David Kilcullen - Blood Year

In the British comedy film Four Lions clueless wannabe jihadists discuss a strategy succinctly expressed as, ‘bomb the mosque, radicalise the moderates’.  It’s one of my favourite parts of the film, largely because, at the time I thought it was so outrageous and ill-conceived as to be ridiculous.  However, after reading this clear, concise and well reasoned summary of the ‘War on Terror’ and its aftermath in the region I recognised, with horror, that 9/11 had achieved almost exactly that on an international scale.  Al Qaeda’s attack on US soil had drawn such massive response it had thrown the whole region into turmoil, exacerbating sectarian grievances, precipitating huge numbers of  civilian deaths as collateral damage and radicalising tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.  As Kilcullen summarises in the book’s epilogue:

“The war in Iraq (commencing only 15 months after 9/11) alienated a host of potential partners and ultimately created AQI.  The disaggregation strategy, after 2005, atomized the terrorist threat, just as social media and electronic connectivity were exploding in such a way as to spread the pathogen throughout our societies, enabling remote radicalisation and leaderless resistance to an unprecedented degree.  The precipitate withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 revived AQI in the nick of time after it had been reduced to 90% and almost annihilated during the Surge.  The precipitate pullout from Iraq, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the AQ succession crisis that followed, and the failure of the Arab Spring - all in the same key year of 2011 - helped turn AQI into ISIS and gave it a global leadership role it proceeded to exploit with utter and unprecedented ruthlessness.  And complacency and hubris after bin Laden’s death, along with vacillation in the face of the colossal tragedy of the Syrian War, created the basis for a conflict that’s now consuming the Middle East and drawing regional and global powers into a hugely dangerous, and still escalating conflict”

I’ll attempt to summarise the main points of the narrative and analysis in what follows.The initial success of Afghan regime change and establishment of Karzai as new leader in 2001 lead to overconfidence about a new paradigm in warfare.  Most military advisors and professionals were more hesitant about this but political confidence was very high.  As a result, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was under-manned (200k should have been 400k) and left an incredibly dangerous power vacuum in the wake of Saddam Hussein's deposition.  The policy of de-Baathification alienated much of the middle class and disbanded much of the Iraqi army into ready-made insurgents and militia movements.

The ‘Surge’ and introduction of David Petraeus were, according to the author, positive and necessary developments in the effort to address the violent and chaotic shambles that emerged in the aftermath of the US invasion.  Obama’s election was less so as he equated leaving with the end of the war, which it certainly was not.  Kilcullen feels that Obama viewed the war as not of his making, which it wasn’t, and not really his problem, which it certainly was, and thought his approach was more politically focussed than practical.  He had campaigned on leaving Iraq and was dead set on accomplishing this aim.  However, when American influence, troops and attention left Iraq, between 2009-11, sectarianism drastically increased.  Iraqi PM Maliki who had been moderate whilst under American supervision became more of a Shia supremacist.  This encouraged more Sunnis to turn to AQI for help and protection whereas previously its power and influence had been dramatically diminished.  AQI was also adept in encouraging sectarian violence, sometimes even committing atrocities against other Sunnis themselves, in order provoke quid pro quo exchanges, which eventually forced Sunnis to accept AQI as their protectors for a seeming lack of other options.  The killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 also gave false hope that the War on Terror was coming to a conclusion.  It did present Al Qaeda with leadership and succession issues during the crucial period of the Arab Spring movement but did little to address the root causes of extremism and insurgency that, in many ways, benefitted from the Arab Spring.

Maliki seems like a definite cause of deterioration in Iraq, his pro-Shia sectarian approach after the US left appears to have been very divisive and disenfranchised Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis.  AQI may have been substantially weakened by the ‘Surge’, the tribal ‘Awakening’ and Maliki's government but ISIS, or its forerunners, appear to have found strength via relocation and collaboration in, post Arab Spring, war-torn Syria with other insurgents vs. Assad.  AQI / ISIS maintained excellent networks in Syria where many foreign jihadists had trained or transitioned on their way to fight in Iraq. It then returned to Iraq post 2011 far stronger than AQI had ever been and was a more attractive proposition for Sunnis who had been abused by Maliki.  This Iraqi-Syrian collaboration, or blurring of borders, was very difficult for Western policy as in Syria it was supporting insurgents against Assad while in Iraq it was supporting the government against insurgents.  However, in both cases ISIS was a major player on the side of insurgency.  Thus by helping Assad to defeat insurgents, including ISIS, it was actually helping a regime more brutal than the insurgents themselves; at least in a Syrian context.  Here Kilcullen compares brutality via number of civilian deaths.  This may have been the motivation behind some of the seemingly confused foreign policy in the region perhaps best exemplified by Obama declaring a ‘red line’ concerning Assad’s use of chemical weapons only to then do pretty much nothing when it was widely acknowledged they had been used.  Iran and Russia’s foreign policies in the region had the benefit of being consistently pro-regime / anti-insurgent although it would have been hard for the US to be so pro-Shia / Iran region-wide.

The original policy of the early 2000s, disaggregation, held that local jihadi movements were being aggregated by regional and global players into a global jihad.  The response was to attempt to destroy the overarching, supranational bodies and leave local insurgents disconnected allowing local authorities to deal with them individually.  This strategy was quite successful insofar as AQ’s influence, and that of its affiliates, was much reduced 2003-2011.  However, ISIS post-2011 appears to have a much more effective three tier structure: 1) State like central operation in Iraq and Syria occupying considerable territory including social services (courts, hospitals, utilities, food distribution etc.) advanced military (tanks, columns etc.), control of major urban areas and collection of significant revenues (taxes, oil etc.) 2) ‘wilayat’ or provinces loyal to the centre and operating on their command but separate from it.  These existed in both Iraq and Syria but also in other countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Caucuses etc.) and were deemed to be more dangerous that former AQ ‘aggregates’ because they were more formally controlled by the centre. 3) International individuals conducting terrorist attacks, mainly in the West, with little or no formal association with ISIS but claiming affiliation for their actions.  As such, ISIS acted as a powerful brand, attracting dissidents in a highly informal and disaggregated way, highlighting the drawbacks of the disaggregation strategy.  Furthermore, individuals with almost no connection to the centre, often radicalised entirely via electronic means, are far more difficult for police to monitor and identify than more formal cells.

2015 appears to have been a very troubling year in terms of the strength and sophistication shown by ISIS and AQI across all levels of its three tier structure.  The ISIS capture of Ramadi, in central Iraq, was apparently textbook in military terms and demonstrated how advanced the organisation had become.  Also, the capture of Palmyra, in Syria, made many civilians far more well disposed towards ISIS.  The Assad regime had destroyed water, electricity and sewage facilities before fleeing the city in convoys prior to  ISIS’ arrival.  The regime also made it hard for ordinary citizens, many of whom had been helping the government troops, to leave the city despite their own retreat.  Furthermore, they bombed the city with little regard for civilians as ISIS arrived having failed to attack them during their approach over the open landscape surrounding the city.  However, when ISIS arrived they reestablished basic services, distributed food, provided clothing and made medical care available in Raqqi via a safe road.  As such,  many locals, unsurprisingly, had a very dim view of Assad’s government troops and saw themselves as having been rescued by ISIS!  This view may have changed following ISIS’ exploitation and destruction of the ancient ruins near the town that had been the lynchpin of the area's tourist driven economy.

The JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, July 2015) agreement between US-EU-Iran had interesting and far-reaching consequences for the foreign policy environment in Iraq-Syria.  While the US was anti-Assad and pro non-ISIS insurgents in Syria it was also lifting sanctions on Iran via the nuclear deal, giving them vastly increased access to capital and weapons.  Both Iran and Russia had been active in supporting an otherwise failing Assad regime in Syria.  As such, many moderate, anti-Assad, anti-ISIS rebels in Syria felt that the US had sold them out by agreeing to such a deal with Iran, which they saw as an acceptance that Assad’s regime could not be overthrown.  Furthermore, traditionally US friendly countries in the region, such as Saudi, Turkey, Egypt, Gulf States and Israel, were critical of the deal.  Egypt and Saudi launched a military force to counter Iranian backed Houthis in Yemen in the deal’s aftermath, representing an increase in proxy tensions in the region.  Turkey’s concerns centred on Iranian influence in the region, partly via an Assad regime it detested, and the risk of increasing Kurdish separatism within its own borders.  As such, it was probably less concerned about the nuclear aspects of JCPOA and more on the scope it gave Iran to increase its proxy war in Iraq-Syria.  After the treaty it entered the conflict by allowing the coalition access to its airbases and attacking Kurdish positions itself in Syria and Iraq.

At around the same time, huge numbers of refugees began overflowing from Middle Eastern ‘safe havens’ like Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon into Europe causing a humanitarian crisis and bringing the effects of events in the region 2011-2015 into mainstream media focus.  While this was on-going, coalition troops were withdrawing from Afghanistan, which allowed Taliban units that had been hiding in Pakistan to regroup and, eventually, attack and capture the city of Kunduz in September 2015.  Following this ISIS groups from Pakistan and Afghanistan also conducted attacks in the Afghanistan / Pakistan region and ISIS vs Taliban power struggles intensified, perhaps partly owing to a knowledge of Mullah Omar, the erstwhile leader of the Taliban’s, death.

Russia’s increased presence in the Syria-Iraq region was inaugurated by Putin’s speech to the UN in September 2015, which contains some thought provoking, albeit hypocritical, remarks (pp185-6):

“We all know that after the end of the Cold War - everyone is aware of that - a single centre of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think that if they were so strong and exceptional, they knew better and they did not have to reckon with the UN...We also remember certain episodes from the history of the Soviet Union.  ‘Social Experiments’ for export, attempts to push for changes within other countries based on ideological preferences, often led to tragic consequences and to degradation rather than progress.  It seems, however, that far from learning from others’ mistakes, everyone just keeps repeating them, and so the export of revolutions, this time of so-called “democratic” ones continues...I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realise now what you’ve done?...Tens of thousands of militants are fighting under the banners of the so-called IS.  Its ranks include former Iraqi servicemen who were thrown out into the street after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Many recruits also come from Libya, a country whose statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1973.  And now, the ranks of radicals are being joined by members of the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition supported by Western countries.  First, they are armed and trained, and then they defect to the IS”

While the coalition had attempted to fight against ISIS, Russia’s strategy was very much to fight for Assad against all types of insurgents.  Their approach was far more heavy handed, providing much heavier air support, materiel and troops, and far less focussed on reducing civilian casualties, in keeping with Assad’s own style.  While most of the US-led coalition efforts had concentrated on ISIS, only around 10% of the Russian efforts focussed specifically on ISIS with the rest directed towards any and every enemy of Assad.  For all its shortcomings, Russia’s policy does have the advantage of being more consistent than the coalitions.  It is against any kind of insurgency and will back dictators, like Assad, or democratically elected governments, like in Iraq, in order to suppress them.  The US-led coalition, however, finds itself pro some insurgents, anti others and, in the case of Libya, arming some only to lose confidence in them and withdraw support.

This lack of leadership from the US has seriously compromised its position and credibility as the global police force and, in many ways, JCPOA has handed that role in the Middle East to Iran cooperating with, and supported by, Russia.  If Bush’s invasion demonstrated the error of maximalist policies and over-reaction then Obama’s muddling light-touch and overly hasty withdrawal has shown the error of under-reaction, hesitation and timidity.  The situation now is worse than it was immediately post 9/11 as the West now faces two (ISIS and AQ) far better organised, better armed, better trained and internationalised extremist organisations in a region riddled with sectarian conflict, violence and weak governance.  In a gruesome, morbid way you have to look at the actions of 9/11 as a huge success strategically for AQ / ISIS.  It catapulted them onto the international stage, garnered new recruits for its cause, encouraged new allegiances, inspired new insurgent organisations, drew a massive, destabilising response from the enemy, brought arms and money to the region, radicalised vast swathes of the population and has ultimately led to growth and proliferation of its world view and proponents who espouse it.  

For the author, leaving the region to look after itself or be overseen by Iran is a not a sensible option.There are two large, well armed and well organised extremist groups (ISIS and AQ) both with perhaps 35-40k troops.  They are attracting disaffected people in the region, many of them young, and motivating them to destabilise and do harm to more moderate and inclusive regimes, as well as to do harm to their allies and supporters in the West.  As such, a strategy of active containment appears to him as the best of a bad lot of strategic options given the fractured political landscape in the region. Will moderate insurgents in Syria fight against ISIS if it has no support from the West and the Assad regime it ultimately wants to dislodge is strongly supported by Iran and Russia?  Will any Iraqi government be inclusive enough to persuade Sunnis and Kurds to prefer it to their own separatist movements? Will the reduction in troops and presence in Afghanistan lead to a loss of territory and urban areas to AQ and ISIS as has happened in Syria and Iraq?  Whatever the case, the political and religious landscape in the region is so complex any solution or movement towards improvement will take a long time and there will  be no quick, easy solution to the problems.

The attacks in Paris during November, 2015 are particularly worrisome as they were of considerable sophistication and coordination.  Well drilled and resourced guerilla teams with access to military weapons, explosives, safe houses, vehicles and forged documents point to the existence of extensive underground networks existing in European cities like Paris and Brussels; perhaps even a IS Wilayat in an EU country.  In turn, this also raises the possibility that ISIS / AQI will use tactics similar to those used to escalate violence between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq; using violence to divide the population along Muslim / non-Muslim or White / Arab lines to encourage radicalisation.  The French response was to deploy an aircraft carrier, conduct extensive airstrikes on Syria and ask its fellow EU member states to join it in a ‘pitiless war on Islamic State’.

As someone who knows little about this complicated area of geopolitics, I found this book to be happily clear and methodical.  It introduces the main players, events and themes of the historical narrative without delving into the kind of detail that would make it five times longer and ten times less comprehensible to the non-specialist.  The author expresses views, and I’m not well informed enough to comment on their merit, but they’re all supported by reasoned argument and do not seem needlessly partisan or biased.  Indeed, Kilcullen isn’t afraid to apportion blame to everyone declaring at one point that there is more than enough of it to go round.  The language and style are clear and analytical.  There is, inevitably, some Australian American-style military jargon, e.g. “getting out in front of the imagination curve” but this is mercifully rare given the author’s background! All in all, I found it an enjoyable and informative read on what is, undoubtedly, a hideously complex topic but one that, sadly, may continue to grow in global significance over the coming years.

