In a post entitled "Woe is Mitt: Contraception, Tolstoy, and Taxes," John Cassidy takes up the kerfuffle surrounding Ann Romney having indicated, on the social media site Pinterest, that one of her favorite books is Anna Karenina. Not wise, some say, since the plot concerns the marital straying of a generally sympathetic character who is married to a boring government official--a sort of 19th-century, Russian version of Mitt Romney. Besides, it's a great novel, one of the best ever written, and therefore probably qualifies Mrs Romney as a "snob" and member of the "culural elite."
Cassidy doesn't say so, but Tolstoy himself might have had some sympathy for Republicans who think his book was immoral. He thought so himself. In late midlife, the famous, wealthy, esteemed author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina fell into a depression, the principle source of which seems to have been brought on by an unusually acute consciousness of mortality. He might have achieved more than almost anyone else, and been of enviable status, but what finally was the good of that if in the long run he was consigned to the same oblivion as everyone else? The resulting reflection, self-examination, and study bred intense disgust with all that he had done up to that time, which of course included the authorship of two of the greatest works of fiction ever composed. He renounced his copyrights, stopped eating meat, moved into the servants' quarters, and adopted a brand of Christianity that caused him to be excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. His wife was understandably perplexed. The fictions that he now wrote were explicitly didactic. They included tales for children ("God Sees the Truth, but Waits"), the justly famous "Kreutzer Sonata" (evinces disgust with sexuality), "The Death of Ivan Ilych" (title character endures slowly advancing terminal illness and realizes at the end that his career and marriage and all other traditional pursuits were useless frauds), and "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (title question answered by last sentence, when the main character, having dropped dead of cupidity, is buried by his tempters and "six feet from head to toe was all they needed").
I don't know how the total picture plays with Republicans. Santorum's voters probably approve of the late Tolstoy, though they may think it's snobbish to know about him. Mitt Romney's country-club set probably doesn't care for the message, which sounds sort of like OWS drivel. My own conclusion isn't overtly political. It's an error to suppose that somewhere, among the rich and famous living in penthouse apartments or in gated communities filled with things advertised on television during golf tournaments, people are content.
