Creating Anna Karenina: Tolstoy and the Birth of Literature's Most Enigmatic Heroine

by Bob Blaisdell

Anna Karenina is one of the most nuanced characters in world literature and we return to her, and the novel she propels, again and again. Remarkably, there has not yet been an examination of Leo Tolstoy specifically through the lens of this novel.


Critic and professor Bob Blaisdell unravels Tolstoy’s family, literary, and day-to-day life during the period that he conceived, drafted, abandoned, and revised Anna Karenina. In the process, we see where Tolstoy’s life and his art intersect in obvious and unobvious ways.


Readers often assume that Tolstoy, a nobleman-turned-mystic would write himself into the principled Levin. But in truth, it is within Anna that the consciousness and energy flows with the same depth and complexities as Tolstoy. Her fateful suicide is the road that Tolstoy nearly traveled himself.


At once a nuanced biography and portrait of the last decades of the Russian empire and artful literary examination, Creating Anna Karenina will enthrall the thousands of readers whose lives have become deeper and clearer after experiencing this hallmark of world literature.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Russia, Literature, History, 21st Century, Russian Literature

400 pages, Hardcover

First published August 4, 2020

About the author

Bob Blaisdell is a published adapter, author, editor, and an illustrator of children's books and young adult books. He teaches English in Brooklyn at Kingsborough Community College. He is a reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and Christian Science Monitor and the editor of more than three dozen anthologies for Dover Publications. Email him at Robert.Blaisdell@Kingsborough.edu

Reviews

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this literary biography of Tolstoy as he wrote his masterpiece, Anna Karenina. Professor Bill Blaisdell admits to a lifelong obsession with Anna Karenina, which he read some twenty times in translation before he learned Russian so as to read it in the original. The obsession warms what could have been a straightforward scholarly treatment of Tolstoy's life in these event filled years as the novel was evolving. Blaisdell passionately wants to know the secret, how the novel evolved from a rather superficial story about a shallow society woman who has an affair and then kills herself, into the majestic novel we know today. As anyone who has ever had a memorable teacher knows, passion is transferable, and Blaisdell makes his, ours. Details of Tolstoy's personal life (tumultuous), his writing habits (awful), the publication of the work in installments in Russian Herald--one of the best things about the book is Blaisdell's imaginings of how it would be to read this great work in monthly installments. I was also surprised at Tolstoy's various correspondents and how very different a man he could be from relalationship to relationship. Just a fascinating read, and in having us imagine ourselves as the original readers of the novel's installments, Blaisdell deftly summarizes each section for us, so if it's been a while since you've read Anna Karenina, as was the case for me, you're not left scrambling.

I have a long essay about this book in the October 4, 2020 issue of Los Angeles Review of Books if you'd like to read more:
https://v2.lareviewofbooks.org/articl...

[Julie Stielstra · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I had seen this on the shelf, with its awful soft-focus, historical-chick-lit headless-woman cover, I might not have even picked it up. The subtitle is weird too: Anna Karenina is hardly an "enigmatic heroine." Complex, absolutely, but if any literary character is (in Blaisdell's words) "hyper-conscious," it would be Anna. Every thought, fear, passion, joy and grief is there for us to see. But then I expect Blaisdell had no say in those (ahem) "marketing" decisions.

I have read Anna Karenina several times, and love it. Bob Blaisdell has read it twenty times, including in Russian, which he learned in his mid forties in order to do so. He reveres it, cherishes it. And he is eager to tell you every single thing there is to know about "The Making of Anna Karenina": how it was conceived, developed, written (and nearly abandoned), thought about and finally published by Tolstoy and his long-suffering helpmate and wife, Sofia. You have to really love this novel and/or Tolstoy to enjoy this book, but if you are the right reader, you will.

You will also read a lot about Tolstoy's life, kids, marriage, houses, friendships, travels, and passion for horses. I did not know he was quite an expert in childhood education, a bit of a hypochondriac, depressive, a fanatical and affectionate writer of letters, and took himself very seriously indeed. Blaisdell is a friendly, fond, yet frank guide. Yes, Tolstoy was a very loving and involved dad... but poor Sofia endured 10 pregnancies by the time she was 30, and he refused to allow a wet nurse (as "unnatural") when her nipples were cracked and bleeding from breastfeeding. And no one gainsaid what Count Leo decreed.

Writers will find worthy insights into the writing process, authorial decisions made, and the emotional toll taken. I personally am still thinking about some of Tolstoy's stipulations about how the author feels - or does not feel - about his characters, and about the way descriptions are deployed. (For more on this, see my blogpost Tips from Tolstoy.) Blaisdell (lucky enough to work on some of this book while staying in Tolstoy's own house at Yasnya Polyana) is an approachable, personal, enjoyable writer - this is not a dry lit-crit book. I do wonder why he chose Constance Garnett's old and somewhat controversial translation as his basic text (I'm a Pevear and Volokhonsky fan, myself).

