On Thursday, I finally finished Pete Dexter's brand new novel, Spooner. It took me a long time (2 weeks for only 459 pages) to finish, but it was worth all the time I spent with it. This is the first book by Dexter I've ever read, and I think I might have to go and check out the rest of his work now, too. Because Spooner is good at everything that makes a novel a great read: funny, sad, well-written, and filled with wonderful, memorable characters. The book centers around the relationship between the titular Warren Spooner, who begins the novel as an injury-prone, mischief-loving little mishap of a child and ends it as a successful adult who takes care of those around him, and Spooner's stepfather, the super-patient and hardworking Calmer Ottosson. Dexter does an absolutely fantastic job at exploring all the complexities of love and family.
The set-up sounds a little sentimental, but the book is anything but. In fact, it's downright bittersweet in even its lightest moments. The story is all about being human, trying (and failing) to understand the people we want to love. From the very beginning of their time together, Calmer cannot understand Spooner. Dexter lets us readers see both the sad desire for attention Spooner craves as a child and the inevitable frustration and confusion Calmer feels towards the strange creature.
Calmer begins the novel as an upright Navy officer with the world at his fingertips, only to have an almost-funny accident derail his career. He ends up working in the South, marrying Spooner's unhappy mother and becoming a default father. He obviously cares about Spooner and wants to love him, but Spooner makes it extremely difficult. Meanwhile, as Spooner tries to find his way in the world, he often fails miserably, usually getting maimed in the process. He wants to make Calmer happy, but he seems incapable of doing right by the man despite his good intentions. Dexter details this bumpy connection between the two with sentences that somehow manage to be both incredibly funny and incredibly heartbreaking at once. I honestly don't know how Dexter manages to do it, creating a world where we readers can laugh and cry in reaction to a single line. The prose in this book, particularly in the first half, is really something special.
As the book continues, things begin to flip for Spooner and Calmer. Spooner eventually finds happiness and family, and Calmer meets mostly with disappointment and loneliness. In the final chapters, as Spooner cares for the aging Calmer, he gets the chance to show his stepfather just what his love really meant (Spooner thinks of Calmer as "the greatest man he'd ever known, or at least the greatest man who had ever known him"). The ending refuses to nicely tie everything together with a hug and kiss, but it also manages to be an extremely cathartic dissertation on what it means to be connected to a person you can only understand through your own eyes. For Calmer, it means trying to love Spooner despite not fully "getting" him. And for Spooner, it means showing you care in the limited ways you can manage.
The whole book is a joy to read, and it's something I would definitely recommend to anyone who is interested in literature tracing entire lives and relationships.
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Persuaded
In honor of the 23rd birthday of a close friend and most-faithful fellow reader, I decided to read Jane Austen's Persuasion. My friend often raves about it, and I decided to check it out of the library on a whim last week after visiting her several days earlier. And thank God I did. As of late, I've been a little depressed and cranky. Persuasion cheered me right up. The book is absolutely wonderful, and I would recommend it to Austen faithful and newcomers alike. The romance between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth is full of surprising and welcome little moments, and anyone who can read the letter towards the end of the novel and not be moved might just be a tad bit heartless.
Not to give the entire book away, but that part with the letter is such a great scene. I kicked my feet in excitement when I figured out that Captain Wentworth had been writing it to Anne while in the same room as her. For some reason, the writing of the letter in such close proximity to Anne made it twice as poignant.
This is a pretty short entry. I loved Persuasion, and I want to thank my birthday friend for talking about it so fervently in the last year. It never ceases to make me happy that such terrific friends and lovely books exist in this world.
And, because it is so lovely, I've included the infamous letter here:
I can no longer listen in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me that I am not too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that is love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F.W.
I must go, uncertain of my fate, but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.
Happy Reading, everyone!
Book Mentioned: Persuasion, by Jane Austen
Not to give the entire book away, but that part with the letter is such a great scene. I kicked my feet in excitement when I figured out that Captain Wentworth had been writing it to Anne while in the same room as her. For some reason, the writing of the letter in such close proximity to Anne made it twice as poignant.
This is a pretty short entry. I loved Persuasion, and I want to thank my birthday friend for talking about it so fervently in the last year. It never ceases to make me happy that such terrific friends and lovely books exist in this world.
