Part II, Chapters 30-35: Germany is the Best Medicine

After a hiatus almost entirely dedicated to college move-in, I returned to Anna Karenina in a mood as stormy as a North Carolina summer night. Half of this could be attributed to the big toe that was aching long after I dropped my book-loaded ottoman on it. The rest came from not wanting to deal with the whole Vronsky/Anna/Alexei situation right then. I'm a believer in characters suffering - as many writers have pointed out, it's the only way to make readers fall in love with them - but all the cheating and dying and unplanned pregnancy was getting me down. And why would anyone want to kick off one of the best years of their life (the light blue brochures I received in the mail were very firm on this point) feeling like they got their heart rammed through a shredder?

Freshman year was bad enough.

But when I turned to Chapter 30, salvation arrived in the unlikely form of Kitty Shcherbatsky, whose exploits in a German "watering hole" - which here refers to a health spa, and not a socializing area for elephants, so get that scene from The Lion King out of your head - are so delightfully silly that they read almost like a separate book. Kitty makes friends, Kitty finds religion, Kitty attracts the attention of a married man...all of which dissolves by the end of Part II. It's like Eat, Pray, Love meets The Baby-sitters Club Super Special: Guten Tag, Germany! Except that Kitty's fascination with strangers comes across as more creepy than cute.

...Kitty, as often happened, felt an inexplicable attraction to Mademoiselle Varenka...The more attentively Kitty watched her unknown friend, the more convinced she was that this girl was the perfect creature she fancied her, and the more eagerly she wanted to make her acquaintance.

For the record, Varenka is a pale and ageless-looking girl who likes to hang around dying people. If the word "vampire" immediately jumped into your head, you get brownie points for being right on my wavelength. Unfortunately, as Bram Stoker was still an unpaid theater critic in the 1870s, any vampiric subtext in Anna Karenina is anachronous and not intentional on Tolstoy's part.

But there's always this steampunk rewrite to tide us over.

Varenka would be much more interesting if she were a soulless and tormented creature of the night. She's a cloyingly sweet character, the kind you secretly wish would suffer a horrible demise in the style of Mark Twain's "Good Little Boy." Kitty can't get over how "wonderfully sweet" it is that Varenka devotes her life to taking care of her invalid adopted mother and other sickly aristocrats. Moreover, they share the burden of rejection by a suitor, a fact that astounds Kitty:

"Why, if I were a man, I could never care for anyone else after knowing you."

Whatever the reader wants to make of that quote  (I've already addressed the issue of possible lesbian undertones in the novel), Varenka captivates Kitty in a way that Anna might have earlier, had the Vronsky conflict not ensued to disrupt it. Our Princess Spitfire - remember her awesome denouncement of the misogynistic social system? - morphs into a Good Little Girl in the space of a chapter. And while there's nothing wrong with martyrly ideals or caring for the sick, it's more a product of her Varenka-worship than a genuine sense of morality.

Sort of like how I listen to terrible wrock music out of pure Potter devotion.

Kitty's attempt to become a different person worked out about as well as Michael Jackson's. The impoverished artist she nurses through illness develops an adulterous longing for his "sister of mercy"; Varenka's suffering mother is revealed to be a selfish snoot. Then Kitty goes all "Born This Way" on Varenka in a moment of pure Emersonian awesomeness.

"Yes, yes, I know you're all perfection; but what am I to do if I'm bad? This would have never been if I weren't bad. So let me be what I am, but not to be a sham...I can't act except from the heart..."

By the time Kitty returns to Russia, she's blossomed into the hypocrisy-hating, take-me-as-I-am-or-let-me-go grrl who we all know was lurking under those ruffled petticoats all along. She's gotten over her relationship drama - aside from a brief pang upon running into Levin's obnoxious brother at one point - and her mysterious illness (if they are, indeed, distinct). She's also developed a taste for plum soup, which is an Official Lit Dish that I will not be making anytime soon. Even my adoration of literary-inspired food preparation doesn't justify kicking all my hallmates out of the dorm kitchen to boil a giant pot of plums.

Ramen experimentation is a different story.

Stay tuned for Part III! It looks like there's a lot of Loverboy Levin, so my hopes are high.

Part II, Chapters 26-29: Dysfunction Junction

Poor Alexei Alexandrovich. In the modern day's rising nerdocracy, he could be a sitcom star - the socially awkward workaholic with a sarcastic sense of humor and knockout spouse. Unfortunately for him, he's stuck in a novel where such quirks only solidify his status as the third wheel to Anna and Vronsky's glamorous and impassioned romance.

A term that is henceforth known as "Harry at the Olympics."

 More than anything else, Alexei is a plot device to make his own wife's love affair more exciting, which is why I can imagine him reciting this part of T. S. Eliot's  "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

And even though he fights this role, choosing to turn his wife's obvious infidelity the same blind eye that Shark Week fans are currently using on anything without gill slits, it eats him up to the point when a friend secretly sends a doctor to check on him. I realize this is a kindly gesture, but who in Tsarist Russia decided that people only qualify for medical treatment if they're having Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus kinds of issues? I mean, all six of Dolly's children had to come down with scarlet fever before she could score some (untrained) assistance from her own family. Kitty got two doctors and a European vacation just for her post-ball angst.

We're a bit more harsh these days.

 Anyway, the doctor tells Alexei that he has a "considerably enlarged" liver and needs exercise, then promptly blabs about the checkup in a flagrant breach of patient confidentiality only made more insulting by the fact that the confidant is Alexei's own head clerk. It's clear from their conversation that they both know what his real problem is, even if he won't admit it to himself. In fact, Anna's little romance appears to be the worst-kept secret in the northern hemisphere since the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot love triangle.

He did not want to see, and did not see, that many people in society cast dubious glances on his wife...

The situation is so bad that his own son can tell that something is up, and freaks out whenever Alexei drops by to visit Anna before the horse race. (They're vacationing separately for the summer, which is how we know that Vronsky is Anna's baby daddy-to-be.) For all that both his parents talk constantly about how his well-being is their top priority, Seriozha is on the path to becoming a future Don Draper or Rorschach or [insert messed-up character with horrifying childhood here].

