Agora Road Book Club: Anna Karenina Edition

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zalaz alaza

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So who are we rooting for?
 
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So who are we rooting for?
I am here to stan for TEAM LEVIN. The rural peasantry (in their bark shoes) know a simple path to satisfying life through exhausting, fulfilling physical labor and commune with nature. The gentry debase themselves by wasting their time with balls and horseraces while the real rulers of the physical economy bother over improving cattle genetics. Urban fools with their platitudes of country living have little power in the physical world, despite their influence in the psycho-social realm of the aristocrats. I hope to see Levin made emperor, with a Dune-style ride into power aboard a great red ox.
 
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Seems to me like the aristocrats are copying the social standards of the wealthy French. There were hints of Rome, particularly in the steeplechase scene. How does one describe a body of social standards? All I can say is it becomes clearer as you advance to later into the book. It really agonizes over what types of infidelity is ok and what type isn't. I was listening to an anti-infidelity ad on the radio and thought of this book. The ad something to the effect of "Children wondering 'where is my father? Why is my mother always crying?'". Also, Vronsky may be a Chad, but part of his chad-ness is his douchebaggery. I hope he gets killed trying to quell some restive peasants out east or something.
 
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I do not understand how this is considered some of the greatest literature of all time.
Il ne faut jamais rien outrer.

Well, compared to Fahrenheit 451 (also considered great) I'd say it's the depth of the characters. Compared to Blood Meridian, I'd say it's the clarity and compactness of prose. Compared to Brave New World, it's the depth and logic of the fictional world. I just read the Conrad novella "Youth" before I read this one, and do believe it is the Conrad-tier excellence in all aspects that make Tolstoy great. I am flying through this book and loving it! I love the expectation of some intelligence on the part of the reader. It is demanding in that way, the same as Lovecraft. I like the bits of French a lot. I like that actions have long term consequences. I like how the characters just keep getting more complex. I like how relatable every character is. I also like the setting a lot, and the way it keeps setting up urban versus rural thinking and priorities. I am particularly identifying with Levin, and his struggle to shape his purpose in life, despite his flaws. Kitty also has some transformative moments that are a recapitulation of things I went through myself while growing up. What makes it great is an engaging plot/characters coupled with memorable prose. I consider myself an advanced tier reader of American late 19th/early 20th century literature, and this has been a fascinating departure from my usual reading. When I saw the cover image of a lady sleeping on a couch, I thought "Oh boy, this is going to put me to sleep", but in fact the opposite is true. Thank you to @L. Rhodes for suggesting this book because I never would have read it otherwise.
 
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zalaz alaza

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Il ne faut jamais rien outrer.

Well, compared to Fahrenheit 451 (also considered great) I'd say it's the depth of the characters. Compared to Blood Meridian, I'd say it's the clarity and compactness of prose. Compared to Brave New World, it's the depth and logic of the fictional world. I just read the Conrad novella "Youth" before I read this one, and do believe it is the Conrad-tier excellence in all aspects that make Tolstoy great. I am flying through this book and loving it! I love the expectation of some intelligence on the part of the reader. It is demanding in that way, the same as Lovecraft. I like the bits of French a lot. I like that actions have long term consequences. I like how the characters just keep getting more complex. I like how relatable every character is. I also like the setting a lot, and the way it keeps setting up urban versus rural thinking and priorities. I am particularly identifying with Levin, and his struggle to shape his purpose in life, despite his flaws. Kitty also has some transformative moments that are a recapitulation of things I went through myself while growing up. What makes it great is an engaging plot/characters coupled with memorable prose. I consider myself an advanced tier reader of American late 19th/early 20th century literature, and this has been a fascinating departure from my usual reading. When I saw the cover image of a lady sleeping on a couch, I thought "Oh boy, this is going to put me to sleep", but in fact the opposite is true. Thank you to @L. Rhodes for suggesting this book because I never would have read it otherwise.
I like the novel, dont get me wrong, and I would agree with it being superior to both Farenheit 451 and BNW. It doesn't hold a candle to BM, or really any McCarthy I have read though. Neither does it compare well to any Hemingway IMO. At first glance I could attribute that to my having to read this in English and not Russian, which is fair, but besides this I am not getting the sense of character depth you seem to be keyed in on that I do from my favorite authors. Not in the whole of the first part do any of the characters seem interesting beyond superficialities, at least to me. In addition its awfully verbose in places that it seems unnecessary. Perhaps a bit is foreshadowing but I really do not need to know, nor am I interested in, the details of how Annas curls fall around her neck. It creates a bland atmosphere that reminds me of watching soap operas mid day with my mother on a day home sick from school. Im sure by personal resentment of gentility also contributes to my general feeling as well.
Again I want to reiterate that I am enjoying it, and will finish, but really feel like I am enjoying it in the manner of a romance novel except I feel like I've got something wrong by having reading it feel trashy asf
 