And, because it is so lovely, I've included the infamous letter here:
I can no longer listen in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me that I am not too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that is love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F.W.
I must go, uncertain of my fate, but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.
Happy Reading, everyone!
Book Mentioned: Persuasion, by Jane Austen
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
A Transcendent Reading Experience
This last Friday, a couple friends and I went to an outdoor concert inspired by the Indianapolis Symphony. A three-piece string ensemble called Time for Three played as the sun sank down behind the stage. At one point during the concert, as the strings vibrated across the small hills where we sat, I turned and watched the shadows of small children race down a hill as the sun moved in blues and pinks and oranges behind them. It was a beautiful moment, and sitting there on a blanket with two of my closest companions, listening to music and watching nature unfold, I felt extremely lucky to be alive. Life would be meaningless if it weren’t for these kinds of small strokes of time – these little moments of transcendence. I could honestly say that night that if I died the next morning, I wouldn’t regret having ever lived any second of my life, not if it all culminated in such moments of extreme bliss.
It is fitting, then, that at such a realization of transcendent happiness, I was reading a book about that exact idea: dying without regret at living, making sense of life in its tiniest moments and gestures. The novel Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, really helped me make sense of that moment at the concert. It’s a book that explores the ideas of grace and dying and life and love without ever trying to make a big statement or change the world. In fact, it’s probably one of the quietest novels I’ve ever read. Not only that, but it was probably the most beautiful book I have ever encountered.
When Robinson’s book came out several years ago, it won many awards and made headlines. Robinson had written one highly-acclaimed novel 20 years before (Housekeeping, which I also read and liked), and this was her first work of fiction since then. I thought the book sounded a little dull. I knew it was about a dying preacher in a small town writing a letter to his small son, and I wanted nothing to do with any of it: the religion, the deathbed-confessional-thing, the soft writing. At the time, I was into postmodernism and wordplay. But since then, I’ve grown older and wiser. I appreciate one slight, beautifully wrought sentence to a witty rejoinder; I prefer a paragraph describing what it feels like to baptize an infant to a clever meta-commentary. After six years of maturing as a reader and 22 years of living as a human being, I was finally ready to really conquer Gilead.
The book is very simple. The narrator, the Reverend John Ames, 76 years old, knows he is dying of a heart condition. So he sets down a diary of sorts for his small son, so that the boy might understand the father and family he’d never know Meanwhile, during the coarse of the diary’s writing, John Ames’s best friend’s son comes to visit. This man, Jack, bothers Ames quite a bit, and the second half of the book explores their strangled relationship and eventual reconciliation. It’s a book about fathers and sons, about heaven and earth and how those two things are often one. It is a book about a life coming to a beautiful and poignant end.
In my opinion, Gilead is nothing short of a miracle. It’s absolutely incredible – from its meandering but purposeful form, to its delicate and careful prose, to its struggling and beloved characters – this is a book meant to be taken in slowly and purposefully. The writing is lovely: simple, direct, and meaningful. I was often surprised by the way Robinson’s style moved and flowed. At one moment, I’d be reading a delightful description of a tree, and at the next, the narrator would make a devastating proclamation about life or death in a single sentence. The religious persuasion of the characters never gets in the way; in the end, this is not at all a book about Christianity. It’s about the total sum of grace in our lives. It’s a book about life itself being a transcendent experience separate from heavenly reward. With Gilead, Robinson composed one of the most emotionally moving reading experiences of my life.
Tears flowed freely down my cheeks for the last twenty pages of Gilead. When I finally closed the book, I had to sit and stare out the window for several moments, trying to understand what I had just encountered. The book is a beautiful work of art, and it is one of my favorite books I have ever read. I cannot recommend Gilead highly enough.
As a bonus, here’s one lovely passage from the book:
There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us. Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child, and that has to be true. “He will wipe the tears from all faces.” It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.
Book Mentioned: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
It is fitting, then, that at such a realization of transcendent happiness, I was reading a book about that exact idea: dying without regret at living, making sense of life in its tiniest moments and gestures. The novel Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, really helped me make sense of that moment at the concert. It’s a book that explores the ideas of grace and dying and life and love without ever trying to make a big statement or change the world. In fact, it’s probably one of the quietest novels I’ve ever read. Not only that, but it was probably the most beautiful book I have ever encountered.
