The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy

The Death of Ivan Ilych isn't my first Tolstoy.  That would be War and Peace (the foreword to Ivan Ilych talks about how Tolstoy used W&P as a vehicle to discuss theories of history!!!) and I followed it up a year or two later with Anna Karenina.  But Ivan Ilych wouldn't have made it onto my reading list if not for it being a book club selection at The Deliberate Reader, because it is a novella, clocking in at around 75 pages depending on your edition and format.  Starting with the funeral of the eponymous Ivan Ilych, the story then jumps back to the beginning of his fall, first slow and then fast, in a series of short chapters.

I don't really like short stories because I typically don't find them to have enough substance for me.  There are some exceptions, of course; Neil Gaiman can write an amazing fantasy short story when the mood strikes him, and I've read some absolutely wonderful literary ones, as well.  Unfortunately for me, Ivan Ilych didn't fall into this wonderful character.  It is exactly what it purports to be: an account of Ilych's death.  Always wanting more and better, his greed drives him to spend beyond his means to no success, and it's in the process of this spending and remodeling of a new home that he quite literally falls, injuring himself in the process.  The injury initially seems minor, but drags him down towards a slow and painful death that's not only torturous to him, but to everyone around him, none of whom seem to particularly like him to begin with.  In the process of dying, Ilych reflects on his life--he feels that he has been wronged by dying, because he lived as he should have, though questions of things like love and meaning come to him as he lies in excruciating pain for weeks before passing away.

This is a contemplative story, and one that's probably not suited for everyone at every point in life.  Several of Ilych's acquaintances reflect on how he might die, but they couldn't possibly, and that's something that I think a lot of readers can empathize with.  After all, most of us don't spend a lot of time dwelling on our own mortality, and I suppose getting us to do so was part of Tolstoy's goal in writing this tale.  Ilych is not an interesting person; he's a mid-level bureaucrat in the justice system and his life is not exactly filled with adventure.  He wants to better himself and sees money as a way to do that.  He has family issues.  Most of us share these qualities, to some degree, as well as some rather unlikable ones that those close to us come to know.  In this way, though we might not like Ilych, I think we can probably understand where he's coming from, why he finds his demise so unfair, etc.  In this, I think Tolstoy did a very good job.

The problem?  This story isn't very interesting.  It's not really supposed to be, I guess--contemplative if definitely more its vein.  While this has its purpose, it doesn't make for a very riveting read.  This was a story I found myself wandering away from again and again, and it took me a surprising amount of time to get through less than a hundred pages.  It has its time and place, and I think it's actually quite good in that regard; it just didn't strike me at this time.

Based on the story's clear merit, I'm going to write it higher than I would on pure enjoyment.  I can see myself "enjoying" this more in a more melancholy or contemplative mood, and it's one I could potentially return to at some point, which isn't something I'd say about most tales of this length.

4 stars out of 5.

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

I read War and Peace in school a few years ago, in a great course called "Napoleon vs. Tolstoy," and really enjoyed most of it.  I felt like Tolstoy's characters were great, and that he had a very interesting way of taking on the Napoleonic Wars from Russia's perspective.  Of course, Tolstoy only focuses on upper-class characters, the aristocracy of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and so I was interested in reading more of his works.  Of course, the fact that Anna Karenina was in the process of being adapted into a movie staring Kiera Knightly, who is absolutely lovely, didn't hurt either.  A few years later, I still haven't seen the movie, but I now have read the book, with the intent of using it for the Popsugar Reading Challenge category of "A classic romance."  Now, when I read "A class romance," my mind immediately goes where most people's probably does: Pride and Prejudice.  But I wanted to read something else (though I do love P&P, I didn't want any Jane Austen this time around) and so I picked Anna Karenina, which is really two classic romances in one, and which is different than Austen in a very real way.

See, Anna Karenina doesn't end happily for everyone.  If that's a spoiler... Well, it's not, because the book's been out for ages and at this point I don't think anything can really be a spoiler for it.  But there are two romances involved: Anna's with Count Vronsky, and Levin's with Kitty.  These two couples are intrinsically opposed, and most of the book that focuses on them is composed of parallel scenes: similar setups that show exactly how different the same situations can end up, based on the people who are interacting.  Of course, Tolstoy's female characters tend toward the wildly dramatic and his men towards either extremely glib or extremely grim.  Tolstoy doesn't really seem to do "middle ground" that much; this was the case in War and Peace, too, as I remember.  And Tolstoy is also not only an author, but a philosopher, which means that the book isn't just a story, it's a philosophical treatise.  Now, in War and Peace the philosophy was about Tolstoy's theory of history.  In Anna Karenina, it seems to be something about people's connection to the land, something about the will of the people, and something about the meaning of life, or maybe all three just mixed together.  Philosophy isn't exactly my strong suit, and Levin bonking me over the head with it over and over again didn't sit well with me.

There's not much really to be said about Anna Karenina beyond that, to me.  After all, it's a classic, and most things that are to be said about classics have already been said.  Overall, though, I did enjoy the book, especially the climactic scene at the train station.  The 50 pages of philosophy that followed?  Not so much.

3.5 stars out of 5.