Bryan Burrough & John Heylar - Barbarians At The Gate

Barbarians at the Gate relates the story of a huge, and achingly complex, private equity / leveraged buyout mega deal.  The cast of major figures in this saga runs to  hundreds, if not thousands, and the two journalists who authored this book do an admirable job of conveying a sense of these figures alongside the broad narrative of the deal itself.  The book is extremely thoroughly researched in terms of the personnel involved; the pair have conducted extensive interviews with all the major movers and shakers.  Indeed, the book, for me, was at its best when describing and portraying the main characters involved. Background and context for each character is rich, informative and engaging including summaries of their childhood, education and family life, brief business biographies and anecdotes exemplifying their manners and modus operandi.  These include many of the titans of the, now vast, private equity business in the US; Henry Kravis (pp130-1), his cousin and partner George Roberts (pp132-3), their former mentor Jerry Kohlberg (also chapter 5, pp128 onwards) and Ted Frostmann (pp235-6). Investment banking bigwigs like Bruce Wasserstein (First Boston then Wasserstein Perella) and Peter Cohen (p155, Shearson), corporate high flyers like Ross Johnson (RJR Nabisco) and Jim Robinson (p186-7, American Express) and countless other lawyers, advisors and board members.  The cast is really too numerous to be able to keep a clear picture of the anyone apart from the recurring lead roles but this can hardly be blamed on the authors and the book is well indexed for anyone wanting to make reference to particular individuals.  Indeed, the vast army of people involved amply demonstrates the grotesque fee orgy that went on around this deal!  Total fees are estimated at one point at close to $1 billion for a $25 billion deal.  Corporate cultures are also skillfully described and colourfully rendered including Standard Foods, Nabisco, RJ Reynolds, KKR, Shearson, Drexel, Salomon and many others.

However, while there is undeniable merit in the portraits of both individuals and institutions the book does sacrifice clear detail about the mechanics and chronology of the deal in favour of more dramatic, albeit more enjoyable and readable, material.  Corporate shindigs, the opulence of boardrooms, the fabulous art collections of private residences and confidential drinking sessions are all described in minute detail with great relish.  Private meetings and the home lives of the major players are imagined and dramatised with regularity but the nuts and bolts of the deal never receive the same exhaustive treatment.  To be sure, there can be justifications for this; the subject matter is dry and difficult to summarise, most readers are probably more interested in a semi-dramatised account, the authors are journalists not financial professionals and for this last fact I’m very grateful as the book was readable!  Nonetheless, I often found myself wishing there was a section dedicated to explaining the financing, and other technical aspects of the deal, in pellucid detail.  This is missing from the book and I feel it would have benefited from a section briefly dissecting the three offers in terms funding and the breakdown of equity, leverage and types of debt employed.  For example, Forstmann finds his ‘$3 billion sandwiched between layers of junk bonds’ which to me is incomprehensible as debt, to my mind, is put on top of equity so that it is never quite clear what kind of capital structure this bid has.  Furthermore, discussion of the Frostmann bid mentions his firm ‘receive[ing] senior debt rather than junior debt’ but it’s not clear why the acquirer is receiving any debt at all from the firm it has acquired.  I imagine that as well as contributing equity Frostmann also agrees to buy some of the debt issued to pay for the acquisition but it is precisely these kind of details that the book leaves unexplained and unattended.  Equally, the ‘reset’ clause on the debt offered to RJR shareholders as part of the KKR bid seems to amount to a guarantee that it will never trade below a certain level, which, in practical terms, seems to remove many of the advantages of using debt as large amounts of capital would have to be raised or set aside to fulfil this promise.  In the end, it seems KKR do have to put more capital into the deal because of this clause but the workings of this are never clearly or satisfactorily explained for me.  The epilogue and afterword, while making some interesting points about the operating fates of RJR subsidiaries post acquisition, raise even more questions about the financial engineering of the deal.  KKR ‘ran up the white flag, swapping its RJR stock for shares in another company it controlled, Borden’ - I have simply no idea how this would work and this is all the explanation offered!  Did they sell the stock and then buy more Borden?  Did a minority at Borden swap their stock for RJR?  It must a have been a sizeable minority stake to be worth what I assume must have been the majority of RJR?  No clues are offered in the book!  Also, after KKR’s unexplained exit when the company is being run by Goldstone, a former lawyer for the management group’s buyout, there is mention of RJR’s stock ‘rising 20%’ following an interview he gives on legal liabilities in the tobacco business.  This indicates the group must have been relisted, which it was in 1991, but this is the only mention made of it! This seems an extraordinary omission not to cover the group’s reentry to the stock market but, again, no further information is offered.             

Of course, the authors can hardly be expected to cover each and every aspect of such a mammoth and byzantine deal.  It is popular book and not a technical dissertation on the financial structures employed.  Equally, I feel they do a fine job of describing the characters involved, the cultures of the institutions and the huge amounts of ego and greed involved in the deal.  However, if these are the strengths of the book then I feel that a lack of detail on the financial structures involved and a slightly unclear technical narrative are the weaknesses.  Other corporate histories I have read authored by two people have also suffered from some of these same perceived faults so I wonder if, in the process of dual authorship, some of these grittier, less glamorous topics get lost between the two.  I also wondered if, reading this book at some 30 years removed from the events, I simply need more explanation than a contemporary reader to whom the events would have been current.  The authors were clearly deeply involved in the contemporary coverage of this rigamarole and, perhaps, as such didn’t share my historically detached perspective.  

It was an incredibly thoroughly researched and highly readable account dealing with a hugely complex topic.  Strong on anecdotes, opinions, the character of individuals and the culture of institutions but a little weak on the financial technicalities.

Ian McEwan - Enduring Love

Someone told me that the opening passages of this book contained the most beautiful prose they’ve ever read.  This wasn’t the case for me and, reflecting on this idea, I thought that perhaps the most potent passages come further into a book when the ideas or characters have been more fully developed.  Nonetheless, the author’s ability to conjure up powerful and instantly recognisable scenes, sensations and emotional landscapes is undeniable.  This first struck me at the end of chapter nine, where an argument is described between the two main protagonists, Clarissa and Joe.  It is vivid and recalls much of the chaotic, visceral immediacy of verbal sparring with those close to you.  Thoughts, threats and accusations seems to be formed and spoken simultaneously without any conscious reflection or planned strategy. Nevertheless, despite this lack of planning, they can often be more hurtful than considered comments.  As if you’re responding instinctively, like closing your eyes or putting up your arms when physical objects fly towards you.  It’s a reflex and can be all the more apposite because of this.  Another example of his skill is the crescendo of suspense that is built up in chapter nineteen by throwing the reader’s attention forward to a crucial event that has yet to happen before returning to the chronology of the narrative.  For instance, “a day or so later it became a temptation to invent or elaborate details about the table next to ours” where the reader is aware that something seismic is about to happen but is left wondering what it could be.  Juxtaposed with the smooth, finely rendered description of a birthday celebration in a busy restaurant it creates a powerful feeling of anticipation and anxiety.

