Part III, Chapters 1-6: Country Matters

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?

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.