Before Jon and Kate, there was Alexei and Anna.

Reading this part of Anna Karenina is like throwing random stuff in the microwave and setting it on "high" - you just know that there's going to be an explosion eventually. I was expecting that Alexei would eventually crack and outright accuse Anna of adultery, or catch Anna and Vronsky in a compromising position à la Lancelot and Guinevere in the Camelot stories. I was completely wrong. Anna tells him on the way home from the race, and if there's a way to politely tell your husband that you're seeing someone else, she does everything but that:

"I am listening to you, but I am thinking of him. I love him, I am his mistress; I can't bear you; I'm afraid of you, and I hate you...You can do what you like to me."

Whoa there, girlfriend. I'm all for the frank sharing of opinions, but I think Alexei deserves a little bit of slack...especially considering that they've been married eight years and she's never before dropped the slightest hint about not being happy. As it is, he's totally taken aback and responds the only way he knows how: unemotionally.

"Very well! But I expect a strict observance of the outward forms of propriety till such time as I may take measures to secure my honor, and communicate them to you."

Alexei Alexandrovich: making this guy look like Oprah since 1837.

 In other words: "Whatevs, just keep it on the DL. TTYL." Too bad couple therapy is a modern concept, because my Spidey sense is telling me that these two aren't done with their miscommunication problems. Anna's emotionalism versus Alexei's stoicism, with sexual infidelity thrown in? There may be no survivors. And on that cheerful note, today's Official Lit Dish is a mix for instant Russian tea. If tea really does have the de-stressing properties that its fans have been touting for centuries, then it's not a stretch to say to that every member of the Karenin clan could do with a cuppa.

Part II, Chapters 22-25: Life and Death Matters

A friend recently pointed out to me that Anna Karenina is the antithesis of the kind of book that people usually read in the summer. And while he's right - anyone who starts a classic Russian novel with hopes for a  Hunger Games is liable to be disappointed - I've found a silver lining to the long-winded nature descriptions and socioeconomic commentary. Namely, that when something the least bit shocking or exciting happens in Anna Karenina, it's ten times as interesting as it would be ordinarily. Kind of like C-3PO and R2-D2 showing up in Sesame Street versus, you know, Star Wars.

Still a better love story than Attack of the Clones.

So when Anna looks Vronsky in the eye and says, "I am pregnant," I flipped out and started screaming, "What? What?" at the book.  Considering that it took them over a hundred pages to start an affair, I'd assumed they'd linger in torment for at least two hundred more before there was any new development. Instead, I was compensated for a tree's worth of stuffy aristocratic dialogue with lines straight out of a daytime soap opera:

"Neither you nor I have looked on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our fate is sealed.  It is absolutely necessary to put an end to the deception in which we are living...Leave your husband and make our life one."

Pretty intense, Tolstoy. Too bad it doesn't go anywhere. Anna is too worried about losing her son to go along with the scheme, and Vronsky quickly shrugs off the news of his impending fatherhood to concentrate on what's really important: winning his horse race. Like the Missouri Tigers' football coach, he knows how preoccupation with the body of a woman can sap even the greatest sportsman's skills.

Suddenly, Andy Roddick's slump makes sense.

So after skedaddling out of the Karenin family's garden, Vronsky heads over to the other lady in his life: the "lean and beautiful" Frou-Frou. They're competing in a steeplechase, which seems to be an obstacle course for horses. Not my thing, but a slight improvement on the Kentucky Derby, where they need big hats, chocolate pie, and 120,000 mint juleps to make everyone forget that it's just a bunch of people riding in circles.

Vronsky has a lot riding on this race (pun most certainly intended). This is his chance to show off in front of Anna and everyone else in Peterburg's upper class, prove that he's not the tubby degenerate his fellow officers take him for, and beat his archnemesis Makhotin. It's hard not to want to root for him. Heck, I think Vronsky's a slimeball and even I wanted him to win, if only to see Frou-Frou emerge victorious over her formidably named counterparts.

It's the same reason I can't pull against UCSC. Go, Banana Slugs!

But this book was written by Leo Tolstoy, and he wasn't in the business of producing heartwarming stories that make you want to hand out free Krispy Kremes to strangers. Hey, do you remember how the dogs in Stone Fox and Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller all died? Do you remember the scene in The Neverending Story when Atreyu's horse sinks to his death in the Swamps of Sadness? Did you dare to hope that the death of beloved pets was a concept unique to children's literature, and that it was finally safe to stop using Kleenex as a bookmark? That smashing sound you hear is your soul being mercilessly crushed:

...Frou-Frou lay gasping before him, bending her head back and gazing at him with exquisite eye. Still unable to realize what had happened, Vronsky tugged at his mare's reigns. Again she struggled all over like a fish, and, her shoulders making the wings of the saddle crackle, she rose on her front legs; but unable to lift her back, she quivered all over and again fell on her side.

I recommend the full scene to those who Nicholas Sparks fans and anyone else who thinks "having a jolly old time" equals "curling up in the fetal position and sobbing until I'm dehydrated." Vronsky's devastation upon finding out that he'd inadvertently broken Frou-Frou's back is so sincere that it made me want to hug the guy, piece of scum or not. It's in honor of his dearly departed horse that today's Official Lit Dish is Carrot Oatmeal cookies, since they combine two favorite equestrian foods. Here's hoping that this death isn't an omen for the future of Anna's pregnancy...

Part II, Chapters 16-21: A Horse Named Frou-Frou

Everybody has one: that friend who wildly overestimates his or her knowledge about a subject to which you've devoted your life, your love, and your Facebook cover picture. The outcome can range from amusing to downright infuriating, depending on how much the right pronunciation of your childhood heroes' names matters to you.

"I wish J. K. Rall-ling had made Hermy-one end up with...why are you twitching like that?"

Levin's clueless friend is Stepan, and the result is one of the more comical scenes about land dealership I've encountered in literature. Stepan's city boy notions about forest prices are like calling Gabby Douglas "un-American"; not just off the mark, but completely and appallingly wrong. Levin knows better, of course, but Stepan is too much of a sophisticate to take advice from someone who oversees countryside property for a living. This ticks off Levin considerably (since Tolstoy has already established him as some kind of agricultural savant) and sends him into an unironic defense of the stratified class system that would warm the hearts of all 11 people who want the feudal system instated in America.