A pleasure for fans of Russian literature (glimpses of Turgenev and Dostoevsky pop up too). It may not make someone who has never read Anna K run out to buy a copy, but if you already have a beat-up, well-read copy on your shelf, this book will be an excellent supplement - and may get you to take your copy down and read it again.

9/7/2020 Update: I impulsively emailed Bob Blaisdell this morning, just to say how much I enjoyed his book, and asked him about his choice of the Garnett translation. He replied within an hour or two, with a cheerful and gracious note. His answer was that the Garnett is still a very good and readable translation, plus it's online with open access, so anyone can read it in full on the spot. I was delighted with his generous and friendly response!

[Laurel Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting biography of Tolstoy and his novel. I think Blaisdell shows prejudice against Tolstoy’s wife and for Anna, though, without giving much evidence. Thus I would say, read it, but with a salt shaker in hand.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a detailed, well-researched, well-written, and surprisingly original contribution to the literature on Tolstoy. I just loved how deeply the author was able to delve into Tolstoy’s life at the time he was composing one of his two masterpieces, Anna Karenina. But it’s not just that the author is able to set the book into the context of Tolstoy’s complex life, which at the time was filled with educational reform, parenthood, intellectual discourse with friends, etc. It’s that the author offers a sustained critique of Tolstoy’s failures of imagination when it came to his heroine’s sexuality and independence. I can’t wait to read the author’s new book on Chekhov.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I simply can't read this anymore. If you're a student of literature, looking to analyse the development of a novel, this is your book. But if you were me, looking for what you hoped would be a unique take on Russian history and culture...all you found was a very irritating and annoying Leo Tolstoy operating in the vacuum of his own pre-occupations. This is most absolutely positive definitely a book for someone other than myself...but I will give it the extra for its usefulness (I hope) to literature students.

[One Flew · Rating 5 out of 5]

While Anna Karenina isn't my favorite novel, it is still a book that I will happily reread and enjoy every few years. Bob Blaisdell clearly adores Karenina and it shows in this loving literary biography of one of history's most respected novels. The idea of the biography of a novel might have previously seemed excessive to me, but I recently read Everybody Behaves Badly (a biography of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises), which was interesting and compelling.

The history of Tolstoy and Anna Karenina are equally fascinating and moving. Tolstoy was clearly a very complex, brilliant and often troubled man. Blaisdell does an exhaustive job of exploring the complicated creation of Karenina, and also Tolstoy's life as both a man of action and a emotionally erratic man. One of the best features of the book for me was how Blaisdell tries to pull the reader into the mindset of the typical Russian reader of the time who would have been consuming the serialized version of the story as Tolstoy slowly published it.

The dissection of the novel is also first rate and it helped me get a greater appreciation for the story. Would recommend to any Tolstoy or Karenina fan.

[Gail Reitano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I kept wishing my second reading of Anna Karenina hadn't been years ago, because the pleasure of piecing together the parallels between Tolstoy's life and the lives of his characters would have been that much greater. Still, this is an excellent book for novelists, and there's impressive scholarship as Blaisdell charts the book's evolution from a tome about Peter the Great into the story of Anna K.
There's a lot to like about this book, and Bob Blaisdell's prose is as smooth and elegant as one of Anna's gowns. I couldn't help but marvel at yet another story of a (male) novelist who has a tirelessly caring, keep-the-home-fires-burning wife who edits his work and tries her best to see that Tolstoy thrives, despite his depression, in the chancy, iffy world of publishing. He is morally opposed to birth control, for an interesting reason, and Mrs. Tolstoy, who really doesn't want to bear and lose any more children is in a bind. Despite that, this is a true love story. Highly recommended.

[Alenka of Bohemia · Rating 4 out of 5]

What does it take to write a book? And what does it take to write a book as impactful, influential and successful as Anna Karenina? Bob Blaisdell gives you all of the answers. With a dedication and enthusiasm for the book that shines through every page, he introduces Tolstoy during a short time in his life when he battled procrastination, family losses, publication deadlines, severe depression and more - and somehow managed to create his possibly greatest work. Partly a biography, partly critical study and all a love letter to the book, this was a surprisingly engaging read. Naturally do not read it unless you have read Anna Karenina first :D

[Lisa S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author learned Russian in order to read Anna Karenina in the original years ago. He has read it over 20 times, has travelled to Russia to research Tolstoy's homes, and has meticulously traced the daily, monthly progress of Tolstoy's writing, thought-process, editing, procrastinating (he hunted a lot, bought steppe land to breed a new tough breed of horses, spent summers with tribal peoples), and somehow creating a masterpiece. Bob takes a lot of the mystery out of writing: it's grueling! it's hard on the wife! your own stupidity gets in the way! The writing is casual (read: not academic, thank god), often funny, gripping.

[Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book that shows the larger context of Tolstoy’s classic.

[Elizabeth ♛Smart Girls Love Trashy Books♛ · Rating 4 out of 5]

-POTENTIAL SPOILERS-

It's been a long time since I read anything nonfiction. I do it so rarely, I don't have the proper tags for it. But really, what does it need to be tagged as? What can I say about nonfiction?

Anna Karenina is one of my most favorite books of all time, both classic and otherwise. I was immediately interested in this book, especially as I'm doing my own reread of Anna Karenina privately in my own time. This guy is even more obsessed with Anna Karenina than me, that's for sure.

I was surprised by how readable this book was. I'm used to nonfiction being really dry and dull and hard to get through as a result, even if they're short. I've had to stop several nonfiction books in the past because despite having really interesting ideas, they were chores to get through. This book feels more conversational and interesting. Most of the time. When it was actually describing the context of Anna Karenina and the reaction of the book and the writing of the book, it was interesting and I flew through those chapters. When it was about anything else, like his letters to friends, I grew bored and struggled to read. It's my fault, not the book. But it still happened.

I also felt like the biographer didn't really elaborate on the whole point of this. He mentioned how Anna was born from Tolstoy having suicidal thoughts himself, but I felt that wasn't explained super well. He talked about him being depressed and suicidal, but I felt it wasn't really enough, ultimately. The biographer also seemed to have a strange vendetta against Sofia Tolstoya that I wasn't a huge fan of. A lot of the time he would say 'well there's no true way for her to know that' 'why did she not write that down' 'that doesn't match her writings' and it got annoying after a while. I don't think he was sexist, but it was weird that he would constantly question her and nobody else even when they did similar things.

This is one of those books I wish I had more to say about, but I really don't. It's nonfiction, so there's not much to say at the end of the day. I felt it was well-written, informative, taught me a lot, and I liked learning more about one of my favorite pieces of literature.However the sections that weren't about the book but more about daily life dragged for me and I didn't understand the author's constant questioning of Sofia.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used to be a bit impressed with myself because I've read Anna Karenina three times. But that was before I read "Creating Anna Karenina," whose author, Bob Blaisdell, informs the reader that not only has he read Anna Karenina 25 times, but he also taught himself Russian to better understand the novel. Blaisdell is a fanboy's fanboy, and he brings that perspective to this book, which tells the story of how Tolstoy went about writing the novel over the course of four years. Along the way, Blaisdell makes several trenchant observations about the novel.

In "The Sinner and the Saint," Kevin Birmingham walks the reader through Dostoyevsky's harrowing life story in the context of "Crime and Punishment." Compared to Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy's life was a walk in the park. Blaisdell dutifully chronicles Tolstoy's meandering, often dawdling path to completion, but quite frankly there's not a lot of drama there to be mined. This recounting does drive home the fact that the novel was originally serialized.

Blaisdell's observations about the novel are much more satisfying. He comes to many of the same conclusions that I have reached, particularly Tolstoy's absurd ideas about sex. He suggests that Tolstoy's description of Vronsky's riding of Frou-Frou could be read as Tolstoy's unconsciously describing sex. As he says, once this idea comes to your head, it's impossible to dismiss it.

Of course he loves the scene of Levin mowing with the peasants - who doesn't? But surprisingly he doesn't like Levin and Kitty's marriage. Paraphrasing, he writes, "I know a lot of who like this scene. I tell you what. Let's play a game. Read Anna Karenina 25 times. If you still like the scene, you win."

I particularly like how he imagines how he imagines the sheer joy a Russian in 1878 would experience when picking up the latest copy of The Russian Messenger and reading the latest installment of one of the greatest novels of all time.

