I'm So Happy It's Over

Without the sentences about people describing how happy they are, the novel “Anna Karenina” would only be 103 pages long

Jeremy's apparently taking a break from the world of Film to come up with his critical review of one of the greatest novels of all time, "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy.  This should be informative and enlightening, or something.  

I don't really have a problem with the novel itself, or its placement in the World Library's 100 Greatest Books Of All Time.  Like anything written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, I had a problem with this book being overly long for the sake of being overly long.  The original edition of this book comprised 864 pages, made longer and longer with each publication and translation (almost 1200 pages by the latest printing), and oh so much of it could have been avoided. 

I can appreciate Tolstoy wanting to tell a story on a grand scale, covering years of people's lives and getting into very intricate detail of the culture and politics of the day, but when you get to the point where you're writing three entire chapters of a novel about a guy mowing the lawn (I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP!!!), something inside of you should say that you've gone too far.  

There's also the fact that every trivial detail of the plot is garnished by entire pages of reaction to the detail, with every character in turn explaining to the others how happy that makes them, or how excited they are for it to happen, and how glad they'll be when it does happen.  It wouldn't be quite so annoying if it were ever any different, but the only time somebody in this book ever has some emotion other than elation about something, she spends a mere 2 chapters going bonkers, then throws herself in front of a train.  Oh, by the way...that was a spoiler. 

So, in a scientific study in which I made up a number that sounded funny, I have concluded that if you remove all sentences from "Anna Karenina" where somebody says "I'm so happy..." or "I'm so glad that..." or something to that syrupy effect, you could whittle the book down to a manageable 103 pages without losing any of the plot.  Failing that, you can just wait until November when the movie starring Kiera Knightley comes out.  Sadly, I'm not making that up, either.