"[L]iving in good style - that's the proper thing for noblemen; it's only the nobles who know how to do it...The gentleman does nothing, while the peasant works and supplants the idle man. That's how it should be."

At least his anti-revolutionary rant is a break from the 24/7 all-Kitty-all-the-time broadcast running through his brain. Now that he's learned from Stepan that she's still on the market, Levin is lovin' once again. Too bad his snotty attitude about Vronsky ought to be a complete turnoff for any self-respecting woman:

"You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don't. A man whose father crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother - God knows whom she wasn't mixed up with...No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or four honorable generations of their family..."

Whoa there, Lev. First, you're getting mighty close to caste system mentality, and second, you're the one with the brother who beat up a village elder. Take a chill pill and learn a lesson from Poli Sci Ryan Gosling.

That's better.

Meanwhile, Vronsky is busy managing the taxing duties of horse races, an affair with Anna, and his job, in that order. I'm still not clear on what being a regiment leader actually means. It's this supposedly prestigious position that requires him to occasionally eat steak with a bunch of permanently hungover manboys. If you substitute Ramen for steak, that sounds suspiciously like the daily routine of a million plain old college students, but it's afforded Vronsky a great deal of respect...although it still doesn't stop his fellow officers from making fun of how fat and bald he's getting.

In case this wasn't a big enough hint at Vronsky's waning masculinity, Tolstoy had to go and have him name his prized racehorse Frou-Frou. And the man wonders why his jockey doesn't treat him with his due respect.

To everyone who realized this was the namesake for that horse in The Aristocats: I tip my hat to you.

With this additional poor reflection on Vronsky's decision-making, I'm more skeptical than ever about his resolution at the end of Chapter 21 to "abandon everything" and run off with Anna. I mean, we're talking about the guy who made sex with Anna his goal for an entire year, only to worry about having too much once he got it:

[H]e needed occupation and distraction quite apart from his love, so as to recruit and rest himself from the violent emotions that agitated him.

Consistency issues aside, I do owe Vronsky for inspiring today's Official Lit Dish. In honor of his beefy breakfast, here's a recipe for portobello mushroom steaks. They're a healthy and meatless alternative that Tolstoy - a committed vegetarian - would have surely appreciated.

Part II, Chapters 10-15: Manning Up

One thing about Anna Karenina that took me by surprise is how chick-litty it can be. I've barely scratched the surface, and I've already encountered ballroom dancing, lovestruck princesses, weepy tête-à-têtes,  detailed descriptions of gowns, and sentences like this:

Yet, while she looked like a butterfly clinging to a blade of grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings for fresh flight, her heart ached with a horrible despair.

I am speaking as someone who has the entire Sound of Music soundtrack memorized when I say that just typing that sentence made my mouth taste like caramel syrup. There's nothing wrong with a tea party or five, but I've also been wondering when I was going to be able to break out my album of "Misc. Manly Stuff" images for the blog.

Like Olympic athletes! They're the epitome of manly...oh, wait.

My wait is over. Today I plunged into a testosterone-scented pool of hunting expeditions, sex with beautiful women, sowing fields, and -

Hold on. Sex? Yes, that's right, Anna finally gives in and gets it on with Vronsky, after "almost a year" of wheedling. I had to read the part that says this about five times to make sure that it actually happened, because Tolstoy is extremely subtle in his language on this subject. (Or maybe reading Lady Chatterly's Lover in the seventh grade permanently desensitized me to the treatment of coital relations in literature.) He dwells a lot longer on the immediate aftermath, which involves Anna sobbing in all-consuming shame and Vronsky thinking about her in weirdly morbid metaphors.

But in spite of all the murderer's horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what the murderer has gained by his murder.

The full description is so unsettling that I can't bring myself to insert the clever joke about la petite mort that would otherwise be mandatory. Let's just say that neither had the kind of reaction desirable to their situation, and that Anna should have received sufficient red flags by now that this affair is probably not going to end happily.

Most of these chapters aren't about Vronsky and Anna, though. They're about Levin. More specifically, Levin putting aside his disappointment over the failure of Operation Snag Kitty and developing mad skills in the field of agricultural theory. Sometime I'm going to have to borrow one of those Ag students that N.C. State is crawling with and get a full explanation for his elaborate "human character as a factor in farming equations" idea. Until then, I'll just assume it's brilliant, since he frequently complains that no one else on the farm knows what the heck they're doing. Oh, and before I forget, is Levin an example of manliness, or what? Working like a freakin' Horatio Alger character to dominate in his career field, now that's manly.

Let's hear it for masculine domination of the corporate ladder! What? Well, that's awkward...

Then, what d'you know, Stepan drops by for a hunting-slash-business trip in the country. He's his usual self: hearty appetite, cheery temperament, comparisons of women to bakery items. It's interesting that Levin values him so much as a friend, even when he is completely taken aback by his Stepan's elaboration on the delights of marital infidelity. I have to admit that I'm not sure to what to think about this now that Anna is guilty of the same transgression. Is Stepan less guilty because he genuinely doesn't believe it's wrong, while Anna feels strongly that it is and gives into her temptation anyway? Is Anna more innocent because she feels regretful afterward? Or is adultery just adultery?

Maybe Stepan and Levin get along because they both like hunting. And hey, fighting through a forest to shoot animals and watch them bleed their tiny lives out onto the grass has to be the epitome of manhood.

I give up.

Thanks to today's Official Lit Dish, you can enjoy Russian-style marinated mushrooms just like the kind that Stepan and Levin enjoyed. In pictures, they look exactly like the kind in Rams Head Dining Hall at UNC, which are my third-favorite salad bar item after the hummus and Turkish figs.

Part II, Chapters 4-9: Scandal Manics

Isn't it fascinating to watch the life of a beautiful, successful person completely implode?

