anna karenina

I am just about finished reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and I say I really enjoyed it. I had tried reading it a few years back, well, many years back but I did not like it at all, I barely got past the first page, perhaps it had to do with that particular translation; this time it really jelled.

My first reaction, after reading about three pages was that of utmost joy. I have not enjoyed anything this much since Jane Austen. So I was just unabashedly happy with the mere thought that I had War and Peace to look forward to. Yes, yes, it is stupid to think about the next book when you still have about nine hundred and sixty pages left to read in the book in your hand and that probably qualifies for another kind adultery, but, whatever. I was just so amazed that here is this wonderful book, this writer, that I have known of all my life, and yet, have never bothered to read, and there is not just what is in my hands but more of what he has written. An embarrassment of riches if there ever was one.

Now, having almost finished it, I am a fan of his writing style. He is able to draw each character in such detail, he is able to relate to them all emotionally and he is able to give the appearance of them all being very different from each other. That in my opinion is the hardest thing for a writer, at least that is what I think right now. I am impressed by how equally well he can describe what the women and the men in the book feel, think, and want. Being a woman, I always find myself wondering what the men think and feel, mostly because of this notion in popular culture that men and women are so different.

Personally I am intimidated by the though of writing about a political, socio-economic debate between characters. I feel severely lacking in such knowledge and feel I shall not be able to bring out cohesive arguments, besides I always find such arguments pointless. They are a bad waste of good time in my opinion, and I am often bored when I listen to men discuss policy and stocks and stuff at parties, mostly because either they are all saying the same thing, or they are not listening to each other and merely want to prove they know more than the next guy, or more often than not none of them have any idea what they are talking about. Most of these discussions that I have heard in my lifetime, between my dad and his friends, and now between my husband and his friends are sad attempts at paraphrasing yesterday's editorial in one's own words and passing it off for original thought! really! I read the paper too! so please, spare me the horror!

Now what has that got to do with Tolstoy and Anna Karenina? Well, this, that he is able to not only write these arguments in a convincing coherent manner, but he is also able to show that they do not really matter. It is the fluff that the real story happens around, but it also goes to give depth or depict the shallowness of certain characters. I think I can never do it myself, not without considerable to the power of infinity effort that is, and hence I admire him even more for being able to do that. And I love him, for showing one of his principle characters (Levin) as taking no interest in these discussions. Well, glad to know there are men who are equally bored of this nonsensical talk. And yes, I accede that the stuff that women talk about, food, housekeeping, and kids is equally nonsensical too. They are both means of structuring time in social contexts coz for some weird reason we cannot sit together and be comfortably quiet. We just have to talk. It's a part of the human condition.

What I did not like that much about the book was Tolstoy's failure to depict Anna's emotional state when she decides to finally give in to Vronsky's overtures. We see her resistance, we see she is aware of the downfall this will be, we see her pushing him away and then suddenly she has taken the plunge. Why? What was she thinking? It was especially disheartening for me to see Tolstoy evade that part, because I see him doing this astonishingly detailed description of her mindset just before she commits suicide. It was like I was with her, I was feeling and thinking everything that she was, I took that journey with her going to Dolly's home, feeling humiliated, lost, option less, and I was with her when she went to the railway station, I was with her when she stood beside the platform and imagined herself falling on the tracks. I can't say if I agreed with her about the hopelessness of her situation, but I know that I understood her. I got it. I got why she felt that the jump and the subsequent death could be her only means of getting out of the mire she was in.

So when he can write so well, that he can convince me that she felt helpless enough to jump, why did he not write to convince me that she felt equally compelled to commit the adultery. Which in effect was the same thing. I got the impression that Anna, from the beginning understood that adultery was suicide, in her social position. She understood that it was a one way street and at the end of it, she would be a fallen woman. But he never goes into her mental state at that time, he does not so acutely describe why she took that first step towards her ruin. She was smart enough to expect every single consequence, but Tolstoy does not describe it, why? Is it because it is impossible to keep the aura of the heroine if you go into such murky confused workings of the brain? And by the time he begins to describe her end, she has already fallen from grace and we can pity her as a once loved friend who has lost her mental balance, whereas in fact that balance never existed. It would be hard to love an imbalanced character from the start so he hides it? Because when i think about it, Vronsky was was just another young captain trying to flirt with a married woman. Anna must have met many of them. Why him? What was so special about him? Why does Tolstoy not write about that? At times I felt like the adultery had nothing to do with Vronsky. It was all Anna, and her own self-destructive streak. He just happened to be there.

