Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Constance Garnett
Rupa / Classics Library, 1877, 828 pages

reviewed by T. Nelson

his novel, regarded by some as one of the greatest ever written, is a compelling depiction of human emotions and mankind's search for meaning and fulfilment.

In the story, Anna, an unhappily married woman, has an affair with Vronsky, an army officer, who falls madly in love with her at first sight and dumps the 18-year-old girl he had asked to marry. Later, while racing his prize horse, his thought­less­ness and penchant for risk-taking cause him to lose the race. His horse's back is broken and it is killed. This tells us all we need to know about what will happen in the rest of the story, and why.

Even though the characters, who are all members of the Russian aristocracy, follow strict formalized rituals in all their interactions, in reality they are highly emotional beings—maybe even high-strung—as they suffer through illness, romantic longing, death, long tedious speeches, worries about their financial problems, and phony upper-class social engagements. Over time, Anna, knowing Vronsky's past history, becomes more and more suspicious of him but uses her beauty and charm to keep him, even refusing to bear children. Finally she has a psychotic break that ends in tragedy.

The first line of the novel is famous: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” At the end, through the character Levin, the author tells us his idea that fulfilment cannot be found in beauty, art, patriotism, politics, philosophy, or science but only through religion. He compares humans to some children who were having fun smashing their cups, saying that what they were destroying was the very thing they lived by. Levin says to himself:

Isn't it just the same that we do, that I did, searching by the aid of reason for the significance of the forces of nature and the meaning of the life of man? . . . And don't all the theories of philosophy do the same, trying by the path of thought, which is strange and not natural to man, to bring him to a knowledge of what he has known long ago, and knows so certainly that he could not live at all without it.

[L]leave us without passions and thoughts, without any idea of the one God, of the Creator, or without any idea of what is right, without any idea of moral evil. Just try and build up anything without those ideas! We only try and destroy them, because we're spiritually provided for. Exactly like the children!

Levin's sudden conversion from a farmer content to shoot grouse and drink with his farmhands to a serene religious mystic is interesting but out of character, and it seems as if the author was merely sounding out his new ideas about religion.

But the remainder is a master­piece of the author's imagination and skill at observing and reflecting on the details of life and death and assembling those details into a vivid, captivating story. The depiction of Anna's paranoid psychosis, utterly convincing to anyone who has witnessed it in real life, and the heartless reactions of those who witness her tragedy may tell us more about the author's real beliefs than Levin's fifty-page religious sermon at the end. Though the author became highly religious after writing this book, his views continued to evolve and he got excom­muni­cated from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. His search for meaning in a world of inhumanity and meaningless suffering in some ways mark this work as a forerunner to existentialism.

nov 22 2023. updated nov 24 2023

Doctor Faustus

by Thomas Mann
Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter
Everyman's Library, 1947 / 1992, 523 pages

reviewed by T. Nelson

rarely read novels. I learned years ago that when one person talks about another, they're invariably trying to manipulate you. How much more so when they tell you in advance they're making it all up. And usually in fiction the characters seem more like cartoons than real people.

But some ideas simply can't be expressed in nonfiction. Thomas Mann's reimagining of Goethe's Doctor Faustus legend is an example. The Nobel Prize winner wrote this to express his lament about how one of the world's most sophisticated cultures destroyed itself by willingly embracing evil in its attempt to achieve greatness.

In the story, a classical music composer named Adrian Leverkühn deliberately infects himself with syphilis. Untreated syphilis often attacks the brain, causing dementia and death. The Devil, in the form of witty talking spirochetes, tells him he will get 24 years of brilliant creativity, after which he is condemned to eternal damnation.

Leverkühn is transparently modeled on composer Arnold Schönberg, who was not particularly thrilled about his depiction as a syphilitic madman. The idea, widely believed in those days, was that untreated syphilis, when the spirochete infects the meninges protecting the brain and finally the brain parenchyma itself, releases the person's creativity.