Of course not. That's a horrible thing to enjoy. We can all agree with that, and then go right back to

• watching one of the many, many YouTube videos titled "Olympic fails"
• reading the latest novel by Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks
• scrolling through multiple Facebook photo albums to watch the most gorgeous individual in your high school class morph into a troll with a botched nose job, and/or
• having a conversation with a friend that consists of nothing but post-breakdown Charlie Sheen quotes and hyena-like laughter until everyone else at Starbucks is shooting you dirty looks over their massive Tazo cups.

So we switched to reading the Taco Bell Twitter account out loud instead.

It's not that humans are mean; we're just easily bored. So as tempting as it is to blame the members of Anna's social circle for being a little too interested in her blossoming relationship with Vronsky, I have to remind myself that the average American is no better. Still...it's easy to see why Anna is frustrated with the way everyone is wink-wink-nudge-nudging each other over something that a) is technically still a friendship and b) she is trying to keep discreet.

Notice that I said discreet and not nonexistent. Because, man, does she want some of that Vronsky love. She's like Anne Hathaway's character in The Princess Diaries when she realizes she has a shot at the most popular boy at school. Anna ditches her old uncool friends - a bunch of "elderly, homely, virtuous, and pious women" - to party with the preps so that she can be near him. And like the guy in the movie, Vronsky doesn't care so long as his reputation stays intact.

He was very well aware that in the eyes of [fashionable] people...the role of a man pursuing a married woman, and regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into adultery - that role has something beautiful and majestic about it and can never be ridiculous...

Shrek 2 begs to differ.

Vronsky's no secret love child of Stephen Hawking and Marilyn vos Savant, but he's spot on about this. At his cousin Betsy's party, the only one not amused by the obvious chemistry between him and Anna is the other Alexei. That's not hard to understand, right? He's jealous that this dishy uniform-wearing bachelor is stuck on his hot wife like Gorilla Glue, right? Wrong. Alexei is worried about "the public opinion" and having to "use his time and mental powers" to warn her about it, not whether his wife actually loves him. Or so he tells himself.

To put himself in thought and feeling in another person's place was a spiritual action foreign to Alexei Androvich. He looked on this spiritual action as a harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.

I guess that's why his lecture to Anna on wifely duties has the emotional resonance of a C-SPAN marathon. As the party guests discuss, aristocratic marriages in this era were based more on prudence than passion. It's hard to tell whether Alexei really loves Anna. On one hand, he says he does. On the other...well, he doesn't actually care about her thoughts or interests until they seem to threaten his societal reputation. (Tolstoy's wife could probably sympathize.) Either way, the speech is about as effective as those warning labels on cookie dough rolls were for me in high school.

That's adorable. Now give me back my spatula.

These days, I'm more likely to pig out on the vegan version of Russian tea cakes, which many of us know as Mexican wedding cookies. Although the recipe was likely introduced in Europe by the Moors in their eighth century invasion of Spain, it was the Russians who popularized it as a dish served alongside tea. It's easy to imagine Betsy's party guests nibbling on these as they giggle at Vronsky's doglike devotion and utter ominous comments like this:

"Yes, but women followed by a shadow usually come to a bad end," said Anna's friend.

Part II, Chapters 1-3: Hello, Kitty

And now we break from the steamy sexual tension of Anna and Vronsky to catch up with Kitty, who was last seen choking back tears as her Big Night spiraled into a living version of Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know." Like Levin, she does not easily recover from the pangs of unrequited love. Unlike Levin, her reaction to it is to come down with a mysterious illness that involves "failing strength" and doesn't respond to treatment. Everyone just assumes that Vronsky's rejection left her heartsick, a condition quite common to Unrequited Tragic Maidens in classic literature. It's kind of a wimpy reason to lie in bed all day, but it was more socially acceptable back then.

The modern equivalent is excessive use of Tumblr.

 Except they're only half right. Kitty's sick, all right - sick of the slimy underbelly of high society, to which Vronsky's betrayal opened her eyes.

"If mamma takes me to a ball - it seems to me she takes me only to marry me off as fast as possible, and get me off her hands...These suitors so called - I can't bear the sight of them. It seems to me as if they're always taking stock of me...everything appears to me, in the coarsest, most loathsome aspect."

She's Holden Caulfield, calling out the prep school phonies. She's Nick Caraway, shouting that the East Eggers are a rotten crowd. She's Cinderella, if Cinderella had decided that Prince Charming was totally superficial and divorced him to start her own housekeeping business. She is mad about being objectified and that is awesome.

Even if the chance that she'll pull a River Tam and vent her frustration over an oppressive system into crazy ninja moves is, admittedly, rather low.

The irony is that both of Kitty's parents are obsessing over the Vronsky situation when her sister - Dolly - is dealing with post-childbirth recovery, six kids with scarlet fever, and an AWOL husband who has already started up a new affair after promising it would never, ever happen again. Come to think of it, Dolly gets about as much crap in this part of the book as Levin did earlier. C'mon, Stepan, you can at least lend a hand with the Oblonsky Bunch when you aren't busy with your girlfriend...especially considering that children died from scarlet fever all the time in the 1800s. (One of them was Leo Tolstoy's seven-year-old son, Ivan.)

However, despite the debauchery and reality television-worthy antics in the lives of Tsarist Russian aristocrats, there's one perk that makes me think twice about throwing a Pity Kitty party. Namely, that the doctors recommend going abroad as the best treatment for her condition, and her mom and dad buy into it. Ha! I wish that every time I felt strangely weak, my parents would spring for a trip to Paris or Milan. I'd even take Disney World. Or how about just the Lands in Epcot?

Canadians in kilts playing Celtic rock? I feel better already.

One of the remedies tried on Kitty was iron, which was probably administered in the form of pill supplements invented during the nineteenth century. A much tastier source would have been this granola, made with ultra-healthy blackstrap molasses. It's also one of the Official Lit Dishes that I can easily make in my dorm's kitchen. If only European travel was as accessible as this treatment...

Why You Deserve Great Literature

I interrupt my abecedarian literary journey to bring you this important message.

Every single book in the world is about you.

