Category Archives: Good Reads

Anna Karenina (final four parts)

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

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It was my first time to read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, but not in a Lena Dunham sort of way.

Today, having no polling stations to visit or curtains to pull back, I’ll cast a small line in the sand on top of a new ground rule: Rather than playing loose and twisting facts into saucy vote-catching soundbites  — that spin so out-of-control during hunting seasons for offices where the buck rarely stops anywhere any more — how about some good old-fashioned honesty?

For when it comes to sharing thoughts about anything important — Anna Karenina, included — nothing else will do.  So here it is:  I was just like one of those non-voting but imaginary Girls in the political endorsement ad that merited Ms. Dunham’s raised eyebrows.  Yes, upon finishing the book last week, I knew which way I wanted to vote.  But I couldn’t justify the reasons for it.  I wasn’t feeling it.  “No, I wasn’t ready.”

When words wouldn’t come last Thursday, I decided to first put some literary distance between me and Anna Karenina.  In short order, I consumed two contemporary novels:  First up was Kevin Powers highly acclaimed and National Book Award nominee, The Yellow Birds; the lesser second was Emma Staub’s Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures.  Both possessed nice form and stylish uses of language.  But neither moved me.  The stories felt manufactured.  The characters, unfortunates souls that they were, felt flat and far removed from their own story lines.  In the end, the novels held no meaning for me, in spite of their glowing endorsements.

Anna Karenina, on the other hand, offered words that made time fly and other commitments negotiable.  I can’t count how often I nodded to thoughts expressed over one hundred and thirty years ago.  How well Tolstoy shadowed the messy human condition with his pen.  To be sure, the structure and the language were not the highlights, but instead, the invisible seams that held everything together.  Why for an old girl, this story still moved well, on and off the page.

But still — what was it about this old, not so unusual tale, that made it feel so alive and fresh?  That made me care about the characters, even when they were being terrible and so humanly self-centered?  I wish I knew.  But after reading the two books above and a third — Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue — in the same space of time that I read Anna Karenina, I know that whatever Tolstoy possessed cannot be taught, even in the most prestigious of MFA programs.

All of this is not to say that Count Tolstoy didn’t write beautiful passages.  There are a number I could pluck from the text, to offer as souvenirs of reading pleasures.  I enjoyed the hunting scene where the point-of-view takes us into the mind of Levin’s conflict-ridden dog, who sensed the fowl before his human owner knew it was afoot.  (Chapter XII, Part Six).  And then there was that lovely contrast drawn between Levin’s two social calls during a single day in Moscow.  The obligatory first felt like hours, though counted in minutes by the clock; the second, its mirror image, revealed how sharing good company makes time pass as fast as life itself. (Chapters VI and X, Part Seven)

These I resist, and others too, for one that seems most appropriate in the closing days before elections are held:

“‘One vote could decide the whole thing, and you must be serious and consistent if you want to serve the common cause,’ Sergei Ivanovich concluded.

But Levin had forgotten that, and it was painful for him to see these good people, whom he respected, in such unpleasant, angry agitation.  To rid himself of that painful feeling, he went to the other room without waiting for the end of the debate.  No one was there except the servants at the buffet.  Seeing the servants busily wiping platters and setting out plates and glasses, seeing their calm, animated faces, Levin experienced a sudden feeling of relief, as if he had gone from a stinking room into the fresh air.”  (Chapter XXVIII, Part Six)

Oh, the truth of it!  Why it’s almost too good to be true.  And for that reason alone, I can’t imagine this first reading of Anna Karenina will be my last.  Nor, I trust, will voting in the upcoming election be less satisfying than my first.  But I wonder:  Are first times at doing anything really as good as some promote them to be?