When Robinson’s book came out several years ago, it won many awards and made headlines. Robinson had written one highly-acclaimed novel 20 years before (Housekeeping, which I also read and liked), and this was her first work of fiction since then. I thought the book sounded a little dull. I knew it was about a dying preacher in a small town writing a letter to his small son, and I wanted nothing to do with any of it: the religion, the deathbed-confessional-thing, the soft writing. At the time, I was into postmodernism and wordplay. But since then, I’ve grown older and wiser. I appreciate one slight, beautifully wrought sentence to a witty rejoinder; I prefer a paragraph describing what it feels like to baptize an infant to a clever meta-commentary. After six years of maturing as a reader and 22 years of living as a human being, I was finally ready to really conquer Gilead.
The book is very simple. The narrator, the Reverend John Ames, 76 years old, knows he is dying of a heart condition. So he sets down a diary of sorts for his small son, so that the boy might understand the father and family he’d never know Meanwhile, during the coarse of the diary’s writing, John Ames’s best friend’s son comes to visit. This man, Jack, bothers Ames quite a bit, and the second half of the book explores their strangled relationship and eventual reconciliation. It’s a book about fathers and sons, about heaven and earth and how those two things are often one. It is a book about a life coming to a beautiful and poignant end.
In my opinion, Gilead is nothing short of a miracle. It’s absolutely incredible – from its meandering but purposeful form, to its delicate and careful prose, to its struggling and beloved characters – this is a book meant to be taken in slowly and purposefully. The writing is lovely: simple, direct, and meaningful. I was often surprised by the way Robinson’s style moved and flowed. At one moment, I’d be reading a delightful description of a tree, and at the next, the narrator would make a devastating proclamation about life or death in a single sentence. The religious persuasion of the characters never gets in the way; in the end, this is not at all a book about Christianity. It’s about the total sum of grace in our lives. It’s a book about life itself being a transcendent experience separate from heavenly reward. With Gilead, Robinson composed one of the most emotionally moving reading experiences of my life.
Tears flowed freely down my cheeks for the last twenty pages of Gilead. When I finally closed the book, I had to sit and stare out the window for several moments, trying to understand what I had just encountered. The book is a beautiful work of art, and it is one of my favorite books I have ever read. I cannot recommend Gilead highly enough.
As a bonus, here’s one lovely passage from the book:
There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us. Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child, and that has to be true. “He will wipe the tears from all faces.” It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.
Book Mentioned: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
An Unfortunate Reading Experience
Last week, I encountered an unfortunate reading experience.
This unfortunate experience occurred while I was reading Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. After having finished Anna Karenina and some critical reading from James Wood earlier this summer, I thought I was in the mood for something different: violence and bloodshed, open spaces and descriptions of land, people living hardscrabble lives. I also looked forward to opening my first McCarthy novel, as I had heard much about him and quite enjoyed the film version of No Country for Old Men. But I had sold myself short on my own reading desires.
At first, things were going well. I loved McCarthy’s idiosyncratic writing style, and I liked the lead character, John Grady Cole, and his traveling companions, Rawlins and Blevins. The story intrigued me, and the scenes in the middle where the boys struggle to survive in a Mexican prison, made fantastic reading. But as I got to the last thirty-five pages of the book, I had a revelation. I didn’t really care about these people anymore. Rawlins had left the action earlier, and upon his leaving, I just didn’t really care enough about what remained to finish the book.
I’ve quit lots of books in the middle of the action. Life is too short to spend my time reading books I don’t like. But I’ve never gotten this close to the end of a novel before stopping in my previous book-quitting experiences. It took me awhile to figure out what was the problem. And when I finally got my best answer, I felt a little bad about it. I was frustrated with reading a book about men, for men, by a man.
The last thing I’d call myself is a feminist. But I have a pretty stubborn streak of feminine pride, and I often tire of reading books where the only female character, the love interest, exists with no inner life beyond standing on a pedestal for the main character and boring the hell out of me. And that was how I felt about All the Pretty Horses. Good writing, good action, great settings; but ruined by my own gender boredom. Once my favorite character (Rawlins) left, the only thing left was the wrap-up of the love story and the final violent outbursts of the male characters. And by that point, I just didn’t care what happened anymore.