The inspiration for this came from the idea that Nietzsche's grandiose philosophizing resulted from neurosyphilis, which is now known to be false. This book is therefore perhaps the most famous example of a great work of literature based on a misdiag­nosis. The symptoms are remarkably detailed, making this book a favorite among neurologists.

The Devil keeps his word, and Leverkühn experiences mania and euphoria along with severe migraines and abdominal ‘lightning pains’ characteristic of so-called tertiary syphilis, but escapes the delirium, hearing loss, retinal necrosis, optic neuritis, and dysarthria that we often associate with it. His creativity is greatly enhanced and he achieves what he and his fellow musicians see as greatness.

The inclusion of twelve-tone music, with its brittle dissonance, and the death of a young character from acute disseminated encephalo­myelitis are used to symbolic effect in the story; but the story of how one composer made a deal with the Devil is really the tale of twentieth-century Germany. It starts out slow, but it is brilliantly done. In the last chapter the two strands—the fictitious biography of the composer and the author's honest and intense grief about the catastrophe that befell his country—come together, making this one of the most moving stories I have ever read.

On the other hand, you could also say it's the story of a guy who was outwitted by bacteria.

dec 18 2019. edited dec 20 2019

Hogwarts Library

by J. K. Rowling
Scholastic, 2001–2007, 2017. 303 pages total

reviewed by T. Nelson

his collection of three small books includes Quiddich Through the Ages, Tales of Beedle the Bard, and Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them. They're strictly for young children; adults would find them juvenile, and even teenagers would blast through them in a matter of minutes. Profits from the books are donated to charity.

It's clear that J.K. Rowling had fun writing them. In Tales, each story is followed by sarcastic comments from Dumbledore, who says this of one particularly saccharine story:

It has met the same response from generations of wizarding children: uncontrollable retching, followed by an immediate demand to have the book taken from them and mashed into pulp.

Fantastic Beasts is not a story, but an alphabetic glossary of the creatures she imagined for the HP series, sort of like Parallel Botany but for a much younger audience.

A lot of books are described in the Potter novels. We can hope that J.K. will eventually write Moste Potente Potions or The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore. If these books are from Hogwarts library, maybe we need some of the more interesting stuff from the Restricted Section. Rowling once said she worked out how horcruxes are made. Fans would be fascinated to know.

Or how about Strange Creatures and How To Not Have Your Soul Sucked Out By Them.

dec 30 2021

Harry Potter (seven-volume set)

by J. K. Rowling
Scholastic, 2007, 4095 pages

reviewed by T. Nelson

s someone who was baffled by the multitude of plot holes and unanswered questions in the movies (like, for instance, how did they fit all that furniture in that little beaded bag*) that I sometimes refer to as Planet of the Ginges, I hoped that reading the books would clear things up. They're light reading for an adult; despite their 4,095 pages it takes only a few weekends to read them.

There are, of course, many differences between the books and the movies. Most notably, the dialogue is not as crisp in the books. Voldemort doesn't disinte­grate in the end and Harry doesn't break the Elder wand in half. Firenze, the clumsily CGI-rendered centaur, is a Hogwarts professor. And some of the characters are more likeable while others are nastier.

In the movies we watch a group of children, selected mainly for their cuteness and hair color, grow up and develop a soul before our eyes. The sudden blast of cuteness caused a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out, saying “Awwwwww!” and then fell silent. By the third movie acting skills become evident and the stories begin to have more logical cohesion. In the books, one must be content with watching the author's writing skill improve, as it does, through the seven volumes.

True, there are a few sentences like this: “Professor Dumbledore was standing by the mantelpiece, beaming, next to Professor McGonagall, who was taking great, steadying gasps, clutching her chest.” Participles can be tricky. Or maybe I just have a dirty mind.

The book also has many scenes not in the movies, like the scene where Luna is giving the live play-by-play of a Quidditch game (a type of soccer in the story) but starts talking about imaginary diseases and pointing out interesting clouds. So cute . . . .