While I recommend reading "The Sinner and the Saint" before reading "Crime and Punishment" for the first time, I recommend reading "Creating Anna Karenina" after reading "Anna Karenina" at least once. If you don't like "Anna Karenina," this book isn't for you.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointed in this dull biography of Tolstoy concentrating on the four years he spent writing Anna Karenina in fits and starts. Mr. Blaisdell makes some bold and ambitious claims at the beginning of the work, proposing that the novel set his mind on fire to the extent that he read it 25 times and learned Russian so he could experience the original. Yet he makes no attempt to provide any details or evidence of what was so amazing to him, other than to scribble tired clichés that Anna K is the greatest Russian novel, the greatest of all novels, the greatest psychological novel, the greatest gift of a novelist to humanity, etc., etc.
If your aim is to give insight into the creation of a character and "birth of Literature's most enigmatic heroine", then that is what you are obligated to do. You should not, as the author does, simply drone on about how Tolstoy repeatedly trashed his work in progress as disgusting. You should not dwell on Tolstoy's procrastination, vacations, hunting excursions and shopping for clothes, horses and dogs.
The author sabotages his own thesis by asserting that Tolstoy only finished the novel because he coveted the income it would provide him due to the popularity of its serialized chapters being published monthly in the Russian Herald and the promise of huge sales of the novel and its future translations.
A telling statement by the author near the end of the work is that "...we still don't know the secret of Tolstoy's artistic genius." Of course you don't and never will if you don't even try to find out what it was. Maybe if the author had explained why he became obsessed with the novel, he could have found the answer within himself. There was something that inspired him to change his life and write this book, but we the readers are not privy to that secret either because the author fails to share it with us, even though he had hundreds of pages of text in which he could have done so.
All in all this was a miserable read, not worth the time or effort to finish it.

[Micebyliz]

There is much of interest in this book if you enjoy reading Tolstoy and want to know more about the writing process and life at that time in Russia. It's kind of a narrative by the author of the book rather than a book about an author (does that even make sense?) so some of it is a bit too familiar with the reader, at least i felt that way. One thing that did really drive me up the wall was the use of the word pedagogy in all its forms. Almost every page and i am not kidding! I should have counted the times it was used. It was distracting!
One passage i really liked was about the characters themselves: "We can say for Tolstoy that he makes it possible to imagine that such details (facts) could be known because they must have happened, as in life. This is his highest, finest morality--showing us again and again that no one is a walk-on, a bit player; everyone exists--seems to exist--beyond the confines of the novel, beyond their author's presentation of them We know ourselves in and by the moment and almost everyone we meet in his fiction seems to exist in that same way. The characters don't know they're in a novel and almost never behave as if they are. They think they exist in three dimensions, with their own minds, feelings, and bodies--and we, our moral senses sharpened by Tolstoy's, take for granted that they do.
They don't know they're in a novel????? how existential is that????
I have to differ about his morality though. He had all those children, would not use birth control which was available at that time, and he had an illegitimate child (although i hate that term) so let's think again about his morals. His poor wife bore all those children, was constantly pregnant and they lost 5 children.

[Héctor Contreras Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting book
however this to me reads a lot like something written by the child of Kathy Bathes in Misery and the Conspiracy theory map guy who was raised by a golden retriever
Bob is SO passionate about the novel and inserts himself so much into the narration of the historical facts that form the basis of the book that at times i found it grating and had to stop reading for several weeks at the time before picking it up again.
This man clearly IDOLIZES Tolstoy so unless you feel like Bob does or are in serious need of someone hipping up Anna Karenina for you to finally reading it after years in you're TBR this won't probably be a pleasant reading experience (seriously , I hope no one develops a usable method of time travel in Bob's life because he will most definitely steal it and travel to 1872 Russia hunting down Lev to lock him in a room with a desk, ink, and paper, until he finishes writing Anna, and he WILL have suggestions and if Lev doesn't comply Bob WILL take the a copy of the novel in it's current form and submit it for publishing under Lev's name just to make sure it doesn't get lost to history. Seriously his writing sometimes borders on "creepy" and on occasion is just plain psychopathic)

[Jules · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was very interesting to read about Tolstoy's letters, life, and writing of Anna Karenina, which Blaisdell collected and referenced wonderfully. However, two things made this read very frustrating for me. 1. How peeved Blaisdell constantly seemed that Tolstoy was a person with a family, and that he wasn't a portrait. 2. This one was the most irritating to me and really drew me away from what Blaisdell was showing and my enjoyment of the history: how completely biased and doubting he was of every small thing Sofia Tolstaya wrote ever. She couldn't get away with her own memories or perceptions, and it felt as if Blaisdell's resentment that she was her own person instead of a Tolstoy scholar made him refuse her concessions for choosing not to write everything she remembers in her diaries (seriously... has he ever journaled?), or by giving impressions of her life years after living it, which, unsurprisingly, didn't reflect the nitty-gritty of daily mood changes/emotions, rather reflecting overall impressions. It was frustrating how she in particular was questioned for everything, whereas Tolstoy was more lovingly given passes for his inconsistancies and their children and friends never questioned for their memoires.

[Debbie Baker · Rating 2 out of 5]

It had a few good bits, but mostly this was an exhausting tromp through everything Tolstoy was doing and tons of his letters from the entire time of composition of AK, and the majority have no link whatsoever with the novel.

[Måns Sunesson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some people have the Bible, the Quran or the Vedas. This man has Anna Karenina.