ANNA THE K: Ratty gave me Richard Pevear and Larissa Volonkhosky’s translation of Anna Karenina, and I finally finished it. These are some fairly random and unfocused thoughts about a really great book; your comments welcome. Spoilers throughout, not so much for the climax (which I expect everyone knows about) but for other things in the novel–and I’m glad I didn’t know about those things before reading it, because I do enjoy suspense in reading, so if you haven’t read AK and think you might not want to know all of the plot points, you might want to skip this post.

Og No Like: OK, I am not good at the 19th-century novel. All those scenes! Scenes of people doing stuff, for no apparent reason–shopping for leeks, talking about paintings, but rarely in a way that connects up with the larger themes or plot-arcs. It’s realistic, I suppose: Most of what we do all day doesn’t connect to the “themes or plot-arcs” of our own lives, yeah? But it’s also boring and frustrating for me as a reader. I have real life to be random and seemingly pointless–it’s not what I go to novels for. (Insert rant about how expressionism is the ultimate Catholic style. Someday I’ll write that rant.)

I also found both Levin and (especially!) Kitty kind of slappable, especially in Kitty’s relation to Levin’s brother’s mistress. Very Lady Bountiful. But see below.

And the ending, with Levin’s thoughts about God, was… unsatisfying. I know it’s very difficult to write about religious experiences in general–as a reader I often come to such descriptions with a high level of defensiveness, and have an unusually hard time relating to experiences that are very unlike mine. And Levin’s inner life in this final section is very, very unlike mine. So I am not completely willing to say, “This section failed.” I’ll just say that it failed for me, and I disliked it, and didn’t see the point of it.

Og Like!: Well, now that I’ve beaten up on a writer who had more talent in his pinky toenail than I have in my entire self, I will say that opening with the Oblonskys and closing with the Levins is perfect. Avoiding opening or closing with the triangle at the book’s center really works. At some level it makes the book less tragic and more bourgeois–its assumptions are steadier than what I’d expect from a tragedy, if you see what I mean.

I did love so many of the characters: Stiva, Seryozha, Karenin especially, I think. All of the characters felt very real. And the Levins’ childbirth scene was amazing, one of the most powerful things I’ve read in a novel. See below for more on that.

Heteronarrativity: Okay, now this I found really interesting, but I’m also worried that others will a) find it obvious and boring or b) think I’m saying something that I’m not. But fortuna favet audaci, so here goes: Anna Karenina may be the most heterosexual novel I’ve ever read.

Partly, this is a statement about me: I haven’t read any Austen, nor any Trollope, for example. (And yes, I plan to remedy the Austen thing, at least, very soon.)

But even so–AK‘s narrative thrust and emotional power come from its depiction of things like: how having a child with a person changes your view of that person (for good or ill). How your changing relationship to your child’s parent changes your relationship with your child (again, for good or ill). How the inescapability of childbearing changes marriage (and adultery). How societal expectations change people when acceptance of these norms is the default, rather than heroic resistance being the default.

And there are elements very common in the other works I’ve loved, but absent or marginal in AK: alienation is the most obvious. There’s less emphasis on physical beauty than I’m used to, I think, with a correspondingly greater emphasis on clothes and other cultural products. (The land is depicted in a way that does emphasize its beauty, but embeds that beauty in a rhythm of work and generativity.)

AK resonated very strongly with me–though almost exclusively because it sounded so much like what married friends of mine had experienced, not at all because it sounded like my experience. I’m not trying to make any larger point really; I just thought this was interesting, and would, as I said, welcome readers’ comments.