In the story, Harry Potter is an orphan who is gradually driven out of his home in the Muggle world by his aunt and uncle and goes to a boarding school in the UK where they teach him magic. The villain, Voldemort, has done some­thing to him which left him with a N-shaped scar on his forehead, as if he fell asleep on a New Balance sneaker. It also affected his brain, giving him the ability to speak snake language and to waltz blithely into obvious traps, a skill he uses often.** It turns out that he is a “chosen one”, and everyone but Harry seems to know what he has been chosen for.

The books were enormously popular, due in part to the author's clever strategy of saying something controversial and outrageous right before her book comes out, which gets people on Twitter stirred up and causes the book to soar to the top of the charts.

Their popularity was enhanced by the fact that the characters are so unrealistically likeable it defies the imagination. In the movies, almost every time Harry enters a room, his girlfriend, his other girlfriend, his girlfriend's mum, his friend, his dog, and anyone else who happens to be in the room runs up and hugs him, giving him affirmation. There's less of that in the books, and Harry is often depicted as quite miserable. Luna is depicted as bitterly lonely and Hermione is not as hormonal as in the movie. The overall story, however, is mostly the same.

The books do explain a few more things. What caused Hagrid's facial injuries? What are those underwater things in the cave scene? And how did those kids manage to fly on invisible horses without falling off? The amusing headlines in the newspaper (examples: “Mistakes wand for chopsticks, creates mayhem at Chinese restaurant”; “Vampire admitted to casualty for too much garlic bread”) aren't depicted in the books. But they still don't explain how the castle magically moved in the movies from England to the mountains of Scotland with nobody seeming to notice.

The movies suggested that a person's soul, whatever that may be, is transmuted into energy by a magic wand. In one scene, for instance, Voldemort's wand overheats and he cries out in pain as smoke comes out of it. Perhaps, I thought, a magic wand is a transducer for soul energy, allowing part of one's soul to project through the wand as energy. This would explain how, in certain cases, the soul could be fragmented into pieces, thereby creating a problem for Harry.

The Plot

Book 1: Harry finds out about a magic rock; discovers his teacher is after it, almost gets killed. Has trouble with his magic wand; uses it to perform COVID testing on a bigger kid during a fight over a girl in the girls' lavatory. Hermione becomes an arsonist.

Book 2: The three kids manufacture illegal drugs in the girls' bathroom. Harry's friend's sister Ginny somehow gets trapped in a sewer. Harry goes in after her, finds a big snake. The Sorting Hat appears, so (unlike in the movie) he puts it on and almost gets knocked unconscious when the Sword of Griffindor comes out of it. Then he almost gets killed by the snake.

Book 3: The three kids learn where all the dog poo in the castle is coming from. Hermione throws rocks at herself. Harry commits assault with a deadly weapon. He and Hermione fly on a giant chicken to prevent Harry's dog from having his soul sucked out.

Book 4: Harry goes on an Easter egg hunt, a swimming contest, and a game of hide-and-seek, and almost gets killed each time. The reporter, Rita Skeeter, gets in Hermione's hair. Harry almost drowns.

The whole story in Book 4 turns out to be a complicated scheme to get a few drops of Harry's blood while performing the almost impossible task of keeping him alive long enough to get it. It never occurs to anyone to just sneak up behind him and jab him with a syringe.

Book 5: Harry now starts to branch out by getting the people around him killed.

Book 6: Harry almost murders a classmate by using a magic spell he doesn't understand. Harry's mentor Dumbledore makes progress on his plan to defeat Voldemort by getting himself killed. Harry almost drowns again.

Book 7: Three teenagers wander around in the woods unsupervised for six months without ever once snogging each other, then decide to rob a bank. Everyone gets more and more confused about how magic wands choose their owner. Hermione's love rival gets eaten. Harry almost drowns again.

