Author Archives: Karen Kittrell

The Tolstoy Zone

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The name, Leo Tolstoy, carries a bit of an intimidation factor. Tolstoy lived in the 1800s, and the world has changed since then. Many writers have come and gone, yet Tolstoy continues to be relevant.

At the library, I find several nondescript volumes lacking flashy colors, fonts and modern graphics. Recognizable titles include War and Peace (1400 pages), Anna Karenina (750 pages), The Cossacks (160 pages) and The Death of Ivan Ilyich (53 pages). I weigh my decision because quite literally my book bag is an unhealthy amount of heavy, and the winner is The Death of Ivan Ilyich. I load the three audio disks for my next commute to work and prepare for an easy week of listening to some old guy’s story about a different time and place. Instead, I discover “a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity . . . [that] lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.” It is an area called the Tolstoy Zone.1

Within minutes of beginning this novella, I want nothing more than to continue. Often, I stop and marvel at Tolstoy’s timeless words and characters. I bubble the aspects of theme that intrigued me as shown in the photo.

 

The “D” Word

In this novel [spoiler alert] Ivan Ilyich dies. Death is part one of Tolstoy’s two-part story. The author approaches theme like a shark circling its prey. On each pass, the shark takes a closer look at what it will consume. The Death of Ivan Ilyich begins with the outside view of death. How do the living view the dead? By reading the Gazette, Pyotr Ivanovich sees the obituary placed by the widow, Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovin. The shocking news becomes an opportunity for career advance for some and a relief for others. Ivan has died and not me. The friend, Pyotr, is one of only two guests for the funeral.  Uncomfortable realities exist in this time period when the dead remain in the home slowly decomposing for days; when an untimely and early death jeopardizes a family’s finances; and when illness causes long periods of declining health to a miserable end. Tolstoy leads the reader with Pyotr to the next revelation–fear. Next time, it might be me who dies.

Fear and death are universal themes much older than the 1880s. Biblical passages, such as John 11:38-44, have cultural ramifications of Lazarus’ death for Martha and Mary. Also, Ezekiel 37:1-14 symbolizes Israel’s hopelessness with a valley of dry bones. Death is both literal and figurative and represents aloneness, separation, desperation, destruction, loss of relationships and loss of possibilities. Tolstoy’s study of emotion is intimate, realistic and all encompassing. He writes of what modern readers recognize as the stages of grief published roughly a hundred years later by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her famous book On Death and Dying.

Life after Death

Ivan is dead, and Pyotr scuttles off to resume his card game and find a permanent replacement for his friend’s vacant seat. The circling shark has swallowed the prey. So what does Tolstoy do? He analyzes how the subject tastes from beginning to end and resets the clock to show how this terrible situation occurred.

The story changes narrators and pivots to be about life instead of death. If this sounds religious, it is no coincidence. According to Richard Pevear’s introduction for Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories, Tolstoy began a personal religious conversion to moral teachings known as “Tolstoyism,” and eventually published What is Art? to receive worldwide recognition.

If I am to read like a writer, I know “what” happens in this story and “why” this novella wrestles with finding meaning in life. The beauty in the story is “how” this message unfolds through Ivan’s thoughts about his life. It feels like a geometric proof written as poetry. Each statement builds upon the next. The narrator wants to live, but, then again, no; he only now considers the lack of meaning and suffering in his life. Although he has tried to be proper and correct, he lived his life wrong and failed to help the people who needed him the most. The transformation of Ivan’s character with only internal monologue is the key to Tolstoy’s mastery. Very clearly, Tolstoy uses Ivan Ilyich as an example of what not to do. Of course, it is an alert to change, but the final message is comforting. If Ivan Ilyich can find peace, so too can everyone else.

Tolstoy is approachable in this timeless novel. All of my earlier fears were wrong. I may never tackle War and Peace, but I appreciate Tolstoy’s writing.

  1. Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone Series 1963.

 

 

 Battle Cry of An Anti-Hero

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A new protagonist, wedged between hero and villain, is America’s favorite son – the anti-hero. Bad attitude, morally challenged and dark disposition replaces the patriotic, courageous and life-sacrificing hero. The anti-hero is usually male, might be the lesser of two evils and happens to be fighting for the right side – but for all the wrong reasons. In the end, either the anti-hero discovers his or her inner hero or meets a tragic end.

copyright 2017VintageASK

Functioning on a sliding scale of barely bad to entirely evil, the anti-hero is in mini-series, comic books, literature, video games and film. Perhaps the rise of the anti-hero reflects growing disappointment with public leaders who fall short of expectations. As school children train for active shooter drills and terrorism knows no regional boundaries, societal norms are shifting. The anti-hero, while fulfilling self-ambitions, can also be a rebellious vigilante, quelling corruption, inequity and prejudice. Villainous, dark and beholden to no law or moral code, this new protagonist challenges status quo values keeping evil in check. The darkness that exists in a main character provides awareness to the potential for evil in all humans, races and religions.