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Again I want to reiterate that I am enjoying it, and will finish, but really feel like I am enjoying it in the manner of a romance novel except I feel like I've got something wrong by having reading it feel trashy asf
Ha! That's how I felt about BM except replace "romance" with "ultraviolent horrorshow". Blood meridian just made me feel dirty and trashy. This is a lot more clearly written than blood meridian in my opinion. Also, I like the extremely detailed descriptions of the women characters because I am a bit of a simp, as @Remember_Summer_Days pointed out earlier. There's one segment describing a peasant woman's bosom heaving within her pinafore that had me like "be still, my beating heart".
 
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remember_summer_days

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I had a long ass draft prepared for this but since it didn't save, RIP that now.

I'm really enjoying what I've read so far, the way Schwartz translates Tolstoy's prose is very enjoyable: The author's style is comfy as fuck. I love how Tolstoy manages to write kino prose while using very few synonyms. According to Schwartz, Tolstoy went out of his way to utilize a limited vocabulary and even a limited array of word roots.

Chapter 1 was a great introduction to the (what I presume is) the main cast of the novel. Still, I find myself perhaps too spoiled by modern literary conventions, as with Dostoevsky, you often feel like several chapters could've been lumped together into one, and get the points across in a more succinct manner. Anna herself doesn't show up until around episode 16. Thankfully Levin carries enough narrative strength for the first half, Tolstoy definitely wrote him to be deeply sympathetic, especially in contrast to the other nobles. You end up feeling heartbroken when he's rejected by Kitty. #TeamLevin

I don't know what it is, but Tolstoy has a way of bringing to life the world of his novels in a manner few authors can. Could be a virtue of the Russians, cause the only author I've seen to portray his characters and settings in such a 'real' way is Dostoevsky.

Regardless, I wasn't expecting the novel to be so, uh, political. Levin and Dolly who stick to their conservative values are presented in a more positive light than their liberal counterparts. Tolstoy doesn't show high regard for nobles who follow liberal ideas. Liberal characters follow their ideology not as a matter of principle, but out of naivety and self-deception. The parallels with Levin point us to the fact that most people follow politics only in order to think better of themselves.

I fucking love the image of the train. From what I've gathered, the train was a symbol of progress, liberalism, and industrialization in Russia. It is a symbol of alienation in Dostoevsky's the idiot and I believe Tolstoy is using the image in a similar manner. The train embodies progress and modern ideas, it's hard not to think of the train as a machine of determinism, the spirit that moves forward the inexorable dialectics of history and into the synthesis of progress. And what is that future? One of the first things we see when the train arrives is the suicide of a man.

Then there's the amazing foreshadowing of Anna saying the Train is a bad omen for her! Probably the best use of this trope I've ever seen
. The train is when Anna first sees her 'love at first sight'. People who fall in love often report that it all felt like fate. Perhaps a romantic idea (pun intended) but aren't we moderns too blinded by romance? I think Tolstoy is getting at something like that. If love is fate, then that implies determinism, and fatalism. If you think it was your destiny to fall in love, then you live in a realm beyond good and evil, how can we condemn adultery if it's a matter of fate? A matter of no choice?

I find Anna being tempted by romanticism (which as far as I'm aware, was also part of the liberal baggage). After her morally dubious dance, Anna retreats into the train and her novels, Anna wants some escapism from her situation. Not from her sins, but from her duties as a wife. She's using her novel to cope with the fact that she has a responsibility as a mother and as a wife. Yet Vronsky, her fate, is following her. It's easy to justify infidelity if it was all fate. Tolstoy wants to critique liberalism's deconstruction of family.

