The Gap Year: Brothers K — Save the date + other announcements
Hey everyone,
Hope you’re all still enjoying The Brothers Karamazov. I’m not gonna lie, of the texts we’ve read thus far, this one has been the most challenging for me to get through. Aside from the fact that it is an emotionally and spiritually dense work on its own, I’ve been distracted from it by preparing for the arrival of Baby Sap (i.e. reading parenting books), as well as some especially cognitively demanding workdays recently.
I’m as committed to this group as ever, and I started this project with the convinction that reading unfamiliar and difficult texts is worth doing. Nonetheless, I also know that we all have varying levels of bandwidth, so in the interest of being inclusive, I’m going to amend the minimum “required” reading as follows:
Read through Part II, Book V, Chapter V, “The Grand Inquisitor”.
OR
If you can’t do that, just read Chapters III, IV, and V of Part II/Book V, and listen to this great discussion from the Sacred and Profane Love podcast about Doestoevsky’s novel.
I highly recommend everyone give that podcast a listen, as it hits on some of the most salient themes of the book that we’ll be discussing.
Date
We’ll meet the evening of Friday, April 1, probably around 5 PM. Further details pending.
Additional things
As if you needed even more reading, I wanted to share this brief essay from Zena Hitz of St. John’s College about The Catherine Project, a new-ish program that has a similar mission to what we’re doing with The Gap Year but a more ambitious reach. I also encourage you to check out The Lyceum Movement when you get a chance. I think it’s cool to see that there are kindred spirits out there who are taking the initiative to pursue humanistic learning as an end in itself.
Thank you all for being a part of this. You are what make The Gap Year.
Robbie