Yet, the anti-hero endures and rallies to the darkness in the world. Examples of popular anti-heroes are listed below:

1) Television Series

Breaking Bad – Walter White

House of Cards – Frank Underwood

The Sopranos – Tony Soprano

2) Comic Books

Deadpool

Wolverine

John Constantine

3) Literature

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov – Humbert Humbert

The Master and Margarita  by Mikhail Bulgakov – Woland

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – Jay Gatsby

Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien – Gollum

Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello by Shakespeare

4) Gaming

Dead Red Redemption – John Marston

Deadpool – Wade Winston Wilson

Grand Theft Auto – Tommy Vercetti

5) Films

Despicable Me – Gru

A Fistful of Dollars – the man with no name (or any Clint Eastwood film)

John Wick – John Wick

Do you have a favorite anti-hero or one you love to hate? Add to my list, but I do have to warn you. After researching and sorting my list of anti-heroes, I needed a dose of hero to brighten my day. If you need a hero fix, search for one of these music videos.  

 Hero – Music/Video

1949-1957 The Lone Ranger Opening Theme Song

1980 Flash – Queen

1984 Holding Out for a Hero – Bonnie Tyler

1990 Heros and Friends – Randy Travis

1998 My Hero – Foo Fighters

2001 Superman (It’s Not Easy) – Five for Fighting

2006 Everyday hero – Smash Mouth

2011 Kill All Your Heroes – AWOLNATION

 

To See or Not To See – That Is the Question

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Purist might believe a true literary experience occurs with the left hand holding book and the right dutifully turning thick pages of print. Generally, I agree except for Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita read by Jeremy Irons. I vote this one better to be heard by the gifted actor’s deep resonating voice and not seen. Here are a few things when considering the choice of print or sound.

The Structure of Black and White

In every list of the best books, Nabokov’s Lolita is present. This book published over fifty years ago presents a forbidden topic wrapped in beautiful prose which is shocking and endearing at the same time. The opening sentences are pure power – “Lolita, light of life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”

The reader knows of tragedy to come and embraces the journey to discover why the narrator says, “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.” Humbert Humbert’s obsessions are repulsive and disgusting to readers, yet he suffers a growing paranoia for his premeditations, actions and results. However, HH somehow manages to be sympathetic, even pitiful, in the skilled hands of Nabokov. The character, neither villain nor hero, fills a new space as the anti-hero, anguishing and lamenting for the beauty and loss of his young love, his captive, Dolores Haze.

If you do read the words, the black and white sentences jig and jag spilling over to the next line and the next with semi-colons inserted as the author’s favorite punctuation mark. I appreciate well placed clauses as much as the next writer and find Nabokov full of surprise and tantalizing sentence structure. Masterful combinations are only fully absorbed by the eyes – otherwise melting into an auditory symphony of words. Now that I have finished the novel, I am ruined for anything less than prose perfection.

Beyond the Book

One invaluable thing in the book is a chronology of Nabokov’s life from birth to death with a column for literary context and historical events. I confirm Nabokov’s birth in St. Petersburg and the brief overlap of his life with Russian greats Tolstoy and Chekhov. He was almost a teenager during the Russian Revolution and published his first book of poems during World War I at the age of seventeen. The family fled and went into exile while Vladimir studied at Cambridge. When Joyce published Ulysses and Eliot published The Waste Land in 1922, Nabokov’s father was assassinated in Berlin.

So, it is odd to me that Nabokov lived or continued to live in Berlin from 1925-1937. He published nine novels in Russian, moved to Paris and then the United States in 1940, the same year Hemingway published For Whom the Bell Tolls. As my son now considers colleges for study, it catches my attention that Nabokov taught at Wellesley and then Cornell. During this time, he published his next novel in English. His spectacular writing in English must rival his native Russian language.

