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 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.