I feel guilty about this reading experience because on any other day, in any other mood, I probably would have liked this book or at least fairly enjoyed reading it. But because I was frustrated with such heavy masculinity dripping off the pages (made worse by an up-close encounter with a fairly misogynistic snob I’d recently met), the entire thing had been ruined. I am sure I will return to Cormac McCarthy eventually (he’s too important and interesting a writer to miss), but I think I will just write off All the Pretty Horses as an unfortunate experience and move on with my life.
And on that note, I am trying to read mainly women fiction writers for the next few weeks in order to get a taste of what I’ve been missing lately. So you can expect entries on Marilynne Robinson, Louise Erdrich, and maybe Anne Tyler. Hopefully I enjoy the next few books I read and don’t get bogged down too much by my own neuroses. Happy Reading, everyone!
Work Mentioned: All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy
P.S. Please take a look at a fellow reader's blog and join in on the July Quotation Month! I plan on participating every day, and I will try to fill you in with my choices and reactions here. Have fun!
This unfortunate experience occurred while I was reading Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. After having finished Anna Karenina and some critical reading from James Wood earlier this summer, I thought I was in the mood for something different: violence and bloodshed, open spaces and descriptions of land, people living hardscrabble lives. I also looked forward to opening my first McCarthy novel, as I had heard much about him and quite enjoyed the film version of No Country for Old Men. But I had sold myself short on my own reading desires.
At first, things were going well. I loved McCarthy’s idiosyncratic writing style, and I liked the lead character, John Grady Cole, and his traveling companions, Rawlins and Blevins. The story intrigued me, and the scenes in the middle where the boys struggle to survive in a Mexican prison, made fantastic reading. But as I got to the last thirty-five pages of the book, I had a revelation. I didn’t really care about these people anymore. Rawlins had left the action earlier, and upon his leaving, I just didn’t really care enough about what remained to finish the book.
I’ve quit lots of books in the middle of the action. Life is too short to spend my time reading books I don’t like. But I’ve never gotten this close to the end of a novel before stopping in my previous book-quitting experiences. It took me awhile to figure out what was the problem. And when I finally got my best answer, I felt a little bad about it. I was frustrated with reading a book about men, for men, by a man.
The last thing I’d call myself is a feminist. But I have a pretty stubborn streak of feminine pride, and I often tire of reading books where the only female character, the love interest, exists with no inner life beyond standing on a pedestal for the main character and boring the hell out of me. And that was how I felt about All the Pretty Horses. Good writing, good action, great settings; but ruined by my own gender boredom. Once my favorite character (Rawlins) left, the only thing left was the wrap-up of the love story and the final violent outbursts of the male characters. And by that point, I just didn’t care what happened anymore.
I feel guilty about this reading experience because on any other day, in any other mood, I probably would have liked this book or at least fairly enjoyed reading it. But because I was frustrated with such heavy masculinity dripping off the pages (made worse by an up-close encounter with a fairly misogynistic snob I’d recently met), the entire thing had been ruined. I am sure I will return to Cormac McCarthy eventually (he’s too important and interesting a writer to miss), but I think I will just write off All the Pretty Horses as an unfortunate experience and move on with my life.
And on that note, I am trying to read mainly women fiction writers for the next few weeks in order to get a taste of what I’ve been missing lately. So you can expect entries on Marilynne Robinson, Louise Erdrich, and maybe Anne Tyler. Hopefully I enjoy the next few books I read and don’t get bogged down too much by my own neuroses. Happy Reading, everyone!
Work Mentioned: All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy
P.S. Please take a look at a fellow reader's blog and join in on the July Quotation Month! I plan on participating every day, and I will try to fill you in with my choices and reactions here. Have fun!