This is another virtue of Tolstoy, I've dealt closely with situations of infidelity, and I've seen the unfaithful party repeat verbatim the stuff the characters in this novel have told themselves. The idea that they had no choice in the matter because of what the heart desires is a common trope, and an idea we often see justified in our popular media, and presumably also in Tolstoy's time. Disney's motto might as well follow your heart, but we don't live in Disneyworld, or in a romantic english novel.

Another allure of romance is how wild and new everything feels when you fall in love, not that I would know about that lol but that's what ppl say. Old-ass men who cheat on their spouses get a thrill from that sort of relationship, it's liberating and makes them feel like a teenager again, a time of unrestrained desire. But from what I've seen in this first chapter, Tolstoy rightfully points out that this is not where true goodness occurs. Adventure and romance are often a matter of vanity, true goodness lies in ordinary acts and ordinary moments, like those of Levin or Dolly, even Anna's consolation of Dolly.
 
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remember_summer_days

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SuperSummary dared to give Tolstoy a critique, but it's gay as fuck IMO. Anyways, SS is paywalled- Ok I paid for a membership cause it was the only place with a White Noise study guide, I'm sorry bros...- but I wanted to see what you guys think about it.

Much of Dolly's suffering could be attributed to her husband's "liberalism"—his distaste for marriage and family life and hedonistic nature. At the same time, Tolstoy underlines that part of Dolly's problems are financial and logistical. If she leaves, she has no financial support nor stability for her many children. Though Tolstoy's intent may have been to underscore the unhappiness that comes from nontraditional views, the institution of marriage and patriarchal limits on women's freedom are undeniable.


I think the author of this critique missed the point (that I can see so far) with Dolly's character. Dolly is not unhappy cause of patriarchal limitations, for better of worse, she is happy inside the supposedly patriarchal system of marriage. Being financially independent wouldn't make her happy, she wants a stable family and a loyal husband. I wonder if the author of this critique thinks that modern women are happy when infidelity happens cause they can divorce and maintain financial stability.


(...) Levin, by contrast, takes marriage and family life as seriously as others might a religious vocation, and his unlikely friendship with Oblonsky contrasts the two. Though he has doubts about spiritualism and is curious about the existence of God, Levin never doubts that traditional patriarchal and heteronormative social arrangements should be revered. This is particularly apparent when he exalts Kitty and dreads the idea of disclosing his own sexual past to a woman. Karenin, as later chapters will make even clearer, is also a traditionalist—though a far less passionate and emotional person than Levin. Levin, whose choices mirror Tolstoy's own, underlines that conservatism can be deeply felt. Levin is sometimes a passionate critic of the social reforms of the 1860s, even as he works within the abolition of serfdom and acknowledges exploitation as social evil.

This paragraph isn't really a critique of Tolstoy, but more of an observation. Though I think the author is showing contempt for Tolstoy in here. Like I can understand bringing up the idea of patriarchy in a novel that exalts traditional marriage, but fuck, heteronomartive? The hell does that have to do with anything? Go read Levin x Oblosky fanfiction if you wanted homoerotism. It's just so hilarious to me, I can't imagine how Tolstoy would react if he were to read about Levin being heteronormative lmaoo

On that note, fun fact. Dosto was actually writing a novel about two young lesbians before he got sent to Siberia, but he never finished that novel. Honestly, it's a huge shame, it would've been hilarious to have that inside his canon.
 
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remember_summer_days

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Ha! That's how I felt about BM except replace "romance" with "ultraviolent horrorshow". Blood meridian just made me feel dirty and trashy. This is a lot more clearly written than blood meridian in my opinion. Also, I like the extremely detailed descriptions of the women characters because I am a bit of a simp, as @Remember_Summer_Days pointed out earlier. There's one segment describing a peasant woman's bosom heaving within her pinafore that had me like "be still, my beating heart".
There's a meme in /lit/ that Blood Meridian is a shitty self-insert story and that The Judge is a huge Gary Stue. From what I've read, Levin is a self-insert of Tolstoy...

