer usually masks the influence of such work, and the assumed boldness of titling your work after a classic usually turns out not to be so much boldness as rash foolishness and too much ego.

Duncan quotes from Karamazov throughout his novel, and the parallels are easily grasped by anyone who’s read both (both novels revolve around the lives of four brothers). However, while most writers only wish their own work will stand the test of time, David James Duncan wrote a modern classic that stands amongst the best of our literature.

Midway through the novel, Duncan succinctly defines the theme of his novel and illustrates where he parts ways with Dostoevsky by giving us a definition of his title.

Literally, a definition:

“K (ka) verb, K’ed, K’ing 1. baseball: to strike out. 2. to fail, to flunk, to fuck up, to fizzle, or 3. to fall short, fall apart, fall flat, fall by the wayside, or on deaf ears, or hard times, or into disrepute or disrepair, or 4. to come unglued, come to grief, come to blows, come to nothing, or 5. go to the dogs, go through the roof, go home in a casket, go to hell in a hand basket, or 6. to blow your cover, blow your chances, blow your cool, blow your stack, shoot your wad, bitch the deal, buy the farm, bit the dust, or 7. to recollect an oddball notion you first heard as a crimless and un-K’ed child but found so nonsensically paradoxical that you had to ignore it or defy it or betray it for decades before you could begin to believe that it might possibly be true, which is that 8. to lose your money, your virginity, your teeth, health or hair, 9. to lose your home, your innocence, your balance, your friends, 10. to loose your happiness, your hopes, your leisure, your looks, and, yea, even your memories, your vision, your mind, your way,

11. in short (and as Jesus K. Rist once so uncompromisingly put it) to lose your very self,

12. for the sake of another, is

13. sweet irony, the only way you’re ever going to save it.”

This is one mighty book. The story of the Chance family and the raising of Everett, Peter, Kincaid, Irwin, Beatrice and Winifred during the decade of the sixties, Duncan brings into focus the triumphs and tragedies of that era. He explores deeply two deeply American institutions, Baseball and Religion, and yet both of these decay into their singular source, Belief. But in the end, his real issue is family, and how belief holds a family together…not belief in God, or belief in sports, or belief in any particular idea, but belief, faith and loyalty to each other. How love for each other connects us and binds us in the face of everything else.

K is one of the funniest novels I’ve read in years. Duncan’s humor is of epic scale, turning something as simple as eating around the dinner table into a topic of hilarity. Comic writers of this quality are in short supply, storytellers who understand that the deep wellspring of humor is not found in cheap wit, but in the irony that weaves through our lives. Duncan hits this chord over and over, nearly toppling you ought of your chair.

Every time I sat down to read this book, I relished the experience, because I knew I’d once again be stepping into that greatest of conversations, during which I’d find myself laughing, contemplating, arguing, stopped short with grief, broken down and then finally rebuilt again…reading K reminds us of what fiction has the ability to do, and the only sadness that comes away with us is the disappointment that there are so few writers who can accomplish this feat.

I’ve said before I don’t often recommend books to the masses. Everyone’s taste is different, but some books ought to be read by everybody. Some books are that good.

If I made a list, K would make the top twenty or so. It’s as good as anything I’ve read.

Hands down.