The characters are depicted with more intellectual detail than physical.  I felt close and connected to the scientific musings of Joe and his crisis about abandoning his career as a popular science writer and returning to ‘real science’.  The flowing prose was occasionally inlaid with captivating ideas that inspired the character with greater vivacity and brought me closer to them.  Joe opines, “so the meanderings of narrative had given way to an aesthetics of form, as in art, so in science” or “if you lived in a group, like humans have always done, persuading others of your own needs and interests would be fundamental to your own well being.  Sometimes you had to use cunning.  Clearly you would be at your most convincing if you persuaded yourself first and did not even have to pretend to believe what you were saying.  The kind of self-deluding individuals who tended to do this flourished, as did their genes”.  In other places the details and specifics are less convincing.  I often found these clumsier touches to be physical.  The grieving widow of the hot air balloon hero looks “a long way off, out on her own in unspeakable weather, like a lone Arctic explorer”.  The mien of someone facing extreme weather rarely looks detached in my experience and imagination it is more a countenance of resolve and determination.  The phrase certainly didn’t aid the depiction and actually jarred somewhat.  Again, the physical description of the same character’s house provoked more confusion than animation.  “Facing the poisonous fire, set opposite the sofa were two chairs”, how can the chairs both face the fire and be opposite the sofa, I thought?  The fire must be contained by a wall and short of the sofa being beside the fire, against the wall, or in front of the fire meaning the fire was largely obscured. It seemed to me the chairs must face the sofa perpendicular to the wall where the fire’s located.  

However, the worst aspect of the book was some of the character’s behaviour in the story.  Clarissa, who is depicted as a caring, compassionate and intelligent woman, transforms from a loving partner into a suspicious, dismissive narcissist  when Joe acquires a stalker.  Her behaviour seems unlikely, unbelievable and unreasonable in equal measure given the previous information we have been given about her.  Her actions are so strange it made me think that Joe has gone mad and that it would turn out that he had invented the stalker, as Clarissa seems to suspect.  One could argue this tension is part of the plot but the this line of thinking strikes me as full of gaping holes.  Clarissa was at the accident and would have seen Parry, the stalker, herself.  Joe also could have shown her Parry standing watch outside their house.  Joe, inexplicably, deletes the 30 answerphone messages Parry leaves and never presents Clarissa with this type of evidence for no apparent reason .  She dismisses the extremely numerous letters as possibly written by Joe on the pretext that the handwriting is the similar, which seems very odd and summarily dismissive for a caring partner not to mention improbable from a purely technical perspective.  Furthermore, where is Joe finding the time to write such voluminous missives!?  Equally, if he was in fact writing himself hundreds of letters wouldn’t Clarissa be more seriously concerned about his mental health and therefore take more concentrated actions to find out if Parry did in fact exist?  Her position is an inconceivable one for the character we are presented with earlier:  She cares about Joe, sees that something is having a very profound effect on him but can’t be bothered to conduct even the most precursory investigation into its veracity and decides he is mad but not actually mad enough to get him to talk to a psychologist or doctor!  However, and in my opinion conclusively, the fact that Parry does exist makes this entire portion of the plot weak and only supportable in a very flimsy and half-hearted way.  The letter of justification that Clarissa writes in chapter twenty-three represents an incredibly generous self-assessment. Again, it was not in keeping with her presentation as a character earlier in the book, and was, for me, the nail in the coffin for this portion of the storyline.  It is simply too unreasonable and far-fetched to warrant any real interest.  Another problem I had with the plot is Joe’s acquisition of the gun and its subsequent use.  Again, good, convincing prose and description is diluted by wholly unbelievable narrative developments on Joe’s trip to buy a gun from some retired coke dealers.  Why would he break down in uncontrollable fits of laughter halfway through the deal?  It spoils the otherwise well-crafted depiction of their living environment and conservation needlessly.  Finally, Joe’s shooting of Parry when he has kidnapped Clarissa also seems unlikely and melodramatic.  Would he have such confidence in his aim after one practice shot that probably wasn’t accurate given it took him a long time to find the hole in the tree trunk?  I think not, especially given the proximity of Clarissa to the target.  Why not just attack him without a gun?  Parry has already been described as small and, at the time of the shooting, was only going to stab himself and not Clarissa!  The whole episode struck me as forced and unnecessarily melodramatic and, combined with Clarissa’s incongruous and scarcely credible behaviour, it ruined the other considerable merits of the book.  It also formed a stark contrast with the other parts of the plot.  The ballooning incident, its aftermath for Clarissa and Joe and the story of the hero’s widow were all sensitively and believably handled throwing the more pantomime themes into garrish relief.

I found the book engaging and beautifully written in parts but the weak narrative and issues I have with the behaviour and actions of the protagonists considerably reduced my enjoyment of it as a whole.

Aldous Huxley - Eyeless in Gaza

The story jumps around a lot chronologically so it is quite hard to establish the characters definitively, especially the peripheral ones.  However, it’s also quite powerful in highlighting how huge swathes of our lives pass without much of note remaining in our memories, while other passages are remembered in pellucid, excruciating detail.  In this respect it is effective.  The chronological gaps between the two can be huge or very short and what is remembered ranges from the obviously significant to the seemingly irrelevant, which all lends yet more mystery to the chimerical and ethereal character of memory!  The negative, for me, was that I felt that most of the peripheral characters are a bit redundant as I didn’t really have a clear idea of their histories or characteristics.  They’re sort of shadowy, half characters who occasionally come into focus but remain largely blurry.  In some ways I feel the story might be more powerful if told in a more traditionally chronological way; however, given I found the end very moving this may be an unfair, and inaccurate, criticism to make. A bit like having a good plate of pasta in a restaurant and then thinking it might have been better to have had pizza!  I suppose one could read the chapters in chronological order rather than in the order they’re presented in order to compare.  Another, far more minor, criticism is the lack of translation of Latin, French, Italian and perhaps another couple of languages in the Vintage Classics edition I read; just how erudite does this publisher expect their readership to be!?  It’s not like they’re in a footnote and I was just too lazy to look them up; they’re not included at all! Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book more and more the further into it I got as I felt there was more depth to the characters and more narrative context in which to locate them.  The individual chronological pieces combine and crescendo together to create a very powerful ending, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  

The prep school scenes are extremely well documented and realistic, presumably drawing on Huxley’s own experiences at Hillside School, Malvern.  The scenes depicting sex and sexual desire are also very vivid but encompass a range of appetites and dispositions.  From ravenous, insouciant man and woman eaters, to ever-ambivalent Anthony to the, scarcely believable, chastity of Brian Foxe who reveres his lover so much he doesn’t want to defile her by the act of copulation!  For me this range of characters and emotions says a lot about Huxley’s ability to observe and portray very different characters believably.

Anthony is an intriguing character with a development that includes the despicable and delightful.  Initially, I felt so sorry for the poor boy left with only his peculiar, unemotional father after the death of his mother.  However, his behaviour towards his old friend Brian, wooing the woman he loves for a bet and then shirking his duty to admit this, made my stomach turn.  I found myself enraged at him and Mary Amberly, his lover with whom he makes the bet, for treating the emotions of others with such disregard.  Especially Anthony, who perpetrates the crime against his oldest friend and must have some premonition of the hurtful consequences.  Brian’s suicide note is heart wrenching to read:

“It’s as if a broken statue somehow contrived to hold itself together….A statue at one moment, and the next a heap of dust and shapeless fragments.”.

We cannot even claim love or infatuation in his defence; he does it to show the worldly-wise Mary how he too can be flip about sex and relationships.  Later, I despise his cowardice for not confessing his crime.  However, at the same time, I feel I can understand how terrible actions emanate from confused feelings that are nowhere near as awful as the acts themselves.    