There's a mistake that many people make about the books recognized as literary masterpieces, a mistake that English majors likely make more than anyone else. They think that reading a work of literature is about finding the meaning that the author put behind the words. You can probably reel off a list of examples from your high school reading list: the meaning of Heart of Darkness is that colonialism is the true evil of Africa, the meaning of All Quiet on the Western Front is that war is a hell that destroys innocent lives, the meaning of Jane Eyre is that the outcomes of a moral life transcend appearance and social class.

These are excellent conclusions. Having read all three, I can say with near certainty that Joseph Conrad, Erich Remarque, and Charlotte Brontë were trying to convey these messages in their writing. I don't mind the general understanding that these particular meanings apply to these particular books. What troubles me, what makes me afraid that you will stop reading great literature once it isn't for a grade, is the idea that people who find other meanings are not reading the books correctly.

There is no wrong way to read a book. If you read Animal Farm and thought it put forth a wonderful message about how pigs might revolt someday if we keep raising them for food, then you are not wrong. It's certainly not what George Orwell was thinking, or what he wanted readers to think. But it's what you think, and the significance of a book comes from its accumulation of insights by people like you. Too often, potential readers are discouraged from great literature because they have been told otherwise. They don't see themselves as worthy or capable of understanding a book that challenges scholars and professors.

"But what about the author's purpose?" you might ask. "Didn't the teachers tell us a thousand times that it was absolutely critical to our book reports, not to mention our ultimate survival on the planet, that we find the author's purpose?" Sure, but you can do that with the Internet in less than a minute and not even have to open the book. You can't Google your own insight, and it's every bit as worthy.

For example: L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a fantastical tale for children in which the lines of good and evil are clearly drawn. (Unless it was really an allegory about populism, but that's opening up a whole other can of worms.) Gregory Maguire saw the story of a badly misunderstood woman within Baum's book, and four best-selling novels and a hit musical later, Elphaba is more popular than Dorothy. Not many people can read the original now without a twinge of sympathy for the so-named Wicked Witch.

I hope that even after you've been handed your last diploma, you'll read literature that seems scary or intimidating or confusing. I hope you'll find yourself in it, just like you do in the lyrics of your favorite song, and realize that it contains the number of meanings it contains is infinite.

Thank you for your patience. The original purpose of this blog will resume tomorrow with Part II, Chapters 1-3 of Anna Karenina.

Chapters 28-34: Motherhood and Cinnamon Rolls

When I was in the eleventh grade, my English class read a number of famously controversial books (several appear on this list). But during discussion time, it wasn't The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Catcher in the Rye that brought us closer than the Cuban Missile Crisis to setting off World War III. That honor went to the less famous novella The Awakening. Why? Because half the class thought that the main character, a woman who behaves recklessly in response to a stifling marriage, was acting selfishly by betraying her duties as a mother. The other half was silk screening Betty Friedan's face on T-shirts.

Not really, but I wanted a segue to showing you this picture of her.

The point of this is that people get fired up over the issue of what parents - particularly mothers - owe to their children. Do they sacrifice their opportunity to make morally questionable choices once they have kids relying on them? Many would say yes, but the issue gets murkier when delving into specifics. I couldn't help thinking about this topic while I read about Anna's homecoming. A fair share of her inner turmoil appears to arise from wanting to live up to her son Seriozha's trust.

Anna experienced...a moral reassurance, when she met his ingenuous, trusting and loving glance, and heard his naive questions.

Anna's lust for Vronsky is much more interesting when you remember that, in addition to being the It Girl everyone loves, she's a mom. And while that role never kept Daisy Buchanan or Scarlett O'Hara from living la vida loco, Tolstoy makes it clear that Anna does not see her kid as a larger, less intelligent replacement for an accessory dog.

Still less cringeworthy than child leashes.

She also genuinely cares about Kitty, which is why she goes to pieces in front of Dolly before she leaves, blaming herself for the way Vronsky ditched his supposed-to-be sweetheart at the ball. Sheesh, these characters take self-hatred to a whole new level. It almost drives Anna to insanity on her train ride home in an interior monologue that reads like something from Alice in Wonderland.

"What's that on the arm of the chair - a fur cloak or some beast? And what am I myself: is it I, or some other woman?"

That's why when she steps off the train and sees Vronsky, I assumed it was a hallucination. But no, it really is Vronsky, who is apparently unaware that following her home is a stalkeresque move worthy of his very own Overly Attached Fictional Boyfriend meme.

Actually, I can think of a few more characters who qualify.

There's an awkward introduction to Anna's husband, who happens to have the same first name as Vronsky (Alexei). Apparently it's a common one in Russia, but it seems like it would've taken Tolstoy two seconds to make up a new one and keep the name thing less confusing than it is already.

Anyway, Alexei Alexandrovich makes Anna's instant attraction to Vronsky much more understandable. He's not unpleasant, but considering that his expressions of affection peak at "You wouldn't believe how I've grown used to you," it's no wonder she melts a little at Vronsky's passionate declarations of love. The woman's been married to a Vulcan for the past decade. Although Vronsky doesn't sound like he's terrific husband material either:

But there was another kind of people...to which [he] belonged: and here the chief thing was to be elegant, magnanimous, daring, gay, and to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

In fact, Vronsky and his hedonistic friends could be the predecessors of the Jersey Shore crew. (Before you argue that great literature should never be compared to MTV, check out this valid opinion that the guido gang and The Great Gatsby aren't that different.) It's certainly interesting to note that he isn't too put off by the fact that his love interest is married. I'm guessing that Anna's inner turmoil is only getting started, considering that she's being wracked with guilt when she and Vronsky haven't done anything more scandalous than talk. In contrast, doing more than talking is all he can think about, since "all his forces...were centered on one thing, and bent with fearful energy toward one blissful goal." Three guesses as to what that is.

It's not those giant letters floating in the background.

Three cheers for finishing Part One! Today's Official Lit Dish is inspired by the bread and cream that Anna's husband eats while rehashing his workday to the bored-out-of-her-skull Anna: cinnamon rolls with vegan cream cheese glaze. That's one hedonistic impulse worth the guilt. Go make some now and eat them in front of your computer as you wait for the Curiosity pictures to load on NASA's website. And enjoy yourself.

Chapters 21-27: Blueblood Blues

Illicit love! Crushed hopes! Gossiping cliques! Impractical poofy gowns!

