6.2 Do we really need Levin’s mowing in ANNA KARENINA?

When I was 17? Absolutely not. Now? Levin’s land-loving feels essential. (ANNA KARENINA, Parts III + NO OTHER LAND)

I bought my copy of Anna Karenina in 2013, the summer before my senior year of high school. This Barnes and Noble Classics edition, clean-edged and dense like a sheet of coffee-table glass, sat out during a summer storm. I was only halfway through. The yellow highlighter bled away from the words into vertical, waving ripples. The paperback spine unglued at page 302, cleaving the book into two (still substantial) novels.

my hashtags are giving me a visceral reaction.. not a good one.

My dad talks about how his brother prefers to watch The Deer Hunter, the Christopher Walken and Robert DeNiro film about Pennsylvanian friends ripped apart by the Vietnam War, on VHS. It comes in two tapes. My uncle watches the conclusion first, the concluding Russian Roulette match in Vietnam now the halfway mark. Then he would start the first volume. It ends a huge wedding, the soldiers-to-be tuxedoed and dancing. “It’s happier that way,” my dad described.

My rain-altered edition has produced the same eff…