Well, despite the fact that I’ve been playing copious amounts of Hay Day and Gardenscapes during quarantine I did somehow manage to find time to read Anna Karenina. Yes, that Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. All eight hundred and sixty four glorious pages of it.
My nephew Tucker was about to start it in one of his college classes so I thought, well, clearly I have the time, I’ll dive in and it’ll give me something to talk to him about.
Having finished it, I can now say I have many thoughts and feelings on the book. In fact, my thoughts, they are legion. My main takeaway from the book is that it is, without a doubt, the greatest novel I have ever read. Having said that it’s not always the easiest book to read.
I went into it by printing this cheat sheet off:
And referring to it constantly. Then I even bought the dad gum Spark Notes and I would read a chapter in the book then read a chapter in the Spark Notes. Look, I’m forty three and I’m done with worrying about what people think. You can read one hundred and fifty year old Russian literature without Spark Notes? Congratulations. I can’t.
Ya know, Tolstoy is a little like Jeff Foxworthy. Yes, Jeff Foxworthy the uber redneck southern comedian. Work with me on this. Tolstoy is going to give you incredibly valuable life lessons that are beautifully written. He’s going to give you romance and high drama but he’s also going to make you learn something. He’s going to teach you about social privilege and even nineteenth century farming techniques. You are gonna learn. And it just made me think of that Jeff Foxworthy bit where he talked about how marriage advice needs to be worked into the commentary of baseball games:
And I do think men would take advice on relationships but we’re not
gonna sit down and read magazines about it.
You got to feed it to us in a way we’d accept
it. Sneak it into the play-by-play of a baseball game
“and there’s strike three Greg Maddux looking really good today.
Speaking of looking good fellas from time to time your woman needs to be reminded that she’s still looking good to you”
Clearly I’m on to something.
Tucker Wilson. Child, Are you listening? Here is the practical lesson of this book: a lack of candor kills relationships. Over and over again in these relationships Tolstoy says something like ‘but neither of them gave voice to their grievances. No. No. No. No.
I wasn’t done.
If you want success in a relationship you have to be vulnerable enough to give voice to those grievances! So many of these issues would be settled if one of the members would say ‘hey, heres what wrong. Here’s what I need.
Because doesn’t this issue play out over and over again in marriage. “But neither of them gave voice to their grievances.”
I mean, I say ‘no no no’ but just last week this happened at our house. I saw something I liked online. Honestly, I can’t even remember what it was. Something small but I liked it. So I texted a picture of it to Billy, my husband, who is drowning in responsibilities, and said ‘this would make a good gift for me for our anniversary.’
Y’all, this man I’ve been married to for almost twenty years texted back ‘can you just buy it for yourself.‘ Uh, no sir, I cannot. I mean, mature Paula could but immature Paula is not here for this. So CLEARLY the right thing to do here would be to gently say to him at a later date ‘hey, here’s why this hurt my feelings‘ but I didn’t. Instead, I just stuffed it down like freaking Anna Karenina and, spoiler alert, that didn’t work out well for her. And now every time I get annoyed with him I think ‘and he even wanted me to buy my own anniversary present’ like some spoiled petulant child. Lord, save me from me.
Man. Me and Jeff and Leo clearly need to spend some more time with each other.