No, I'm not talking about the backstage drama at a high school production of Oklahoma!. This is something with an even greater share of sweat, tears, and corsets: a ball. Fictional balls never go smoothly, but no one  told Kitty, who seems to thinks that dancing in a pink dress is the ideal way to win a higher social standing and the heart of a handsome man.

Because it worked for Carrie, right?

Of course, it's no surprise for any observant reader when Vronsky zones in on Anna instead. Not after what happened the evening before the ball, when he stopped by the Oblonsky house for exactly long enough to catch a glimpse of her. But for naive young Kitty, the sight of her would-be beau waltzing the night away with Anna is quite a shock. And why not? It's the end of her belief in society's assurance that, as an innocent and beautiful (and aristocratic) maiden, she deserves a "happily ever after" with the perfect husband. Fairy tales that supported this trope were all the rage in Russia at the time. Being upstaged by a much older, married woman blows all the messages they preach out of the water.

Meanwhile, our homeboy Levin is going through his own share of angst now that he's sure Kitty rejected him in favor of Vronsky:

Yes, there must be something disgusting, repulsive about me...What right had I to imagine she would care to join her life to mine? Who am I, and what am I? A nobody, not wanted by anyone, nor of use to anyone.

Even though Tolstoy piles on the self-loathing to the point when I thought he should have titled this book The Sorrows of Young Levin, I feel for the guy, especially when he makes a point to check on his deadbeat brother. Despite Nikolai Levin's history of assaulting young boys, old men, and everyone in between, our Levin is determined to find the good in him somewhere. Personally, I don't blame their other brother from disowning Nikolai, who goes on to scream at his mistress that he's going to beat her when she tries to take away his vodka. What a charmer.

I would question how he got a girlfriend in the first place, but Chris Brown's success at receiving female attention has disillusioned me.

Furthermore, Nikolai's lecture to Levin on the need for a communist revolution is so unconsciously hypocritical that it's hysterical. Here he is, complaining about the plight of workers and bashing his brother for having "aristocratic views," while doing...what, exactly? Oh yeah, that would be drinking himself into oblivion with the money his family sends him. He's the opposite of Stepan: his lifestyle and politics are totally out of sync. As a Mac user who doesn't like corporate acts of evil, I won't be too critical of him on this matter, but it sure isn't winning him brownie points from his actual hardworking brother.

Still, things are looking up for Levin once he finally gets back to his farm, where he resolves to stop expecting that he'll ever have a woman in his life other than his housekeeper and his favorite cow. Freud followers might say this is just as well, since it doesn't take a psychoanalyst to recognize Oedipal undertones in his notion of the perfect woman.

Levin scarcely remembered his mother. His conception of her was for him a sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be, in his imagination, a repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a woman that his mother had been.

Borderline madonna fixation aside, it's no wonder that he's crazy about Kitty - they're both idealists with romanticized notions of courtship and marriage. And, as of now, both of them have had their dreams soullessly crushed. I smell a theme in the works...

Other than to not count your dance offers before they hatch, as Kitty learned the hard way.

Speaking of smelling, this Official Lit Dish is for anyone who likes the aroma of simmering beets. Because Anna leaves the ball before supper is served, I can only guess as to what delicacies the guests enjoy. However, it's absolutely plausible that there's a soup course, and borscht was at that time a soup enjoyed by the Russian nobility and peasants alike. If you're not afraid of brightly colored vegetables, this would be an excellent (and nutritious) meal that matches the color of Kitty's face when she realizes that she has no partner for the mazurka.

More shenanigans coming tomorrow, when (I'll admit it, I peeked ahead) we see what's going on in Anna and Vronsky's heads after this turn of events. Can't wait to wrap up Part One of this eight-part behemoth!

Chapters 18-20: Everybody Loves Anna

Hey there, Other Anna! It's nice to meet you after 70 pages of exposition about your brother and his friends, during which you were mentioned a smidgen more frequently than the latest Kidz Bop CD on Pitchfork's Best New Albums page. From the moment you descended from that train carriage, I was almost as captivated as Vronsky by your gray eyes and dark hair and pale complexion and - hold on, we have all that and a name in common? Talk about discovering your literary doppelganger. Although I doubt that the impressions I inspire at public transportation centers could be described with the words "elegance and modest grace."

This is the only picture I could find of myself in a train station.

Okay, one-way conversation with a fictional character is now over. The reality is, while it's nice that Anna's appearance catalyzes all that exposition into a solid storyline, I find the number of characters who fangirl their hearts out over her to be alarming. Just like everybody hates Levin, everybody adores Anna. Especially other women. Vronsky's crusty old mother, who sat with her on the train, adores her.

"Good-bye, my love," answered the Countess. "Let me kiss your pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age, and I tell you simply that I've lost my heart to you."

If that strikes you as the least bit suggestive, then Kitty's reaction to her later on in the story ought to hit you like one of Wile E. Coyote's anvils.

[B]efore Kitty knew where she was she found herself not merely under Anna's sway, but in love with her, as young girls do fall in love with older and married women.

Whether or not Leo Tolstoy had homosexual attractions himself (his autobiographical work Childhood has some pretty strong implications that he did) that trickled into his portrayal of the female opinion of Anna, he makes it easy for us jaded modern readers to draw slashfic-spawning conclusions. After all, we live in a world where people speculate that a Disney princess is a lesbian because she likes archery and doesn't have a boyfriend. Ultimately, it's best left up to each reader as to whether Anna is the subject of romantic or platonic admiration among her gal pals.

Either way, she's no plain Jane.

After Anna gets off the train and endures some gawking by Vronsky (which spurs his mom to drop references to Anna's husband and son, with all the subtlety of Lady Gaga at an awards show), there's a brief interlude due to a gruesome murder. Yup, a man gets sliced in half after he wanders onto the train track. If this were a Dan Brown novel, the incident would launch a clandestine investigation...but since it's a literary masterpiece well known for being tragic, I'm going to hazard a guess that it's foreshadowing instead. I do know one thing, and that's that there's no way a stinker like Vronsky gave a pile of money to the dead man's widow out of Christian sympathy. This guy is trying to win over Anna through one of the oldest tricks ever.