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Damn You, Tolstoy! : Reading Anna Karenina
Last autumn, I took a class called “The Great Novel,” which quickly became the best class of my college career. The professor conducted the class as if it was a grad-school-level course, but every moment of the class and every page read was completely worth the hard work and intellectual exhaustion. In that class, we read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. At first, I hated the book. I thought it was slow, boring, and heavy-handed. But as the book went on, I fell in love. War and Peace might be the greatest novel I have ever read (although I’m still reserving the right of favorites to The Great Gatsby). Of course, Tolstoy did not consider his magnum opus to actually be a novel. It was so complex, so long and involved and busting at the seams with humanity, that he thought it defied category. Which, trust me, it does.
Tolstoy actually considered his first novel to be Anna Karenina. Before “The Great Novel,” I never had much ambition to read Anna. I already knew what happened at the end, and I knew the book worked in the same plane as Madame Bovary, which I read a few years ago. But after reading War and Peace, I was unable to get Tolstoy’s writing out of my head. The way he enters into the existence of every single character is unlike anything I’ve read before. I needed more. It was no secret in the English Department that the favorite book of my “Great Novel” professor was Anna Karenina. In fact, it was something of a running joke there. So I knew that book needed to be my first summer read.
So after three weeks of amazement, occasional boredom, and a lot of “fuckin’ Tolstoy” moments, I finally finished the book a few days ago. And I have to admit, I like War and Peace better. The characters of War and Peace were more attractive to me than the characters here, who were often frustrating to understand. I “got” them, but they were often so untrustworthy as characters and people that I couldn’t enjoy every moment I spent with them. But because the details and the flashes of extreme humanity in both all its glory and grossness were so perfect, I still admired the book greatly. Tolstoy is just so damn good at getting into every inch of a situation, a person, a moment. He’s an obsessive God, constructing every perfect inch of his novel and then going all-out to make us see his world. It’s ridiculous, and I will probably envy the way he shows us his entire imagination until the day I die.
But here’s the problem with Tolstoy: he has opinions. A lot of them. And he’s not afraid to nearly destroy an otherwise good book with them. The epilogues of War and Peace were so overcooked in Tolstoy’s “philosophies” that I could hardly stomach them. It’s his constant intellectual probing that makes his novels so good, and yet at the same time, it’s what so often turns readers off of him. It’s a prickly area for me when someone mentions Tolstoy. How can I love him so much as a writer, as an observer of people and place, but hate him so much as an ideologue? Tolstoy was the kind of person who honestly believed that listening to Beethoven could lead to a life full of wantonness and sexual destruction. He both loved and hated religion and spirituality. He was a bit of a misogynist, even though what people consider his greatest literary creation, Anna Karenina, was a woman. As a contemporary reader, it’s a little hard to get behind this kind of writer.
So how do I deal with my love/hate relationship with Tolstoy? The same way I deal with friends and family members; I try to love him despite all his faults. It’s hard at times. (All I have to do is think about the epilogues of War and Peace and my blood starts to boil). But a writer who so perfectly describes thoughts and emotions that every person has felt or understood at some point cannot be brushed aside. He gets so into the thick of human existence that it’s impossible to hate him as a writer and as a person. Do I want to punch him in his bearded face every time I read him? Yes. But I also want to kiss him and worship at his feet. The only way I can deal with Tolstoy is by getting over the bad and looking at the good. Because, Holy Shit, there is soooo much good in Tolstoy’s work.
Which brings me back to Anna Karenina. Despite my frequent frustration with the book and its characters, there were too many beautiful moments and sentences in it for me to discount it as a masterpiece. Here’s just a few amazing pieces:
- how Tolstoy describes a new parent’s pride after a newborn’s first sneeze
- the scene between Anna and her son, which is one of the most moving passages of literature I think I’ve ever read
- this: “Kitty did in fact conceal her new views and feelings from her mother. She concealed them not because she did not respect or love her other, but simply because she was her mother. She would have revealed them to any one sooner than to her mother.” Even 150 years ago, despite being a man, Tolstoy understood young girls didn’t think their mothers knew anything. (And if you’re reading this, Mom, of course Tolstoy’s wrong).
- Vronsky and Anna’s visit to the painter
- Levin reaching out to God when his wife’s in labor; gorgeously written
- the passage where Levin mows with the peasants
- most of all, the last few chapters before Anna’s [SPOILER ALERT] suicide, where Tolstoy completely enters her frantic mind; incredible
So there you have it. I wouldn’t necessarily go around recommending Anna Karenina to everyone (although I certainly plead that everyone try Tolstoy at least once), but I still enjoyed it as it was.
