sorry i liked everyone’s comments and then rudely did not reply
This is a book I’d like to read someday! Along with What Is Art?, frequently cited in the Pevear/Volokhonsky footnotes for AK. What you said re: Tolstoy and social improvement makes total sense and you articulate the point very well; I would say that’s what I understood as Levin’s point of view too, but when I wrote my original comment I was thinking along the lines that, in consideration of his wealth/status as an aristocrat, Levin seems unnecessarily pessimistic/defeatist about how much he might effect change in local politics. Though I’m making this judgment using incomplete information, and I can see how this is a naïve point of view also—his wealth might be totally inextricable from his land, farm, estate, workers’ wages, etc. and isn’t something he can necessarily throw around as leverage for political gain.
Your story is very amusing, however I am 100% behind your mock reaction (though I’d probably have been for-real upset). I read the book after having seen the 2012 movie adaptation (which I enjoy a lot; incidentally among the most stylish movies I have personally seen) so was aware of the general outline of the plot. Which, yes, I get that it’s the plot and not the story and so spoiling it “doesn’t matter,” but that should be for me to retrospectively decide. The book was great even though I knew some key events which would happen, and a pretty good example of a story where spoilers don’t matter; but spoilers only don’t matter some of the time and in specific cases, and there’s really no way to tell when they will or won’t affect how the reader/audience/whomever perceives the thing, so best to ere on the side of caution.
AND
What I hate more than the argument that spoilers don’t matter (which I don’t really hate, actually—I disagree with it philosophically, I exist on a different plane of reality from it) is this idea that somehow things which are old are allowed to be talked about freely. More infuriating, some have a different definition of what old even means—if it came out more than five years ago, well darn, time’s up, you had your chance! Whether the person you’re talking to was born yesterday or sixty years ago, I don’t know, maybe they’re primed to have a wonderful time reading Treasure Island or The Count of Monte Cristo or something.
This is incoherent. Avoid spoilers!
is this some kind of philosophical claim or did you forget if you finished the book