In the tale end of things, it’s your vote.  It does count, but not in a Leo Tolstoy sort of way.

~~~

Much thanks to Arti for hosting this read-along.  For more reviews and reactions, visit Ripple Effects.

Anna Karenina (first four parts)

30 Sunday Sep 2012

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I can’t remember what we were talking about last July in class, when the thread of discussion turned to Tolstoy’s, Anna Karenina.

But two things I do recall.  One, that I was the only student, out of a class of twelve, to confess I’d never read it.  And two, how ready I became to read it, upon hearing my writing instructor’s passionate response:

  “Don’t deny yourself this pleasure.”

What else shall I say, dear reader, about my delicious splurge in reading this novel? The one I’ve had to set aside, with great gnashing of teeth, for a few days in order to satisfy other commitments.

One thing for sure, I’ve no interest in summarizing the narrative dream created by Count Tolstoy’s delightful tale.  I know my limits.  I cannot do it justice.

But I can’t say enough about how much I admire Tolstoy’s ability to transport me to late nineteenth century Russia, to make me feel as if I’m eavesdropping on everyday conversations on matters of the heart.  And not just love and marriage and divorce — but rather, it seems, anything and everything that could be of passionate concern and interest to 1870‘s nobility: The many references to then contemporary artists; the philosophical discussions and scholarly arguments about theology and communism; heated exchanges about women’s rights and education of the masses; the colorful mishmash of opinions on best agricultural practices in the face of a Russian labor force entrenched in old ways of doing things; even spiritual practices and devotion are touched upon.

Gosh, it just feels so relevant.  Is there truly nothing new under the Sun?

And the way he writes, in such intimate tones, as if he were telling the story to me alone.

And the writing skill he draws upon in using contrasts of threes, in order to paint readers a huge canvas of Russian life.  We have three couples, in various stages of marital bliss.  Or not.  Three vocations:  Gentlemen farmer, government bureaucrat and career military.  Three locales. Two cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg.  And some slice of heaven somewhere far out in the rural farmlands where some of my favorite passages have laid.  LIke this one, told from Levin’s point-of-view:

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.  And, going out to the yard, Levin, like a tree in spring, not yet knowing where and how its young shoots and branches, still confined in swollen buds, will grow, did not himself know very well which parts of his beloved estate he would occupy himself with now, but felt that he was filled with the very best plan and projects.”   [page 153, Penguin Books, 2000, translation by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky]

Oh, I understand Levin, well, because I too, am Levin.

So, now, as I put aside my novel, I console myself that I am no worse off than Anna Karenina’s original readers, who also were forced to do without, while waiting in between, for the next installment to be published. Why I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that they, like us, took time to share thoughts between reading installments.

And though it will be lovely someday to reread Anna, for now I feel darn lucky to be a new reader.  Because I can’t say what will happen next!

Why the whole being on the edge of my seat thing reminds me a lot of following Downton Abbey.

 — POP OVER TO RIPPLE EFFECTS TO READ ARTI’S REVIEW AND FOR LINKS THAT WILL CONNECT YOU TO REVIEWS OF OTHERS.

Midnight’s Children: The Final Jar of Time

30 Saturday Jun 2012

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Funny, isn’t it?  That twenty days after first tasting the final words of Midnight’s Children, I’m still pondering those pickle jars.

So why pickle jars?  And not the exotic people, places and things introduced into my mind, by the magical writing of the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t author, Salman Rushdie? (Can anyone use that “writery” trick of foreshadowing as effective as he?)

How can it be that it’s the image of thirty-one pickle jars trumping all else, in the end?  Especially that one.  You know.  On the end.  Empty and waiting.

“Twenty-six pickle-jars stand gravely on a shelf; twenty-six special blends, each with its identifying label, neatly inscribed with familiar phrases:  “Movements Performed by Pepperpots,” for instance, or “Alpha and Omega,” or “Commander Sabarmati’s Baton.”  Twenty-six rattle eloquently when local trains go yellow and browning past; on my desk, five empty jars tinkle urgently, reminding me of my uncompleted task. But now I cannot linger over empty pickle-jars; the night is for words, and green chutney must wait its turn.”  —  p. 443

Pickle jars represent chapters; thirty full jars equate to thirty full chapters of the novel.  Thirty full chapters of the narrator’s Saleem Sinai’s life.  So full —  not of preserved cucumbers — but of a cucumber-nosed narrator’s stories, dreams and memories truth.  Artfully told.  Artfully preserved.  Artfully titled, with chapter headings that hide as much as they reveal; “Movements Performed by Pepperpots,” for example.  Hmmm.  What might that concoction smell and taste like?

I wouldn’t have written these words twenty days ago. Because the words and ending felt flat first-time around.  The final bite of words left a bad taste in my mouth.  Like onions that linger to overstay their welcome.

I expected something spicy.  Something like all that had come before.  After all, I had followed the narrator through India, Pakistan and Bangladesh —  through the ups and downs of his dramatic “India-talkie” life.  And like a child-soldier, I longed for a little more “Ka-pow’ for the finale.  Know what I mean?

I should have known better.  By now, I should have known Rushdie better.  Because, as with Books One and Two, it’s the second reading where appreciation for Rushdie’s novel grows, where chapter contents begin to meld into flavors both fabulous and subtle on the tongue and mind.  Cucumbers, after all, are not pickles overnight.  And neither are Rushdie’s pickle jars of stories.  They require time and space to appreciate fully.

“One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history.  They may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be overpowering, tears may rise to eyes;  I hope nevertheless that it will be possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of truth… that they are, despite everything, acts of love.” p. 531

Truth.  Again it’s truth.  Truth floating up and swirling all around.  No longer truth in general, but truth in particular.  Truth as it’s embodied in a particular person.  Truth as it’s embodied in the narrator, Saleem.   And truth as it’s lived out (or not) by a country’s leaders. Military might as well as political power.  India.  Pakistan.  Eeny.  Meeny.  Miny.  Moe.    But rather than summarize, I prefer to get out-of-the-way, and let the Master Magician pull those ‘true-self’ “Rusdie-isms” out of his own top hat.

“Don’t you remember really?  Nothing? Allah, you don’t feel bad.  Somewhere you’ve maybe got mother father sister,” but the buddha interrupted him gently:  “Don’t try and fill my head with all that history.  I am who I am, that’s all there is.” [emphasis added] p. 403

“In the aftermath of the Sundarbans, my old self was waiting to reclaim me.  I should have known:  no escape from past acquaintance.  What you were is forever who you are.”  [emphasis added]  p. 423

“I no longer want to be anything except what who I am.  Who what am I?  My answer:  I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me.  I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine.  I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come.  Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each “I,” everyone of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude.  I repeat for the last time”  to understand me, you’ll have to swallow a world.” [emphasis added] p. 440-41

Simply beautiful.  Don’t you think? But as I said at the beginning, it’s the ending jar that gets me.  The jar that remains empty, since it represents the narrator’s future. And not just Saleem’s future, but my future, too.  And your future. And all of our futures.  Eeny.  Meeny.  Miny.  Moe.

Last days.  Last words.  Last breaths.  And then, eternity.  Yes, in the end, knowing ourselves — our true selves — requires accepting our own mortality.  Our own emptiness.  Our now-you-see-us-and-now-you-don’t selves. Which reminds me of Rushdie’s fabulous take on the after-life where we get a taste of invisibility through Parvarti’s magic tricks…. p. 438-39

And so much else, that I’ve no time to go there….

But later.  Maybe, then.  Maybe, then, we’ll have more time.  For as the great Rushdie, himself, once wrote,

“To pickle is to give immortality, after all…”  p. 531

————

Note 1:  For other book reviews, pop over to Arti’s place and follow the links.

Note 2: All page references are based on the 2006 Random House Trade Paperback Edition.