The Brothers K

"The Brothers K" is a 1992 novel by David James Duncan an author, fisherman and environmental advocate from the Pacific Northwest. It builds on the sporting and spiritual themes of The River Why, Duncan's first book, but on a much larger canvas, focusing on an entire family instead of a single protagonist. Duncan uses multiple points of view to reinforce this effect by including material supposedly written by different family members in the broad narrative by Kincaid Chance. The novel tells the story of the Chance family as they pass through the turbulent waters of Papa Chance's minor league baseball career and the upheavals of the Vietnam War. It is also a deeply religious novel about love and family and spiritual growth and the difference between church and religion. The title is clearly a reference to Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and to the baseball abbreviation for a strike-out.

Critics of The Brothers K say that the novel has too many run-on sentences and is not "tight". Duncan has said that he enjoys "those long, nineteenth century sentences" and in "Dickensian [conceits] : why use only one example when you can use three?"

Reviews of The Brothers K were almost entirely positive, and it was acclaimed as an "ambitious novel that succeeds on almost every level." (USA Today)

Plot

Papa Chance is a former pitcher who has settled down with his wife in the mill town of Camas, Washington. They have six children. Everett Chance, the eldest, is a natural politician and powerful speaker whose passionate opposition to the Vietnam war creates much of the family tension in the book. He spends much time and effort pursuing a young Russian literature student named Natasha and finally wins her heart from draft exile in British Columbia by sending her an epic letter/novel. Everett does not have great natural athletic gifts but is a scrappy competitor. Second oldest, Peter Chance, is the intellectual brother who will study at Harvard and then in India. Though a natural athlete, Peter spends most of the book having renounced gifts of the body in his dogged pursuit of spiritual growth. His adventures with the con artist Greyson on an Indian train lead him to enlightenment and he returns to the family in their hour of need. Kincaid Chance, the youngest brother, narrates the book yet is the member of the family we finally learn the least about. He has little or no athletic ability and serves as a mirror to reflect for us the colorful personalities that surround him. Irwin Chance, the third son, is a strapping athletic prodigy and beautiful soul. He is naturally enlightened, much in the vein of Alyosha Karamazov, and deeply religious. Yet, after conflicts with the Seventh-day Adventists in Camas, Irwin's conscientious objector status is denied and he is sent to Vietnam. After witnessing an incident where his commanding officer mistreats a Vietnamese prisoner, Irwin has a mental breakdown and is committed to an Army mental institution in California. The family, suffering from the great divisions of the 1960s and Vietnam, pulls together to travel to California and bring Irwin home. The youngest children are twins, Beatrice and Winifred (Bet and Freddy). Much like Kincaid, they reflect their brothers and yet make important contributions to the family and the novel.

Reviews and Articles

David S. Cunningham, Chapter 5 of "Reading is Believing: The Christian Faith Through Literature and Film" (Brazos Press, 2002)