I really like the dichotomy Huxley draws between Anthony, a boy who hasn’t been loved enough, and Brain, a boy who has been loved too much.  Both end up emotionally retarded in very different ways but with the ultimate consequences that they are broadly unsuited to meaningful relationships.  Brian because he is too idealistic and places his lover on an impossible pedestal and Anthony because he seems scared of commitment, probably on account of the loss he has suffered earlier in his life and never properly come to terms with.  I feel like what happens between the two is sickening and disgusting but in some way it is also understandable and almost familiar. In the end, my anger and hatred of Anthony subsided into a feeling of hopelessness and loss at the tragedy of Brian’s suicide and the dreadful feelings of guilt that must haunt Anthony in the aftermath.  

As I mentioned, the end of the book is by far the most powerful section to me as Huxley, and the characters, try to make some sense of their lives and the experiences that have lead them to this point.  Dr. Miller is an intriguing, semi-prophetic character who speaks didactically in almost parabolic language; short sentences, lots of repetition, sweeping, unqualified observations that challenge conventional wisdom or seem unrelated to the topic at hand.  He is a figure from the society Anthony knows, appearing in a strange land at a time when he desperately needs help and he provides it to him while simultaneously reflecting on the metaphysical nature  of the universe!  There is more than a little of the saviour about him and what he says and does.  It strikes me there’s also a lot of wisdom in what he says and that this is his purpose in the book for Huxley, to be a demagogue for Anthony and help him to develop and reach greater understanding.  I hear what I imagine to be Huxley’s opinions in a mixture of what he says and what the mature Anthony says at the end to Helen, which I’ll include later. I have a feeling he makes a very brief appearance earlier in the book but cannot be sure of it.  His other worldly quality reminds me of the dog that falls out of the sky while Anthony is lying on the roof with Helen.  As far as I’m aware this remains totally unexplained but seems to be the totemic image of the horror and pain of the world for both Anthony and Helen; recurring in both of their narratives over long periods of time.

One piece of the novel I loved was Hugh Ledwidge’s letter to Helen about the passage of time.  Apart from this missive and some very vivid depiction of him as socially and sexually awkward I would put him in the category of ‘shadowy, half characters’ that I mentioned in the first paragraph.  I never feel I’ve got to know very well owing to their scanty appearances and a personal narrative that is, at best, loosely sketched.  The letter is wonderful though and can probably justify his whole inclusion as it’s not something Brian, Anthony or Helen could really say:

“‘Midsummer Day, Helen.  But you’re too young, I expect, to think much about the significance of special days.  You’ve only been in the world for about seven thousand days altogether; and one has got to have lived through at least ten thousand before one begins to realize there aren’t an indefinite number of them and you can’t do exactly what you want with them.   I've been here more than thirteen thousand days, and the end’s visible,  the boundless possibilities have narrowed down.   One must cut according to one’s cloth; and one’s cloth is not only exiguous; it’s also of one special kind - and generally of poor quality at that.  When one’s young, one thinks one can tailor one’s time into all sorts of splendid and fantastic garments - shakoes and chasubles and Ph.D gowns; Nijinsky’s tights and Rimbaud’s slate-blue trousers and Garibaldi’s red shirt.  But by the time you’ve lived ten thousand days, you begin to realize that you’ll be lucky if you succeed in cutting one decent workaday suit out of the time at your disposal.  It’s a depressing realization; and Midsummer is one of the days that brings it home.  The longest day.  One of the the sixty or seventy longest days of one’s five and twenty thousand.  And what have I done with this longest day - longest of so few, of so uniform, of so shoddy?  The catalogue of my occupations would be humiliatingly absurd and pointless.  The only creditable and, in any profound sense of the word, reasonable thing I’ve done is to think a little about you, Helen, and write this letter…’”

I feel the conclusion of the novel, consisting of Brian’s death, Anthony’s trip to South America and encounter with Dr Miller and his final monologue with Helen is very powerful.  For some reason, Helen’s experience with the Communists where she loses her lover didn’t have such a profound effect on me except as an exemplification of the kind of hate politics that Anthony later criticises in his exposition on how to live life.  This portion is, for me, presaged by Anthony’s conversation with Mark in Chapter 13 (1934) when he says:

“But, after all, if you had enough love and goodness you could be sure of evoking some measure of answering love and goodness from almost everyone you came into contact with - whoever he or she might be.  And in that case almost everyone would really be ‘dear’.  At present, most people seem more or less imbecile or odious; the fault is at least as much in oneself as in them.”  

But reaches its fullest expression in Chapter 54 (1935).  It’s also perhaps because I was better placed by this point to appreciate his philosophy knowing more about his experience and narrative:

‘It begins,’ he answered, ‘with trying to cultivate the difficult art of loving people.’

‘But most people are detestable.’

‘They’re detestable, because we detest them.  If we liked them, they’d be likeable’

‘Do you think that’s true?’

‘I’m sure it’s true.’

‘And what do you do after that?’

‘There’s no “after,”’ he replied.  ‘Because, of course, it’s a lifetime’s job.  Any process of change is a lifetime’s job.  Every time you get to the top of a peak, you see another peak in front of you - a peak that you couldn’t see from lower down.  Take the mind-body mechanism, for example.  You begin to learn how to use it better; you make an advance; from the position you’ve advanced to, you discover how you can use it better still.  And so on, indefinitely.  The ideal ends recede as you approach them; they’re seen to be other and more remarkable than they seemed before the advance was begun.  It’s the same when one tries to change one’s relations with other people.  Every step forward reveals the necessity of making new steps forward - unanticipated steps, towards a destination one hadn’t seen when one set out.  Yes, it lasts a lifetime,’ he repeated.  ‘There can’t be any “after”.  There can only be an attempt, as one goes along, to project what one has discovered on the personal level on to the level of politics and economics.  One of the first discoveries,’ he added, ‘one of the very first one makes, is that organized hatred and violence aren’t the best means for securing justice and peace.  All men are capable of love for all other men.  But we’ve artificially restricted our love.  By means of conventions of hatred and violence.  Restricted it within families and clans, within classes and nations.”  

I really like the idea of life’s purpose being a constant, never ending process of improvement and it resonates with what I have experienced in life so far.  I also like the idea, probably more present in the first quote than the second, that what we think of the world is at least as much a reflection of our own internal lives than it is any objective reality.  

The final passages of the book, where Anthony expounds a meditative philosophy of peace, contain some very beautiful passages:

“Frenzy of evil and separation.  In peace there is unity.  Unity with other lives.  Unity with all being.  For beneath all being, beneath the countless identical but separate patterns, beneath the attractions and repulsions, lies peace.  the same peace as underlies the frenzy of the mind.  Dark peace, immeasurably deep.  Peace from pride and hatred and anger, peace from cravings and aversions, peace from all the separating frenzies.  Peace through liberation, for peace is achieved freedom.  Freedom and at the same time truth.  The truth of unity actually experienced.  Peace in the depths, under the storm, far down below the leaping of the waves, the frantically flying spray” - my highlights

At the beginning, I didn’t think I’d enjoy this book nearly as much as I did at the end, which is much better than the inverse!