Shortly after the year of Stalin’s death, Lolita was published in 1955 by a Parisian publisher of explicit material because the established major publishers feared the public’s reaction to this novel’s subject matter. In 1958, Pasternak published Doctor Zhivago, one of my mother-in-law’s favorites (on my list to read or watch the 1965 film). One year later, Nabokov resigned from Cornell and moved to Switzerland. In the final decade of Nabokov’s life, Bulgakov published The Master and Margarita.

Hearing is Believing

Better than attending a three hour play or watching a film, I lived this novel for precisely eleven and a half hours – over two weeks commuting to work. The deep baritone voice of the British actor disrupted my usual car audio listening vibe. As Jeremy Irons raced through the Forward at a clip faster than I usually listen, talk or think, I weaved in my highway lane, resetting the base to low and going back to tweak the treble eventually to high before I could comfortably listen to the recording. I had just achieved the perfect balance when I heard “. . . a classic in psychiatric circles . . . the wayward child, the egotistic mother, the panting maniac – these are not only vivid characters in a unique story; they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils.” The warning added an extra writer-ly chill to my January morning. I debated whether to turn back and stop, but I trusted a gifted actor with an-oh-so-marvelous voice.  Jeremy Irons became Humbert Humbert, transforming mere words on a page, unfolding the story and revealing the depth of depravity and desperation – hence the panting maniac..

National Public Radio, in a fiftieth year anniversary of Lolita, interviewed Cornell staff about Nabokov. The author traveled the United States and used the travel experiences for Lolita. He also frequently rode the public transit and listened to the communication style of Lolita-aged girls taking notes on index cards. It is said Nabokov wrote the entire novel on index cards and pieced the story together. The car ride after HH picks up Dolores Haze from summer camp shows his research with perfectly timed teenage sarcasm, irreverence and awkward interactions.

This audio book delivers bursts of humor such as the first overnight hotel stay. HH misinterprets the questions of a drunk on the front porch. Irons is brilliant in reading this little exchange in Chapter 28 which highlights the beginning of HH’s well-deserved paranoia.

‘Where the devil did you get her?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said: the weather is getting better.’

‘Seems so.’

‘Who’s the lassie?’

‘My daughter.’

‘You lie – she’s not.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said: July was hot.’

The audio book succeeds where the 1962 Stanley Kubrick film did not. The film, however, unites Jeremy Irons with the work, the actor cast for HH in the film and a natural for the recording. His reading is acting and makes this one of the best audio book recordings I’ve heard to date.

Four Types of Playful Writers

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Writers are, in general, playful people. As explained in a study by Dr. Rene Proyer “Playful people are able to reinterpret situations in their lives so that they experience them as entertaining or are able to reduce stress levels.” In my writing, I often rework real life situations with a better (or worse) ending and a more empowered character – a SuperMe – capable of witty remarks and amazing feats of skill, knowledge or cunning. Although it seems hard to find anything entertaining about pain or loss, the expression of an unpleasant experience in a creative way can be cathartic. For an example, recall Life of Pi by Yann Martel; young Pi survives on a boat with what seems to be a tiger, baboon and hyena.

The study categorizes playful people in four ways. I imagine writers can check one or all these categories. I will test each categories with myself and with the four Russian writers on my reading list for the year – Tolstoy, Chekov, Bulgakov and Nabokov.

1) “Other-directed playful” includes socializing with friends and other writers.   For me – a member of several writing groups, an “E” for extrovert on Myers-Briggs tests and working in a profession that involves people – this category is a hit. For the Russians writers, socializing with each other is well documented. Tolstoy reportedly took partying (1800’s style) at college to the extreme and never graduated. Lucky for him, it did not deter his writing career and success.

2) The “light-heartedly playful” consider life a game. And in games, it’s how the game is played. During the years I cared for my parents, we continued to play games. I had a performance baseline for each of them and measured each day against the previous. During play, the filters and pretensions dropped. Strategy choices revealed character, health and mental faculty. Humor was also part of the game. Chekhov began his writing career by publishing humorous anecdotes and stories to pay for his medical school studies. After that, his writing took a turn for the dark and serious.

3) The “intellectually playful” like to play with thoughts and ideas. Occasionally, the less tired and more clever me does re-orchestrate events to tell a playful story. I once threw away a microwave because my son said smoke came out of it. When I learned this might not have been true, I wrote a short story, “Trial of the Microwave.” On a more serious topic, Bulgakov wrote a satire about Stalinist Russia, Master and Margarita, which casts a wall-eyed loon and a talking cat as the devil’s attendants. I needed the talking cat in the microwave situation.