Well, no matter. In a hundred years, there will be college courses on these books. They teach something that every kid needs to know, and many of them read them many, many times. J.K. Rowling obviously loves children, and she created an Eden-like world for them with a rich tradition, where people bond through a shared culture, there is no politics, there are exciting things to learn, and the possibility of friendship exists. She contrasts it with the Muggle world, which threatens to engulf and conquer them and from which people with magical ability must conceal their existence.

The symbolism of Harry's scar is obvious even to children. Harry discovers that the same event that gave him a scar left Professor Snape an even deeper one. The villain has low empathy and has literally lost part of his soul. This leads him to defeat twice: at the beginning when he could not imagine that Harry's mum would defend Harry, and at the end when he could not imagine that Narcissa's love for her child would overcome her loyalty to him.

It is also a story about growing up: the young Harry fantasizes about his parents telling him they love him, and through a series of setbacks learns to face hard truths. In this magical society, magic has prevented the development of science and technology (though they do have radio, and in one scene in the movie Ginny is seen swiping on a cell phone in the background). Divorced from its origins in early Christianity, there are no deities, no electricity, and no mechanistic under­standing of the physical world.

Harry discovers that the world is not as he thought it was. He realizes that the people he idolized also have a dark side. He manages to defeat a more powerful and much smarter opponent by con­form­ing to conventional social mores and cultivating friendships.

The books are full of clues. In Book 7, Harry finds the first page of an old letter from his mum to Sirius. When Snape finally lets him see the second page—509 pages later—it only contains a few words, including Lily's signature. This reinforces the idea that Snape hated Sirius, but he also knew that Harry would want to see what she had written.

But mostly it is the story of an individual and the hundreds of mundane experiences that integrate him into society and motivate him to confront his nemesis to protect the society that accepted him. In the school, one teacher tries to prevent him from learning magic, forcing him to learn how to be a leader. Another berates him for being weak, forcing him to strengthen his mind.

The moviemakers understood this too. In one scene from Half Blood Prince not found in the books, Ginny is paralyzed with fear on encountering the werewolf Greyback, and Harry immediately uses his magic wand to protect her. Potter fans wondered why it was added, but in the very next scene, they kiss. (Or maybe she bites him, it's hard to tell.) He has saved her life again and his attachment to her and to the group is solidified. The story is packed with things like this.

A key moment is when Hermione says (in the movie version), “You need us, Harry.” She doesn't just mean he needs them to find all those Horcruxes. He has become permanently attached to the group.

It's clear in the book version that the guilt from the loss of his mentors and his own mistakes gives him the final push he needs. Everyone but Harry seems to know from the start what Harry really is and the terrible sacrifice he will be asked to make, and does whatever is necessary to ensure that he makes it.

Rowling is telling readers that the only way to be cured of the scars and traumas they acquired in childhood is to confront their problems courageously, no matter how hard it may be.

When Harry finally figures it out, his choice seems unavoid­able. But in J.K. Rowling's story it is those seemingly irrelevant details of Harry's life that determine his reaction. She never lectures us or draws conclusions for the reader but lets the events tell the story, so it is only later that we realize that this silly fairy tale has given us a profound message about human nature.

One message we can all learn is: if they start calling you the chosen one, ask some hard questions. Like, for example, what does “pig for slaughter” mean?

In the end, Harry returns to the muggle world. The book doesn't say what he did, but I suspect with Harry's skill with snake language that he became a Python programmer.

aug 23, 2020. updated sep 24, 2020 and dec 05, 2021. last updated jul 20, 2023

Update After reading this a second time, I've come to appreciate why this book and the author were (and remain) so popular. If this book is that entertaining to me, it must be pure crack to kids.

* She had several tents, picnic tables, benches, six months of food, many books and paintings, and Coleman stoves stored magically in her purse. But they still had to sleep on blankets in the snow. If there's that much space, why not a five-star hotel and a limo so they could just drive around?

** This is why I have long suspected that this scar wasn't put there by Voldemort but is actually the result of a botched frontal lobotomy.