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.