Don't feel bad for being a simp. Tolstoy writes great waifus. I still think about how beautiful Natasha was in War and Peace. I wonder what women think of his characters, lest we be accused of seeing women through a patriarchal perspective. Though Ophra's Book Club, which I'm sure it's 99% women, loved this novel. If that's the case, Tolstoy might be a great example that men can write women convincingly.

The one thing I know is that feminists accept and even praise Dosto's portrayal of waifus, but I'm not well read on Tolstoy scholarship.
 
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remember_summer_days

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I like the novel, dont get me wrong, and I would agree with it being superior to both Farenheit 451 and BNW. It doesn't hold a candle to BM, or really any McCarthy I have read though. Neither does it compare well to any Hemingway IMO. At first glance I could attribute that to my having to read this in English and not Russian, which is fair, but besides this I am not getting the sense of character depth you seem to be keyed in on that I do from my favorite authors. Not in the whole of the first part do any of the characters seem interesting beyond superficialities, at least to me. In addition its awfully verbose in places that it seems unnecessary. Perhaps a bit is foreshadowing but I really do not need to know, nor am I interested in, the details of how Annas curls fall around her neck. It creates a bland atmosphere that reminds me of watching soap operas mid day with my mother on a day home sick from school. Im sure by personal resentment of gentility also contributes to my general feeling as well.
Again I want to reiterate that I am enjoying it, and will finish, but really feel like I am enjoying it in the manner of a romance novel except I feel like I've got something wrong by having reading it feel trashy asf

TBF, I've got no idea how the hell F451 got into the western canon, it's legit light-novel tier. I would challenge you on Tolstoy not holding a candle to any McCarthy. It's hard to see how you can argue that The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark, heck even The Road, are somehow better than War and Peace. From what I've read so far of Anna Karenina, it easily tops it when it comes to characters and the use of themes. Early Mccarthy suffers from some purple prose, and his early stories feel directionless.

We just have to disagree on characters not being interesting beyond superficialities. I'm a huge Mccarthy simp, but his characters don't shine because of their depth (they are more like archetypes imo), are the Kid or Lewelyn Moss 3 dimensional or with a deep character arc? Whereas Tolstoy's characters feel real as fuck, these are people you know, and they show all the complexity of real humans.

I agree with some stuff being verbose, but again, how can you critique Tolstoy for this and not Mccarthy? Especially early Mccarthy. Though Mccarthy is way prettier verbose stuff.

For the rest of your critique, perhaps it's just a matter of intuition. I just see Anna Karenina's world as real, I feel like I'm the train with the character, watching them dance... Not a bland or soapy atmosphere at all IMO, but if you see that way, I don't think I can argue against your feelings on the matter.

Great post regardless, it's based to give your hesitancies with such a popular piece of literature.
 
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Tolstoy's way of calling out a basic bitch:
"This was the princess Myagkaya, notorious for her simplicity and the roughness of her manners, and nicknamed l'enfant terrible"
I loved Myagkaya. Tolstoy calls her simple, but I got the sense that he was using her lack of tact to point out how disingenuous everyone else at the party was being. She always says exactly what she means and the people around her love her for it, not because they approve of her sincerity but because they think it's hilarious. Yet another character in this book I feel like I've met in real life.
you often feel like several chapters could've been lumped together into one
I don't mind the length of the book or Tolstoy's verbosity but the way he keeps putting chapter breaks in the middle of a scene is really weird. For example, chapters 1-3 of Part 2 would make way more sense as one long chapter about the doctor's visit to the Scherbatsky house. At first I thought the abnormally short chapters were a result of Tolstoy having space limits due to writing a serialized novel, but AK was actually divided up into 13 long multiple-chapter installments and published in a book-length journal instead of a newspaper or magazine. Maybe it's just a 19th century thing. I don't mind it too much because it makes the book easy to read on the train.
Speaking of serialization, this site has a list of the original 13 installments. They don't entirely correspond with the final 8 parts, but looking back over what I've read already I can see where there are stopping and starting points in the text left over from the original divisions. Following the original release schedule and reading one installment a month could be a fun book club idea. I also found this article about a Russian prince who read AK as it was being published and recorded his reactions to the novel in his diary. I haven't read it yet, but am planning on coming back to it once I've finished the book to see how his response compares to mine.
 