4) The “whimsically playful” enjoy “strange and unusual things and are amused by small day-to-day observations.” Details – accents, tone of voice, body language – convey information to the observant. The crystallized conflict photographed above caught my attention the other day. I took several photographs to determine if the ice was melting or the water was freezing. Before I could decide, my fingers numbed, and I almost dropped my phone in the water. Nabokov’s narrator in Lolita can dial up the description to create a complete image and feeling. Read through this jewel by Nabokov. He writes “. . . on the trim turf of the lawn-slope, an old gentleman with a white mustache, well-dressed – double-breasted gray suit, polka dotted bow-tie – lay supine, his long legs together, like a death-size wax figure.”

One last point about playfulness, Dr. Proyer notes that play enhances the ability to solve complex problems. A playful person can shift perspectives. In writer-speak, this shift is changing point of view. A writer imagines the thoughts and motivations of each character and determines the best narrator for a story. Solving (complex) plotting problems may mean jumping into another character’s thoughts and point of view. Or the story might need the intimacy of first person. Sometimes, I get it wrong. I’m quite proficient at switching from third person to first or vice versa. And being playful, I find it fun to edit and try it again in a different way.

A Russian Roulette of Writers

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When the hygienist said it would be a few minutes, I reached into my bag for a book or story packed for such an occasion—a few stolen moments of reading. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout mingled there in my oversized and heavy purse with my Nook, spare change and crumpled receipts. My short story group selected the book to examine short stories compiled into a novel.

 

A World Literature Illiterate

The dentist’s usual routine—rush in, smile, check teeth, smile, rush out—stopped at the sight of my book. He asked, “What are you reading?”

I told him about the short story group.

“If you want to read the best short stories, you should read Russian authors,” my Russian dentist said.

“Our study group reads mostly American authors,” I said, embarrassed at my limited knowledge. I hadn’t read many of the American writers until I joined the group several years ago. My discovery of authors like John Cheever, Tobias Wolf, Antonya Nelson, George Saunders and Jhumpta Lahiri was still new and fresh.

I remembered a few foreign authors. “We read James Joyce—Irish.” Dubliners, of course, duh. “And Gabriel Garcia Marquez—South American.”

The dentist sighed and examined me through his ultra-magnified glasses zooming into the tiniest imperfections in my teeth, pores in my skin and crevices of my soul. “If you want to read a real story, read Chekov, the greatest short story writer.”

 

Required Reading

A few months later, I visited the dentist again. Study guide in hand and prepared to redeem my reputation, I announced, “We’re studying Chekov this month. And this one.” I point to the page. “He’s Russian too?”

“Nabokov. Yes, he’s Russian.” The dentist, his eyes downcast, said nothing more.

“Have you read ‘The Woman with the Dog’ by Chekov?”

“Yes, yes, of course. At my home in Russia, we had a library of more than three hundred books. First edition books. Valuable, but all stolen.”

I imagined his family living in Russia during the cold war years and wondered what forced them to leave. “Do you want to read our lesson? We’re studying stories retold or written in homage to another work. The Chekov story is recast by the author Joyce Carol Oates. And Lorrie Moore writes ‘Referential’ based on Nabokov’s story. Have you read ‘Signs and Symbols’ by Nabokov?”

He looked at me again through those magnifying lenses attached to his glasses, piercing through my ignorant American inquiry. “I read it in eighth grade.”

I tried to remember what I read in eighth grade, on those late nights sitting in my bean bag chair next to a pole lamp I rescued from the trash. My middle school friends swapped vampire novels and other contraband. My college-aged brother left behind his anti-war books like Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun.

But what did I read in school? Did I read in school? Overall, my eighth grade literature was entirely forgettable compared to what I read at home after my parents went to sleep. My dentist’s superior schooling trumped the American mandates for my entirely forgettable eighth grade year.

 

Biased To Domestic

My dentist politely declined my outline and expressed no interest in the other writers. Instead, he tore a scrap of paper from my file, unfortunately not the part with the amount I owed him, and wrote Bulgakov and his novel shown in the photo above. “This is the best. Read this.”

The conversation haunted me for several weeks until I studied an article about Americans bias to invest domestically when greater returns existed elsewhere. I wondered if greater reading returns came from abroad also. There was only one way to know.

The idea of reading the best of Russian writers piqued my curiosity and is one of my New Year’s resolutions. About Chekov and Nabokov, my dentist later confessed that he wanted the literature in Russian and not translated into English. I sympathized, hoping he can read some English, because I was trusting this guy with my teeth.

 

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