Adam Phillips - Against Self-Criticism (Article in the LRB - 5/3/15)

What does it mean to love thy neighbour as thyself in the context of the abject self-loathing that many people display?  Was the advice originally conceived as ironic?  Or do most people actually conform to it, insofar as they treat other people with a good deal of cruelty and indifference.  As this example, which Phillips attributes to Lacan, shows there is a beguiling simplicity to this Christian teaching that is unhelpful and untrue when considered in the context of an average person’s psychology.  As Phillips goes on to show, most of our feelings are fundamentally ambivalent; meaning they are a mixture of opposing views.  We hate what we love and vice-versa.  All strong feelings are accompanied by their opposite.  What satisfies us also frustrates us, and we must believe what frustrates us could potentially satisfy us otherwise we wouldn’t find it frustrating!  Viewed from a position that accepts that love is meaningless, or impossible, without hate the Christian narrative of love may begin to look like a facile cover story designed to repress the ever-present ambivalence we all feel.

Phillips evokes “a malign parent that harms in the guise of protecting” when talking about the self-criticism.  This highlights that there are, most certainly, positive and essential attributes to self-reflection.  However, the relentless and unending self-criticism that most of us subject ourselves too is a strange and sadomasochistic way of loving ourselves.  Nevertheless, it is so deeply ingrained in our day to day behaviour that the very idea that we should stop criticising ourselves ordinarily arouses a great deal of criticism itself!  Over the past few days I have tried to catch myself in the act of self-criticism and have been struck by several things.  First, it is almost unbelievably frequent.  Secondly, it is extraordinarily repetitive consisting of limited variation around a couple of unimaginative and unexamined themes - “you’re lazy / useless / selfish”.  Thirdly, it is cruel and leaves no room for other interpretations of the action or mindset it is criticising.  As Phillips points out, if we met a person like this we would think them highly unusual, inexplicably cruel and very, very boring! Phillips suggests we would imagine that they had suffered a traumatic or damaging event from which they are recovering.

So what is this bizarre, but ubiquitous, part of the conscience that detaches itself from our conception of ourselves and repetitively abuses us in such unfeeling fashion?  Is it a small fragment of an alternative self; someone we could be but is overpowered by other selves within us?  For Freud, who calls it the superego, it is the voice of culturally learned behaviour that protects us from biological desires that are dangerous to us when we live in a society.  For example, the urge to murder.  Someone offends us, we want revenge by murdering them but we are afraid of the consequences this will have for our continued existence in society so we turn this violence on ourselves and internalise our hatred.  This constant self-criticism makes it impossible to truly evaluate ourselves in a more measured and subtle manner; like someone shouting at you while you’re trying to watch a film.  Furthermore, so great is our fear of the superego, perhaps because we are terrified of the murderous darkness inside ourselves, that we agree with the superego’s criticism and speak on its behalf!    

However, as with ambivalence, understanding such a powerful and prevalent part of our psychology cannot be achieved via simple interpretation or singular methods of explanation.  As Hamlet says in Act 3 Scene 1, “conscience does make cowards of us all”.  Even though we are the creator of the superego; the superego also makes us something different by its existence.  It is an unforbidden pleasure, allowed for and even encouraged by society, that is always available to us, which may go some way to explaining our near constant recourse to it.  We relish our failure to live up to standards without reflecting on what the standards against which we are judging ourselves are.  Partly because our conscience is too busy berating us and never allows us time to consider this question.  Indeed, conscience itself may be a coward, as well as making cowards of us, afraid of allowing us to develop a more complex and subtle morality.  Conscience criticises because it is afraid of what it it doesn’t know or cannot comprehend.  Thus, by interpreting our conscience simplistically and taking its criticisms at face value we lend credibility to its boring seriousness, suffocating drama and fearfulness.  Self-criticism itself is incredibly simplistic; involving no consensus or negotiation and endlessly repeating the same unexamined insults.  It is dictatorial and tyrannical and leads to a situation where, for Freud, the superego enslaves the ego.  Instead of this unconsidered dogma and ill supported judgement there should, instead, be reasoned conversation and inquisitive experimentation.  

So why do we seem to enjoy something that is so cruel and boring? And why is it so prevalent?  Freud thinks it arises from a fear of loss of love.  Safety and security of love are the things we most covet and for this reason safety is preferred to fulfilment of desire and desire is, similarly, sacrificed for security.  We conceive of ourselves as criminals and need to be protected from our immoral and wayward desires.  However, this viewpoint leaves little room for us to explore desires that are not forbidden as we are constantly engaged in criticising out of fear of ourselves.  We are so busy repressing our nature, on the supposition that it will be forbidden by society and hence unhelpful, that we are unable to truly get to know ourselves and our deepest desires.  Again, there is certainly a risk of overly simplistic interpretation and explanation here.  Nonetheless, once I began looking out for self-criticism I was shocked by how often I engage in it.  It is amazing that something so unusual and mean can play such a large part in one’s life and yet go unnoticed.  Part of this must be due to habituation; and another part to society’s endorsement of this trait, both explicit and implicit.  However, once we have noticed what we are doing to ourselves it also allows us to see just how boring, unimaginative and overwhelmingly useless it is! Viewed in this light, Phillips advises us not to take the self-criticism of the superego too seriously.  I also think it’s best to try and catch oneself indulging in this sadomasochism and to make a conscious effort to limit it.  Such basic, repetitive cruelty cannot be helpful in coming to a proper understanding of who we are and we must strive for more intelligent, nuanced understanding.   

One supplementary point I think is worth consideration is one’s response to the self-criticism of the superego.  In the paragraph above, I mention Phillip’s advice to not take the superego too seriously; which I believe is fundamentally sound counsel.  However,  we must be cautious that these attempts to marginalise the message of the superego do not turn into an equally hateful counter-criticism.  Just as the superego’s simplistic criticism is not helpful in coming to a deeper understanding of oneself, I think that an overly vitriolic assessment of the superego could be equally unhelpful.  Rather than trying to despise the superego and dismiss it as idiotic, I believe it may ultimately be more rewarding to try and comprehend the superego from a position of acceptance and loving understanding.  While the jibes of the superego may be cruel and hurtful, it is incumbent on us to resist the urge to respond to hatred with hatred or to return cruelty with further cruelty.  As Spinoza tell us in The Ethics, “hate is increased by being returned but can be destroyed by love”.  

Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

Spread over a range of disparate characters, Tolstoy shows striking emotional astuteness and sympathy. So real, and in many cases, personally recognisable, are the depictions of the psychological and emotional machinations of his dazzling cast that I was left in awe his mastery of the internal life. There is such an abundance of interesting situations, individuals and relationships I feel like I could study its contents almost endlessly. This being the case, what follows will be necessarily superficial and will, no doubt, exclude huge swathes of material of equal or higher value than what it contains.