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I loved Myagkaya. Tolstoy calls her simple, but I got the sense that he was using her lack of tact to point out how disingenuous everyone else at the party was being. She always says exactly what she means and the people around her love her for it, not because they approve of her sincerity but because they think it's hilarious. Yet another character in this book I feel like I've met in real life.

I don't mind the length of the book or Tolstoy's verbosity but the way he keeps putting chapter breaks in the middle of a scene is really weird. For example, chapters 1-3 of Part 2 would make way more sense as one long chapter about the doctor's visit to the Scherbatsky house. At first I thought the abnormally short chapters were a result of Tolstoy having space limits due to writing a serialized novel, but AK was actually divided up into 13 long multiple-chapter installments and published in a book-length journal instead of a newspaper or magazine. Maybe it's just a 19th century thing. I don't mind it too much because it makes the book easy to read on the train.
Speaking of serialization, this site has a list of the original 13 installments. They don't entirely correspond with the final 8 parts, but looking back over what I've read already I can see where there are stopping and starting points in the text left over from the original divisions. Following the original release schedule and reading one installment a month could be a fun book club idea. I also found this article about a Russian prince who read AK as it was being published and recorded his reactions to the novel in his diary. I haven't read it yet, but am planning on coming back to it once I've finished the book to see how his response compares to mine.
I've always found the way old russian novels like those from Tolstoy and Dosto were published really interesting. We really don't see that format of publication nowadays I don't think. Imagine if Infinite Jest was published monthly over the internet lmao. Funnily enough, the closest thing we might have to how AK or C&P were published might be light novels....
 
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Anna Karenina bros... How are we holding up? Reading something like this is dense lol. I have yet to read this weeks pages, mostly cause I keep getting distracted with other novels, and I haven't written my notes down for last week's pages. Tomorrow I'll try doing a write up.
 
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Anna Karenina bros... How are we holding up? Reading something like this is dense lol. I have yet to read this weeks pages, mostly cause I keep getting distracted with other novels, and I haven't written my notes down for last week's pages. Tomorrow I'll try doing a write up.
Finished part 2 today. Still enjoying it a lot, but the fact that every single character is running away from their problems or trying to ignore how they feel in some way is starting to get to me. The situation with Anna and her husband is just depressing. Kitty is the only character who's had a real moment of self-realization so far, everyone else is either deluding themselves or just "going with the flow" and not really thinking about what they're doing. The train imagery you mentioned in one of your previous posts absolutely fits - "Though Vronksy's whole inner life was absorbed by his passion, his external life ran unalterably and inevitably along its former customary rails of social and regimental connections and interests." Vronsky (like everyone else) is absorbed by feelings he doesn't want to acknowledge. He simultaneously wants to take responsibility for Anna's pregnancy and for everything to continue like normal without there being any consequences for his actions. The result is a disaster - he's distracted during the steeplechase and makes a stupid mistake that costs him both the race and the life of his favorite horse (fittingly a mare.) Same goes for Levin, who wants everything to go back to normal at his estate despite the fact that he's still upset at being rejected by Kitty. Or Anna herself, who wants to be married to both Karenin and Vronsky at the same time and puts off telling her husband about the affair until it's too late to be ignored.
I'm starting to think that Tolstoy was trying to draw a parallel between this lack of self-awareness in the characters of AK and the ultimate fate of Russian society in the late 19th century. It's almost like he knew that the upper-class world it describes was going to be completely destroyed 40 years after the novel was published, and that the change would come as surprise to those Russians who had been "going with the flow" based on the assumption that there would always be a tsar. Maybe this is something that only makes sense retroactively, but Tolstoy must have known that he was living through a political turning point resulting from the emancipation of the serfs and the transfer of wealth from the traditional aristocracy to the middle class - see Levin's rant in chapter 17. I also wonder if AK had as good of a reputation before the revolution as it does now, or if its current status as a classic has something to do with post-revolutionary nostalgia.
TL;DR Anna Karenina reads like a slow-motion train accident. And yes, I've been spoiled on the ending.
 
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