Is that what is his "brilliance" because Tolstoy without writing it explicitly, creates her character as one that defies logic to make these grand acts of self-annihilation and self-loathing. Her committing adultery, her telling her husband about it to incite his wrath, her refusal of his offer of divorce, her insistence on going to public places and facing humiliation, and her final suicide. I don't know. Maybe that is his brilliance, but I felt cheated. I think these were such complex decisions that he being this great writer that he was, I wish he had tackled them. I wish he would have written about her mental state at each of these moments, when she took these logic defying steps. It if it meant she could no longer come across as a cool heroine then so be it. I would have still read that.

But, overall, he writes beautifully, and I feel a special friendship to Levin, which i believe is Tolstoy himself, and that is nice feeling, to feel like you and someone else this great think on the same lines :)

Bill Bryson's A short history of nearly everything.

I am reading this book and it is a riot. I have to keep reminding myself not to laugh out so loud. Since I get most of my reading done when I am outside, or when folks at home are sleeping, so...

I think I am enjoying it more because it is such a right time in my life to be reading this, okay that sounds grander than it is, it is just this particular sequence of books that I have or am reading along with this one, that makes me get this one better.

Just this one part I was on last night where he keeps going on and on about how the conditions on earth are just right for human life to survive, and if the earth had been just a little bit closer to or farther from the sun we could not have existed, and blah blah blah... I could gag on that. I had to force myself to read that part. Okay, skim, I would have gladly skipped it altogether, but only because the book has been so good so far so, you gotta cut people some slack, un till finally he says what I have been thinking all along, or more like Mr. Feynman says it, and I go, there, I knew there had to be a reason why I liked him so much. Mr. Feynman that is.

In case you are going what is she talking about? Here is the synopsis:

There are a lot of people who love to marvel at the fact how conditions on earth are just right for human life, how delicate a balance has been struck just so we could thrive, and they give plenty of examples to prove their point. It is a circular argument that looks very promising on the face of it. The trouble is that the truth is more than likely the other way round. Because the conditions were so we evolved. We evolved to suit our conditions not the other way around. You can call it divine providence all you want but really it is just.... well... yeah...

Ender's game

I read Ender's game when a student of mine asked me how I could be a science teacher and not read science fiction? I really did not know what to say. You see, I could not figure out if it was a very smart question or a very stupid question to ask. What is the correlation? Is there one? Do all science teachers read science fiction? Should we not instead look down upon it, after all it's not real science now is it? Don't journalists look down upon paparazzi? They don't get the real news :)

okay, bad analogy. Kill me.

I have read a lot of science fiction since, thanks to some very dedicated students and a die hard science fiction junkie of a friend.

I think Ender's Game is high on the list. Though the second time round it was not that much fun, once you know the secret it is hard to be surprised, but then all thrillers suffer from that flaw. Personally i think it is a great book to read once at least, though in all honesty I must admit that none of my book club women liked it, which is very surprising to me and very disheartening because that book on their list was the reason I joined their club in the first place that and Sense and Sensibility. So I was disappointed in them, they keep reading all those sad, tear jerking, emotionally manipulative stories from the middle east, and they wrinkle up their noses at this. But consider the demographics, they are all white middle aged women in their early 30's to late 60's, if you donot belong to that group, you just might like the book. I do. And I am the only brown person in there. :) No, don't nobody go around construing that as racism, I am just stating a fact here, and yes, there probably is no correlation either, i am just .... making a rationalization, mostly because i really like my book club and i really wanted them to like Ender's Game, and it is very isolating to be the only person in the room who says I loved the book and every one else looks at you like you are from another planet, because they all hated it.

