Anna Karenina is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century, alongside War and Peace, penned by the same author, Leo Tolstoy. The novel, which Tolstoy regarded as his “first,” is the story of an alluring young woman who commits adultery with a military man, and the shroud of relationships surrounding her life and fate.

Reading Anna Karenina is like going back in time to 19th-century Russia and yet remaining rooted in the experiences, conflicts, and temptations that define all eras and contexts. As my former teacher said, it is “a rapturous sonata of a novel. One foot in time and place, one in the eternal. The human heart in conflict with itself, like Faulkner said.” (When asked what he thought the three greatest novels were, Faulkner said, “Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina.”)

My edition of the novel, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, is around 800 pages, but I found the story and characters engaging enough to plow through in a couple of weeks. However, the book was initially released in serial installments between 1873 and 1877 in a periodical called The Russian Messenger. Similar to TV shows today, people would be able to read only a portion of the story at a time, building anticipation for the next release. My colleague, the science journalist Denyse O’Leary, noted to me that this would allow readers to actually digest and reflect on what they read. Anna Karenina wasn’t originally designed to be read all at once.

I thought this was an interesting observation that has some implications for our phone-dominated cultural context. Fewer people are reading in general, but it wouldn’t be fair to say that our appetite for story has declined. Instead, the “dopamine cartel,” as music and cultural critic Ted Gioia calls it, has hijacked our ability to appreciate even visual entertainment. Reading a tome like Tolstoy’s is then seen as an impossible venture. If I can’t endure a Marvel movie without checking email and Instagram, how on earth should I expect myself to read, let alone enjoy, the great classics?

One Step (Chapter) at a Time

The serial release of Anna Karenina, though, might offer us frenetic moderns some slight encouragement. Yes, our attention spans have been damaged by visual media, and recovering the joy of reading, even for those who grew up with the pastime, is a great challenge. But we shouldn’t think we have to climb the mountain before hiking the foothills. Baby steps is the name of the game. If you see Moby Dick or The Lord of the Rings on the shelf in your local bookstore, it’s probably better to tell yourself, “I could get through the first chapter” instead of “Wow, I’ll never be able to read that.” Take a note from our predecessors and read serially, without rushing, without haste. Take it slow! You might, like me, suddenly realize you’re on page 600 and have no intention of turning back. The stakes of the plot, the moral and emotional conflicts, and the spiritual journey of Konstantin Levin, another one of the book’s central figures, might just immerse you thrillingly into the mind of one of the world’s foremost storytellers.

One of my own struggles, which I’ve only recently come to terms with, is that while I read quite a bit, I’ve gotten really bad at reflecting on what I’ve read. I often read quickly and check my phone at regular intervals and move on too fast to the next waiting volume. Reading Anna Karenina was too good of a read to hastily reshelve; I didn’t just want to read it. I wanted it to do something for me, to change me, if even in a modest way. Reading’s no good if I burn through books without letting those books read me to some degree. That’s part of the magic of reading great literature. We the readers think we are doing the interpreting, but if it’s a good book, we’re the ones who end up getting interpreted. –