A Long-Distance Reading Venture

Like most Facebook users, one of the things I've enjoyed most about the social network is that I've been able to reconnect with old friends from high school and college, some to whom I haven't spoken in more than twenty years. One of those friends is Susan Baldwin, a dear high school chum. I learned quickly that Susan and I still have much in common, including an affinity for reading and writing. Like me, Susan keeps a regular blog, titled Whilst, which I check regularly, and in one of her latest posts, she mentioned that she is reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.


As it turns out, I recently attended the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, where the Simon & Schuster representative gave me three copies of the book. To English teachers, getting free books is like winning the lottery, so I was one happy educator! So I had this goal to begin Anna Karenina, just as soon as I finished reading The Devil in the White City and Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty. I've finished the former and am halfway through the latter, but when I read Susan's posting, I decided to go ahead and start this Russian classic. I e-mailed Susan and suggested we read it together. She signed on at once!

Susan is about 50 pages ahead of me, so I'll have to read fast. I'm only on page 25, but that's because before I began reading the novel, I read the introduction, the chronology of Leo Tolstoy's life and work, and the historical context of Anna Karenina. I felt those textual supplements were necessary because I'm ashamed to say that even though I've taught literature for 20 years and I have a PhD in English, I've never read a Tolstoy novel (But I did try when I was in high school. I just couldn't get through it because I was expecting it to be about Anna and I couldn't get through the parallel plot about Levin. As a more mature reader, I'll have patience for Levin this time around).

I do know the story, though. Like all modern students, I watched the movie. Twice, actually. I saw the Vivien Leigh version. Wasn't she gorgeous? I enjoyed that film so much because it ignored Levin altogether. And the story was so good that, even as a 20 year-old viewer, I didn't even mind watching it in black and white. Shortly after Davis was born and I was home with more TV time, I watched the Sophie Marceau version of the film. I remember very little about it, which says much about the quality of that iteration.

So now, at 44, I embark on the novel again, and what I've learned about the author helps me to make sense of the story. For instance, Tolstoy was orphaned as a youngster, and he was then sent to live with relatives, who shortly thereafter died as well. Poor Leo! Her certainly knew about loss. I guess that unhappy childhood stuck with him, as evidenced in this photo.



When he grew up, he studied Eastern languages and law, but he left the university before graduating to return to his home town of Yasnaya Polyana (which sounds a lot like Yoknapatawpha County) , where he volunteered in the army. As everyone knows, he wrote several noteworthy books of fiction and non-fiction, but I was unaware that he started a school for the children of Yasnaya Polyana, that he married an aristocratic neighbor, Sofia Bers, that later in life he and his wife organized famine relief programs, or that he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church. Apparently, he was also excommunicated from the local barber shop.

Ironically, Tolstoy died in a railroad station, just like his title character Anna Karenina (although the deaths varied--he died of pneumonia. She had a fight with the train--the train won).

I also learned that, much to my surprise, World War II started in 1914! I think I know why Simon and Schuster gave me three copies of this book.

Typos aside, the introductory matter has been informative, and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens when the adulterous Stephan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky has a visit from his sister, Anna (I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the Arkadyevitch tree). In later postings, I'll write my impressions of the novel so far, as well as what Susan and I have to say about it in our online discussions.