The kaffeeklatsch that Anna and Dolly have later is disappointing if you held hopes that Stepan would have to suffer a little more for his wrongdoings (guilty as charged).  While Dolly gets her Sylvia Plath-meets-The Hours on for a few exciting moments ("What have I to strive and toil for? Why to have children? What's so awful is that all at once my heart's turned, and I have nothing but hatred for him...") her sister-in-law ultimately convinces her to forgive and forget, because those menfolk just can't help themselves, dontcha know.

I would've made her sit through my Girl Power Ballad playlist.

Chapter 20 concludes with the promise of a ball, where there will have to be at least one realization of passionate love, as ordained by the Laws of Balls in Literature. I have a hunch that, based on the sparks already flying between Anna and Vronsky, it will leave Kitty a lot less giddy than she is now. In the meantime, she'd better stay away from this post's Official Lit Recipe, no-bake espresso cookies in honor of Anna and Dolly's heart-to-heart over a coffee tray. She's definitely worked up enough over her first dance of the season without any extra caffeine pumping through her system.

 I'll part with the melancholy quip that Kitty's enthusiasm prompts from our heroine. I think many college students can relate to Anna's words as the scary thing known as Real Life looms before us:

This mist [of happiness], which covers everything in that blissful time when childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is a path growing narrower and narrower...

Chapters 12-17: Russian Aristocracy Problems

Is there ever a situation in a fictional work in which the man and woman clue into their mutual sexual tension without all sorts of horrible misunderstandings and angst? Of course not, because muddling through that is half the fun. Even seemingly drama-free couples, like James and Lily Potter or Zoe and Wash on Firefly, were revealed to have rocky starts.

I blame it on the mustache.

I only ask because Tolstoy makes it painfully obviously that Levin is a perfect match for Princess Kitty, who goes on to (first big spoiler alert of the blog) reject his proposal because she's distracted by Vronsky. Vronsky is the Wrong Guy First to Levin's Insecure Love Interest. He's a charming military man with certified mom approval and smoldering good looks. In case the reader is silly enough to actually consider him the better alternative to Constantin "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" Levin, it's immediately established that a) Vronsky is flirting with Kitty without any intention of marrying her and b) he doesn't see any problem with this. I know, neither do the drunk guys on Franklin Street who catcall to the sorority sisters on midnight Sweet Frog frozen yogurt runs, but things were different back then. There's even something kind of cool about a societal disdain for leading girls on, although it does throw a wrench into the casual dating.scene when people draw conclusions like this:

Vronsky openly flirted with Kitty at balls, danced with her, and came continually to the house; consequently there could be no doubt of his intentions.

Anyway, even though Vronsky is a committed bachelor whose ideas about how to confirm the "secret spiritual bond" he feels with Kitty do not involve the elaborately trimmed wedding gowns worn by Russian brides in that era, she is convinced to the contrary. This leads her to deliver Levin a rejection only slightly edged out by "You're joking, right?" on the Scale of Worst Possible Things You Can Say To Someone Who Just Asked To Spend His Life With You. Then he doesn't even get recovery time before he's roped into a hostile social setting with a countess who hates his guts and the big rival himself, Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky. Not to mention Kitty's mother, who thinks "Thank God, she's refused him" the moment she sees Levin's dejected face.

Cut to the next day at the Petersburg train station. I'd honestly forgotten all about Anna Karenina herself at this point, despite typing the title a billion times. But at last, she's poised to make an appearance as a guest to Stepan and Dolly's house, with Stepan clearly hoping that his sister can mend relations between him and his wife. Vronsky is also there to meet his mother. And in case Tolstoy didn't make it clear already that Vronsky is despicable, we get this gem:

He did not in his heart respect his mother, and, without acknowledging it to himself, he did not love her...

Dude doesn't love his own mother? Even Darth Vader and Adolf Hitler loved their mothers. Vronsky also isn't winning himself any favors from this reader when he tells Stepan that it's easier to stick to Claras (prostitutes) than carry on a genuine courtship because you risk your money instead of your dignity. If Stepan is the Jude Law of Anna Karenina, Vronsky is the Hugh Grant. He has the chance to get serious with the gorgeous Elizabeth Hurley Kitty, and he'd rather submerge himself in an unsavory and patriarchal system? For shame!

Sadly, no food items are mentioned in these chapters (I guess Stepan and Levin are still digesting those jellied oysters), so my Official Lit Dish is a bit of an extrapolation from the story. The way I see it, once Levin escaped back to his hotel room after his proposal went awry, he probably took refuge in comfort food like the baked Russian pastries called piroshki. They're carb-heavy, easy to eat, and often stuffed with sweets: what better way to soothe a broken heart? Other than taking a walking stick to Vronsky's pretty little souped-up two-wheel drive.

PETA says: Be sure to unharness any innocent horses before enacting your nineteenth-century revenge fantasies.

Chapters 6-11: Love and Lunch

50 pages in, there is still no Anna K. (The fictional one, obviously.) If I didn't know through common knowledge osmosis that this is a book about a woman who has an extramarital affair, I'd be suspicious of a Waiting for Godot deal where the person in the title never actually appears in the story. I'm okay with that for now, though, because ohmygosh Levin. Constantin Levin is not merely the overbearing symbol of the values of rural life that  the first few chapters seemed to promise. He's an awkward dude with an inferiority complex and humble food preferences. Think an older version of Michael Cera in Juno.

With cabbage soup and porridge instead of orange Tic-Tacs.

After a series of unsuccessful crushes on approximately every female in Dolly's family, Lovin' Levin has become smitten with her youngest sister Kitty in a way that would be more squicky (she's 18, he's 32) if he weren't so adorably unsophisticated and bashful. At one point, everything is perfectly aligned for him to ask for her hand in marriage - they're on an ice-skating semi-date, holding hands, with her dropping little one-liners like "You do everything with passion" - and he can't work up the nerve because he's sure that she's out of his league.

An ugly, good-natured man, as he considered himself, might, he supposed, be liked as a friend; but to be loved with such a love as that with which he loved Kitty, one would need to be handsome and, still more, a distinguished man.