And now, onto something a little more fun….
Books Mentioned: Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (translated by Constance Garnett)
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Tolstoy actually considered his first novel to be Anna Karenina. Before “The Great Novel,” I never had much ambition to read Anna. I already knew what happened at the end, and I knew the book worked in the same plane as Madame Bovary, which I read a few years ago. But after reading War and Peace, I was unable to get Tolstoy’s writing out of my head. The way he enters into the existence of every single character is unlike anything I’ve read before. I needed more. It was no secret in the English Department that the favorite book of my “Great Novel” professor was Anna Karenina. In fact, it was something of a running joke there. So I knew that book needed to be my first summer read.
So after three weeks of amazement, occasional boredom, and a lot of “fuckin’ Tolstoy” moments, I finally finished the book a few days ago. And I have to admit, I like War and Peace better. The characters of War and Peace were more attractive to me than the characters here, who were often frustrating to understand. I “got” them, but they were often so untrustworthy as characters and people that I couldn’t enjoy every moment I spent with them. But because the details and the flashes of extreme humanity in both all its glory and grossness were so perfect, I still admired the book greatly. Tolstoy is just so damn good at getting into every inch of a situation, a person, a moment. He’s an obsessive God, constructing every perfect inch of his novel and then going all-out to make us see his world. It’s ridiculous, and I will probably envy the way he shows us his entire imagination until the day I die.
But here’s the problem with Tolstoy: he has opinions. A lot of them. And he’s not afraid to nearly destroy an otherwise good book with them. The epilogues of War and Peace were so overcooked in Tolstoy’s “philosophies” that I could hardly stomach them. It’s his constant intellectual probing that makes his novels so good, and yet at the same time, it’s what so often turns readers off of him. It’s a prickly area for me when someone mentions Tolstoy. How can I love him so much as a writer, as an observer of people and place, but hate him so much as an ideologue? Tolstoy was the kind of person who honestly believed that listening to Beethoven could lead to a life full of wantonness and sexual destruction. He both loved and hated religion and spirituality. He was a bit of a misogynist, even though what people consider his greatest literary creation, Anna Karenina, was a woman. As a contemporary reader, it’s a little hard to get behind this kind of writer.
So how do I deal with my love/hate relationship with Tolstoy? The same way I deal with friends and family members; I try to love him despite all his faults. It’s hard at times. (All I have to do is think about the epilogues of War and Peace and my blood starts to boil). But a writer who so perfectly describes thoughts and emotions that every person has felt or understood at some point cannot be brushed aside. He gets so into the thick of human existence that it’s impossible to hate him as a writer and as a person. Do I want to punch him in his bearded face every time I read him? Yes. But I also want to kiss him and worship at his feet. The only way I can deal with Tolstoy is by getting over the bad and looking at the good. Because, Holy Shit, there is soooo much good in Tolstoy’s work.
Which brings me back to Anna Karenina. Despite my frequent frustration with the book and its characters, there were too many beautiful moments and sentences in it for me to discount it as a masterpiece. Here’s just a few amazing pieces:
- how Tolstoy describes a new parent’s pride after a newborn’s first sneeze
- the scene between Anna and her son, which is one of the most moving passages of literature I think I’ve ever read
- this: “Kitty did in fact conceal her new views and feelings from her mother. She concealed them not because she did not respect or love her other, but simply because she was her mother. She would have revealed them to any one sooner than to her mother.” Even 150 years ago, despite being a man, Tolstoy understood young girls didn’t think their mothers knew anything. (And if you’re reading this, Mom, of course Tolstoy’s wrong).
- Vronsky and Anna’s visit to the painter
- Levin reaching out to God when his wife’s in labor; gorgeously written
- the passage where Levin mows with the peasants
- most of all, the last few chapters before Anna’s [SPOILER ALERT] suicide, where Tolstoy completely enters her frantic mind; incredible
So there you have it. I wouldn’t necessarily go around recommending Anna Karenina to everyone (although I certainly plead that everyone try Tolstoy at least once), but I still enjoyed it as it was.
And now, onto something a little more fun….
Books Mentioned: Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (translated by Constance Garnett)
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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