Anna is a character of incredible charm and social tact. All bow before her perfect manners, enchanting good looks and impeccable demeanour. This inherent agreeability she shares with her sibling Oblonsky, who is portrayed as the personification of good nature, warm feeling and clubby bonhomie. However, Oblonsky’s preeminently calm, gentle and soothing social manner is juxtaposed with the tumultuous state of his finances, his lazy attitude to work and his relaxed approach to adultery. As with her brother, Anna’s considerable charm is not left unsullied by other aspects of her character. However, as with most of the characters, you don’t feel you’re being shown a cast that have been preordained simplistically as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I’m reminded of Chekov’s comments on the duty of an artist, “A court must put the questions correctly, but it is up to the members of the jury to decide, each according to their own taste”. To me, Tolstoy achieves this in the same manner as George Eliot in Mill on the Floss. The possible exception to this impartial presentation is Varenka, whom Kitty meets while recovering from her rejection by Vronsky in Germany and who later almost receives a marriage request from Levin’s academic half-brother Sergei Koznyshev. Anna married as a young woman not knowing love and subsequently fell in love. This is the root of her various difficulties that eventuate to a sad and horrible fruition. Can this be described as a crime? I don’t think so. To me it speaks more of the evils of an inflexible social structure that cannot accommodate change. However, one could easily argue that if a society accepts too much ‘change’ then there will quickly be no structure at all. Anna is a deeply sociable person and becomes consumed by boredom and jealousy when isolated from society. She is intelligent and self-critical, acknowledging her own evil in her actions towards her husband. However, despite his evolving actions and motivations, she holds her hatred of him firm. What does this point towards? Perhaps it is evidence of her own regret at having made the wrong decision and the social turmoil recognition of this fact causes her; Karenin is the externalisation of her own anger with herself. Whatever the cause, the pain and deterioration that occur to Anna as a result of her effective exile, a terrible punishment for one who seems to thrive on social interaction and appreciation, are acute. Her descent into suicide is excruciating to read and the grim inevitability of the sequence does nothing to lower its tension.

Vronsky is another character blessed with excellent social manners and a surfeit of charm. He too is a mixture of acts that we both condone and condemn, leaving our final judgement of him quite unsure. He is a talented man as indicated by his successful career, his mastery of his horse racing and his meticulous management of his estate after his elopement with Anna. This also displays his love of detail. He also seems to hold the esteem of his peers. However, against these broadly positive representations we have other less complimentary incidences. His courting of Kitty surely doesn’t endear him to all readers, however, is he to blame for falling in love with Anna? Again, while his actions towards Kitty are hardly desirable, I feel he can’t be blamed for falling in love. He also displays a violently emotional side, which seems to be most in evidence when he is under pressure. He falls in love with Anna immediately and absolutely and gives up his career for her without a second thought. He falls at the last hurdle in his important horse race. He shoots himself in the chest when his love of Anna becomes confused and unbearable in the face of Karenin’s magnanimity towards Anna during her illness. Here Tolstoy summarises the experience of real, deep seated confusion, “He felt himself knocked quite out of the rut along which he had hitherto trodden so proudly and lightly. All the apparently solid habits and rules of his life suddenly seemed false and inapplicable”. He is reported to be almost inconsolable upon Anna’s suicide after which he elects to join the Serbian war with the words, “As a man I have this quality, that I do not value my life at all and that I have physical energy enough to hack my way into a square and slay or fall - that I am sure of. I am glad that there is something for which I can lay down my life which I not only do not want, but of which I am sick! It will be of use to somebody”. In sum, I find him implacable. He seems more sure of himself than Levin and more conservative too but, at once, he seems more passionately in thrall to his emotions too. I feel like the love that Anna and him share is admired by Tolstoy and that he may even ascribe to it a mystical quality. I take as evidence for this the nightmare they share about the peasant talking French that they never discuss. The dreadful effects that arise from their pursuit of their love seem more to do with the circumstances Anna finds herself in once society has judged her and Vronsky’s response to losing Anna to suicide; he can find no love in the world once Anna is taken from him.

Karenin’s character moves through differing phases too. At first he seems the boring antithesis to Anna’s vivacity; capturing this social bird of paradise in a dull cage of status seeking officialdom. However, we feel his pain when he is wronged through little fault of his own and, to a degree, admire his stoicism and equanimity. Nonetheless, this initial reaction could be reinterpreted as self-deception in light of his later hatred of Anna and his wish for her death. This, in turn, is followed by what appears to the reader as an attitude of genuine forgiveness and magnanimity. However, these ‘true’ Christian feelings quickly metamorphose into spitefulness masquerading as magnanimity and a parading righteousness deceitfully claiming a loss whilst secretly booking a profit of indignation. Lydia Ivanovna’s involvement in this stage is despicable and makes us think much less of Karenin for consorting with her. The climax of this false Christianity is their encounter with Oblonsky and the sleeping savant! Here, Anna’s former friend and her estranged husband effectively decide her fate via the expedient of French charlatan, Landau, who claims to offer God’s opinion through his sleep-talking. I like the name of the savant especially, ‘pram’ in French, seeming to simultaneously refer to his sleep induced revelations and, perhaps, the childishness of such ideas! I see Lydia Ivanovna, in this guise of Karenin’s spiritual guide, as the personification of the society that was once so charmed by Anna turning against her and exacting pointless revenge on what it deems a ‘fallen woman’.

Levin’s moods are spectacular in their variety and depth but, as anyone would know from an honest assessment of their own feelings, they are hardly unusual for being so assorted. In a small way, the reader suffers with him as he grasps hold of a new notion, full of enthusiasm and zeal, only to have these feelings abandoned as sophistry or overturned in favour of newer, seemingly more suitable, schemas. His infatuation with Kitty at the skating rink quickly turns to embarrassment and dejection following his refused proposal. Following this, we see him turn to the management of his estate with renewed zeal and resolve to occupy himself in agricultural matters. As he moves through these phases, it seems to me that his feelings and emotions are the most vividly and believably displayed of all the characters, which is a real distinction in a book that deals with the emotions so adroitly. This deft treatment continues through the various, delicately described incidences of his life. The rekindling of his romance with Kitty is a masterpiece of reawakened love and restitution of feelings that had been previously abandoned as hopeless but which were never totally discarded. Again, as with Vronsky and Anna, Tolstoy seems to show a potentially metaphysical or mystical side to love when the pair decipher implausibly long chains of letters, drawn in chalk on a card table, into complete sentences. Levin’s rapture about Kitty’s acceptance, his nerves and agitation in preparation for the wedding and his wild jealousy at Veslovsky’s flirting with Kitty when Oblonsky brings him to stay at Levin’s estate, his mixed feeling about his child’s birth. All treated with the same exceptional skill by Tolstoy; making us feel and relive the same, or approximate, emotional events from our own lives. I see Levin as an emotional man, but in a very different way to Vronsky. While Vronsky may appear to be more measured and conservative during his day to day life, he is overcome by feelings so strong that he takes extraordinary actions. Levin’s feelings, on the other hand, receive more minute description from Tolstoy but do not result in such devastating consequences. Alternatively, Levin seems to be able to find a way of rededicating himself to something else or is capable of recourse to actions that aren’t as final as attempting to die; either via suicide or fighting in a war. At bottom, I feel Levin is an optimist. He cares deeply about his serfs and servants and has an altruistic desire to improve their lot, as evidenced by his co-operative schemes and attempts to introduce superior foreign farming techniques. Despite their reluctance, or the disappointing results of such schemes, he perseveres in his care for them. Indeed, one feels that he is quite right to think primarily of the character of the labourer when considering farm management, which is the thesis for his book that he works on sporadically. The love of the countryside and a simple rustic life seem central to any understanding of Levin. Excluding his romantic interactions with Kitty he’s happiest after a long day mowing the grass with his labourers or out shooting with his dog before his companions have arisen. When in town he’s astounded at how so much time can be spent essentially in pursuit of small talk and is upset at how little he achieves whilst he is there. However, against this seeming placement of rural life above urban it is also noteworthy that Levin and Kitty only fight in the countryside and not in the town. Equally, Anna and Vronsky’s disagreements reach their zenith during their rural exile. However, this may be little more than a coincidence given that Levin and Kitty don’t spend much time in town and that a deeply social creature like Anna is bound to suffer while in exile; both physically and emotionally. Despite this, I feel like Tolstoy is, at some level, showing us the pros and cons of both lifestyles. The town is filled with diversion and interaction, which we all need, whilst the country life can be more simple and solitary but, equally, can be socially claustrophobic and lonely. Whatever the niceties of Tolstoy’s view of urban living versus rural living, to understand Levin I think it is central to locate the nub of his character in simple, visceral, religious rural life. For me, the most moving passage in the book is his religious experience in Book 8, Chapter 12. Here, Levin discusses the character of another serf with his carriage driver who refers to this man as someone who, “lives for his soul and remembers God”. Levin proceeds to interrogate him about what this phrase means in practice. The driver struggles to elaborate beyond a very general, “you know what I mean”! Levin continues to reflect on the driver’s comments and the role of reason in spiritual matters, here I will quote at length as I think it is so well written:

“To live not for one’s needs but for God! For what God? What could be more senseless than what he said? He said we must not live for our needs - that is, we must not live for what we understand and what attracts us, what we wish for, but must live for something incomprehensible, for God whom nobody can understand or define. Well? And did I not understand those senseless words of Theodore’s? And having understood them, did I doubt their justice? Did I find them stupid, vague or inexact?
No, I understand him just as he understands them: understood completely and more clearly than I understand anything in life; and I have never in my life doubted it, and cannot doubt it.”

“I, and all other men, know only one thing firmly, clearly, and certainly, and this knowledge cannot be explained by reason: it is outside reason, has no cause, and can have no consequences.
‘If goodness has a cause, it is no longer goodness; if it has a consequence - a reward, it is also not goodness. Therefore goodness is beyond the chain of cause and effect
‘It is exactly this that I know and that we all know
‘What greater miracle could there be than that?”

“And in all of us, including the aspens and the clouds and the nebulae, evolution is proceeding. Evolution from what, into what? Unending evolution and struggle...As if there could be any direction and struggle in infinity!”

“‘What should I have been and how should I have lived my life, if I had not had those beliefs, and had not known that one must live for God, and not for one’s own needs? I should have robbed, lied and murdered. Nothing of that which constitutes the chief joys of my life would have existed for me.’ And although he made the greatest efforts of imagination, he could not picture to himself the bestial creature that he would have been, had he not known what he was living for”

“‘Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.’”

To me, this is a very powerful exposition of a feeling I have experienced many times when considering spiritual matters. I feel I know what is “right” in my “heart” but find excuses or explanations that override it via reason. However, a rationalist would probably respond that my intuition amounts to nothing more than accumulated social prejudices and that if I lived in another time, in another society that I would have a different set of prejudices thus demonstrating the fundamentally unreliable nature of such feelings. Against this objection, I would point to the real emotional consequences of attempting to live a rationalist or nihilist philosophy in practice. Both Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment make this point. In any case, Levin is overwhelmed by a feeling of revelation and I would see this as the most important passage in the book for him. Indeed, Levin’s struggles with rationalism and atheism earlier in the book appear to solved by this experience and it seems to me like this chapter sees Levin find a way of expressing himself, or understanding his experience, that brings him closer to his nature and living in accordance with it. It’s unclear to me whether Levin’s all encompassing revelation amounts to an endorsement of Christianity by Tolstoy.

Kitty strikes me as one of the less intensely analysed characters in Anna Karenina. Perhaps this is because I feel more affinity with the male characters but I still believe that she is something of a carte blanche, especially when compared to Levin or Anna. One explanation for this could be her age. Kitty is young, ingenuous and emotional. She seems to be mainly the object of others intentions or emotions but this is not to say that she doesn’t have feelings or show emotional development. Indeed, there are several interesting instances of this: Her encounter with Varenka is interesting as it seems to mark a movement away from youthful self-absorption, although this change is not immediate. She is, however, immediately in awe of Varenka’s selflessness and ability to show love to all people in spite of, and perhaps because of, her own pain. This change in Kitty continues through her love for Levin and their marriage and reaches its climax when she is nursing Levin’s dying brother; an act we, and Levin, think her incapable of when in reality she performs this most difficult of duties with aplomb. In contrast to Levin’s struggles with reason and religion, we are shown Kitty as a steadfast and simple Christian believer and it is possible that she is part of the theme exemplified by Levin’s driver; unsophisticated, inexplicable faith that is actually far more advanced than the seemingly urbane sophistry of those who employ reason in pursuit of a similar aim. For example, Levin and his half brother Sergei.


Levin’s brother Nikolai, is a form of tragic hero to me. He evokes strong and contradictory feelings in Levin from repulsion and disgust to pity, respect and deep seated familial love. Levin’s recollection of him as bright young man; attractive, full of life and loved by everyone contrasts starkly with the angry, selfish and depressed alcoholic we encounter in his filthy bedsit. The particulars of his life seem to echo some of the themes we find in Anna’s experience. I think of him as a vivacious young man whose keen intellect and considerable strength of mind bring him to a rejection of the corrupt and confused society he sees all around him. The same society that casts Anna out into exile and, ultimately, brings about her suicide. His decision to marry a prostitute seems to indicate his liberal, autocratic leanings and disregard for conventional wisdom. However, he seems to lack the strength or ability to turn this rejection into something positive. To be sure, he falls into the category of those who use reason when probing spiritual questions and, in this sense, he appears condemned to endure a cold life by the standards of this novel. This is the case for both Levin’s brothers. His desperate and sporadic appeals to God during his last moments are terrible.


Anna Karenina is a book about love and the magic, madness and tragedy it can produce. In the religious sense, we see Tolstoy reject intellectual and rational attempts to explore meaning in life. As is shown in Levin’s religious experience, we see that love of God, or good, is irrational and unreasonable at it’s heart. Levin is, in some ways, helped to this understanding by his marriage and his romantic love of Kitty. However, other romances in the novel don’t have such positive outcomes. Anna and Vronsky’s love is condemned by society and drives Anna mad, removing the meaning from Vronsky’s life. Nikolai’s love for his former prostitute wife is frail and becomes consumed by his hatred in the face of his illness. Levin’s other half-brother is so intellectual he seems incapable of even beginning a romance with Varenka. However, I wouldn’t wish to draw a distinction between the happiness of those who love God and the despair of those who do not. The story is far too nuanced to support such a simplistic interpretation. Love, either of God or of other people, is an endlessly complicated and intricate emotion. However, love does seem to me to be the central theme. It produces wildly different outcomes for the various protagonists but, in every case, it is the thing that gives meaning to their lives. Much of what we see that appeals to us as readers must be classified as love of some type or another and much of what repels us is hatred of one form or another. The most extreme instance of this hatred is that which is shown to Anna by society and this indictment also strikes me as a central theme. As such, I would see the book as condemning the hatefulness, which is often associated with societal judgement and those judged by it, and endorsing the simple, visceral love that I feel sure everyone feels for the world at certain points in their lives. Varenka shows free and indiscriminate love despite the pain in her life while Nikolai’s pain turns to hatred and judgement of it’s own. Levin finds love and also finds a way to love the world whereas Anna and Vronsky’s love destroys them, in Anna’s case because she may love the approval of society too much and in Vronsky’s because he may love Anna too much. Love in Anna Karenina is mystical and unavailable to rational analysis, but it is the animating force of the world and all that occurs in it.