 D'awww! It's comforting to know that dead Russian novelists understood the hell that is the friendzone. Poor Levin also has to put up with his famous writer brother Sergei, who in one conversation shoots down a) his attempt to join in a philosophical discussion, b) his lack of involvement in local politics, and c) his wish to make peace with their brother Nikolai, the black sheep of the family. See how the pesky cosmopolitan urbanite is trying to demoralize the wide-eyed young nonconformist? Either Tolstoy is making a point, or he's just venting the anger that must have come with being the fourth of five kids.

That explains why he looks like a surly Scotty McCreery in this picture.

These chapters are about two things: love and lunch. (Not to be confused with my favorite Improv Anywhere skit, "I Love Lunch!", although a scene like that would have certainly lightened the tension of Levin's romantic woes.) Anyone who says that food porn was born from bored yuppies with Instagram accounts needs to read through the catalog of fancy cuisine that Stepan and Levin chow through on their dinner date. Even as they dish on their respective woman problems, they're shoveling down jellied oysters - though Levin, bless his heart, secretly prefers "white bread and cheese."

Don't we all? (Even vegans like this writer.)

While no great secrets are revealed, their table talk is entertaining because their personalities clash in a Will Turner and Jack Sparrow way. Levin is torn between fretting that he's too corrupted for the fair Kitty and being desperate to marry her. Stepan is brushing off adultery as an uncontrollable tragedy of life and bemoaning the boredom of married life:

[T]he future is yours, and the present is mine, and the present - well, it's only fair to middling.

After a charming game of Which Thing Makes The Best Metaphor For A Loose Woman (Stepan votes bread and Levin votes vermin - not either one's best moment) the waiter brings the check and I can finally abandon this fictional meal for the real one that awaits me in the kitchen. Maybe next time I'll try the Official Lit Dish I picked for this post: berry compote, which is the tastier-sounding name for the "stewed fruit" that Stepan orders. I bet it's good on toast, especially with a side of internal strife over whether you should text your crush or stick to Facebook stalking him/her and avoid any chance of rejection.

Chapters 1-5: No Anna, Lots of Jude Law

I am not going to start this by quoting Anna Karenina's famous first line, which is controversial and has inspired its own sociological and statistic principle. Instead, here's a good reason to put this Incredible Hulk of a novel on your reading list: the chapters are short. This might have nothing to do with the actual content of the book, but it makes it a heck of a lot easier to take a break and watch the London 2012 swimming races until Missy Franklin's adorable face is tattooed on your eyelids.

Like the NBC Olympics coverage, Anna Karenina has a greater ratio of political endorsements to teary-eyed young women than I was expecting.

 Anyway, because of the mini-chapters, the first 24 pages weren't painful at all, despite the fact that the title character hasn't actually put in an appearance yet. Nope, so far it's been all about how Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky (henceforth known as Stepan) has cheated on his wife, Darya "Dolly" Alexandrovna Oblonsky, with the French governess. That's right: over 130 years before Jude Law made headlines for cavorting behind Sienna Miller's back with his children's nanny, Stepan is trying to win back his woman's favor. The best part of this storyline is that Jude Law is in the upcoming Anna Karenina  movie, even though he plays a different character. Unfortunate implications much? I wonder if he's read the script.

Jude Law is also the voice of Lemony Snicket in the Series of Unfortunate Events movie. As mentioned before, the central theme of Anna Karenina is a plot point in the books. COINCIDENCE OVERLOAD.

 This might come across as somewhat romantic if Stepan actually loved Dolly and felt bad about screwing up. The reality is he's just concerned that she won't be able to run the household properly if she stays mad at him. Even though this is sort of accurate, because their youngest kid has already gotten sick from "unwholesome soup" that her Super Mom powers would apparently have detected otherwise, it definitely puts him in my Literary Chauvinistic Male Pig category beside un-studs like Rhett Butler and any Hemingway hero ever. Let's just say that I was cheering when Dolly ripped him a new you-know-what in a takedown on par with Carly Simon's "You're So Vain."

You are loathsome to me, repulsive! Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you have neither a heart nor a sense of honor! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger - yes, a complete stranger!

...and then she has inward angst about still loving him. But at least she shows some spirit...unlike her husband. For a man who writes racy letters to his French maid-slash-mistress, Stepan is a pretty bland character. He just putters along at his high-end government job (which he got through pure nepotism) and his high-end social life (which he got through being a rich prince and not arguing with people).

Not this kind of prince. Nineteenth-century Russia, like Saudi Arabia, had lots of princes, most of whom didn't inherit the throne or have weddings that inspire graphic novels.

 Tolstoy does more than imply that Stepan is an example of the complaisance that comes with being a member of the bourgeoisie; he calls him out directly for choosing the political affiliation that best suits his lifestyle. Stepan doesn't like traditional family life, going to church, or challenging the media, so - ta da! - he's a liberal.

And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.

Hands up, everyone who heard Glenn Beck's voice reading that quote in their head. Somehow I suspect that Tolstoy's views are more in line with Stepan's friend Levin, the earnest but uncultured country boy who thinks that government bureaucracy is ruining everything. As of the end of Chapter 5, they have dinner plans. Is it too much to hope that a tantalizing secret emerges over coffee?

Maybe Stepan/Levin was the Joey/Chandler of its time.

 Speaking of coffee, people in this book are always drinking it, just like in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Since I believe in immersive literary experiences AKA excuses to eat while reading, I Googled "Russian coffee." All the recipes that came up seemed to involve vodka, which a) is not part of my diet and b) is not the best thing to imbibe when most of the characters have easily confused fourteen-letter names. So my Official Lit Dish recommendation for this chapter is a warm mug of your favorite coffee or tea (the latter of which was actually more popular throughout Russian history, even after Peter the Great introduced the "cup of joe" concept to the nation). If you're feeling adventurous, pair it with a delicious scone made from all the canned pumpkin that's been sitting in the pantry since the after-Thanksgiving grocery store sale.

Oh, and what does any of this have to do with Anna Karenina herself? She's Stepan's sister. I'm sure all this will tie into her story...eventually.