One of the only things that people seem to like more than watching movies and TV shows is complaining about their various inaccuracies. I'd love to have a pint of vanilla almond bark Tofutti for every time I heard some variation of "It's unfathomable that a fat slob like him could snag Katherine Heigl." Or, "How can they spend that much time by the water cooler but not ever have to pee?" Or, "If it was really that easy to learn martial arts, everyone would be karate chopping their onions and those people who sell knife sets would go out of business."
And the Fruit Ninja app would be irrelevant.
The truth, as we all know deep down, is that we aren't searching for reality in Hollywood or the media. Why bother? If I want to see guys who don't look like perfection incarnate, all I have to do is be anywhere besides a screening of Magic Mike. In fact, any latent desire to experience the unglamorous aspects of life - bad breath, fatigue, a lingering sense of gloom and regret - was more than satisfied on the first day of my 8 AM class. This is why I'd like to offer a suggestion to the next person who thinks about criticizing The Newsroom for being overly dramatized: read one of Anna Karenina's painstakingly detailed descriptions of farm labor. Then tell me what makes the daily grind so much better than Olivia Munn delivering Sorkinisms.
It definitely doesn't lend itself to GIFs.
Levin disagrees. Unlike his brother, who likes to limit his experience with country life to speaking about it in idyllic terms, Levin just loves to rough it. He'll grab a scythe and start cutting grass at the drop of a streaker's pants in Davis Library during exam week (that's "with minimal motivation," for those of you unfamiliar with UNC campus life). I get that Tolstoy was trying to show that Levin was the total opposite of all those pampered aristocrats we encountered earlier, but the whole thing seems more than a tad forced. I mean, the laborers in his team don't just get excited over finding bugs and snacking on soggy bread. They get excited about working overtime with no compensation, because they just love to strain their backs under the hot sun. This portrayal seems suspiciously like an attempt to justify Levin's earlier claim that educating peasants is a waste of money:
"...why should I worry myself about establishing dispensaries which I shall never make use of, and schools to which I shall never send my children, to which even the peasants don't want to send their children, and to which I've no very firm faith that they ought to send them?"
If you're like me, then a small part of your soul died after reading that.
Levin, you're breaking my heart!
Really, how much more patronizing can a guy be without straight up morphing into an Apple commercial? Levin's attitude toward the common folk reminds me of how the white Southern ladies treated their maids in The Help - that is, being all buddy-buddy with them until the possibility of actual societal advancement comes up. While his hands-on approach is more genuine than his brother's armchair philosophizing, Levin has a long way to go when it comes to defying the Russian caste system. No matter how cute it is when he freaks out about forgetting to check up on his decrepit housekeeper after she sprains her wrist.
As previously mentioned, one of the most unbelievable parts of the farming sequence for me was the delight Levin and the other men took in their humble meal of "sop," or bread soaked in kvass (an alcoholic drink similar to beer) and salted. While this sounds even less appetizing than the mayonnaise-smeared salad I saw on an anonymous plate in the dining hall yesterday, today's Official Lit Dish of Russian black bread has potential to be my new favorite sandwich securer. Why build your PB&J with that weirdly spongy Wonder Bread when you can be chowing down on a symbol of lower-class humility and simplicity instead?
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.
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.
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.
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 likeC-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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
