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.

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 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.