Chitralekha

This just has to be one of my most favourite books ever. Chitralekha by Bhagvatisharan Verma. It has been a while since I read it, and I am horrible with names, so I do not remember any, but the premise and the treatment of the subject matter was so beautiful, it has stayed with me forever. in my own words this is what the story is, and even at the risk of repeating myself, because I say this all the time, its not the story, it the telling that makes a great book. Still...

Two students of a sage ask him which is the more noble path - that of a householder or that of an ascetic? The sage takes them and leaves one in the home of a merchant and another with an ascetic, asking them to observe the life and motivations of both and come to their own conclusions. I don't remember the details much, but the merchant who spends a lot of time with the courtesan 'Chitralekha' comes across as a worldly man with worldly vices, whereas the ascetic spends most of his time in prayers.

Their lives intersect over the courtesan who is looked down upon by the asectic, she challenges his understanding of God, that if he shuns the world is he not rejecting the lord's creation, and is that not an insult to the maker himself? The merchant does not interfere in the continuing battle of wits between the two. Again I am dicey on the details but over the course of the next year, Chitralekha begins to be ashamed of her life lived in the pursuit of sensual pleasures, and goes to the ascetic to take her in and help her get out of this life of sin. The ascetic does, but later falls for her and then blames her for his own degradation. I don't remember what the two do after, I think the ascetic runs away, or does he kill himself? or does she? i can't remember, essentially it is the mutual downfall of the two of them, each dragging the other.

Chitalekha who was never ashamed of her own choices in life begins to doubt herself because of some clever arguments by a man of God, and is then crest fallen to find him as frail, weak, and human as any other man she has ever known. And the ascetic on the other hand realizing that it was one thing to be give lectures on celebacy when he had never been near a woman and quite another to look temptation in the eye and say thanks, but no thanks. The irony of it, that they both fall for actions they always knew were wrong. To me the story is a testament to the fact that arguments do not always come from a place of understanding. We can yell and shout and defend our own point of view to death, without ever internalizing the concepts, or being on a solid footing ourselves. That it is very easy to be duped by glibness of word, but it is not always supported by action. The whole idea of not calling any man great till he is dead, because you don't know what turn he is going to slip at.

And in the midst of all these righteous, loud mouthed defenders of their own beliefs, is the merchant. He lives a life of comfort, he does what he wants and he does not defend himself. People criticize him for drinking, for spending nights at Chitralekha's home, for not being a pious religious man and he does not seem to care. He loves her. He continues to love her through everything that happens to her. He loves her when people call her names, he loves her when she mocks the ascetic, he loves her when she loathes herself, he loves her when she leaves him and her riches to be with the ascetic and he loves her when the ascetic casts her away. He loves her in spite of what anyone else thinks, including herself.

In the end, it is his understanding of life and love,duty and passion, and right and wrong that comes across as the sanest and the most natural one. It is the slow and gradual growth of his character that is the most stunning part of the book.

The Jane Austen Book Club

Just saw the movie - The Jane Austen Book Club (2007), was okay but got me thinking of all those amazing Austen books, of falling in love, of getting married, of love vs reason, of the uncertainties of the future, of the hope of youth, but above all of friends - past and present. And each of those deserve separate posts, which i am going to write in the future. For now i want to talk about the books.

Which is my favorite Austen book? I don't know. I like them all. Who is my favorite Austen heroine? Well... I don't know. We all want to be Elizabeth Bennett now don't we? :) I do too a little bit, but I guess I like Emma a lot more. Lizzy is so perfect in most respects, but she is scared of making mistakes, of making a fool of herself, may be because she is surrounded by all these people that embarrass her to no end, but i would like to see her take a risk once in a while.

Emma makes a lot more mistakes, and i love her for she blushes for them profusely :) She is equally critical of herself and others, but she is so much willing to accept her mistakes and works so hard to improve herself.

I do not think being safe all the time is the way to go in life, you have to put yourself out there - a little bit at least. And i guess that is why Fanny Price does not really cut it too well with me, no i like her, its hard to not like an Austen heroine, but sometimes i wish she did somethings differently.

Wait, should we start a Jane Austen Book Club too? Wow I would love that. Let me know if you want to participate.