Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) (50 page)

George and I hurtle down the highway, having breached that boundary where logic evaporates and all that remains is a single instinct, that love is simply this—this monumental and elementary thing: the willingness to be changed by someone.

A driver invisible to me unrolls a car window and, from the dark interior, taps a cigarette on the sill. A shower of tiny red lights bounce and split on the road, skidding in the rush of wind and dark wheels, then extinguish without a sound.

The short happy life of a spark. Leaning heavily against the back of my seat, I will myself to stop scanning the traffic for potential accidents.
If our car crashes,
I say to myself.
If our car crashes and I am snuffed out,
let me be unprepared. Let me have failed to anticipate it. Let me go through life the way we are, after all is said and done, meant to: shocked.

1. Tracy Farber is a young, educated, professional single woman living in a big city. How is she similar to and different from other heroines in contemporary literature?

2. Tracy's ex-boyfriend describes her as “the world's most unlikely romantic” (
p. 9
). What does he mean by that? How is this description apt? In what way does George challenge Tracy's outlook on romance?

3. Tracy states, “For people who claim to want happiness, we Americans spend a lot of time spinning yarns about its opposite” (
p. 4
). Do you agree that American literature has a fixation on doom and gloom? What lies behind this cultural mixed message? Do you agree with Tracy—does the happiness that we have an inalienable right to pursue deserve our serious consideration as well?

4. On her first date with George, Tracy explains the many reasons for her deep love of literature (
p. 42
). Do you agree or disagree with her list of the attractions of literature? What motivates you to read? Would you add any reasons of your own to the list of literary pleasures?

5. Tracy goes on to describe her choice of twentieth-century interwar literature—Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner—as her specialty, after very nearly succumbing to the seductions of Herman Melville and his contemporaries in nineteenth-century American literature. What does her choice say about her as a person? When Jeff says to Tracy, “There's something very nineteenth-century about you,” what does he mean by this? In general, how do your own reading choices reflect your personality?

6. How does Tracy's vacillation between the romantic and modern/post-modern literary periods parallel her shifting thoughts on love?
Tracy later reflects on the difference between nineteenth- and twentieth-century views of love (
p. 280
). Which view do you think is healthier?

7. In the course of dating George, Tracy solicits advice from friends and relatives—Hannah, Adam, Yolanda, Jeff, her cousin Gabby, Aunt Rona—each of whom offers different counsel. How do each person's own romantic views color how he or she reads Tracy's situation? What would your advice to Tracy have been?

8. Kadish threads a great deal of humor throughout the novel. Which incidents and observations did you find most entertaining?

9. Aunt Rona and Tracy's mother, in encouraging an otherwise perfectly content Tracy to find a husband, subscribe to a very limited definition of happiness. How do their opinions on love and marriage reflect larger societal trends? Is Tracy's reaction to the pressure typical of professional women of her generation?

10. As it turns out, George, too, has a very narrowly defined idea of what constitutes happiness. How does his revelation of his future plans affect his relationship with Tracy? Do you think Tracy is justified in responding the way that she does?

11. George and Tracy come from different cultural backgrounds—George still grapples with the fundamentalist Christian upbringing he's left behind, while Tracy comes from a Jewish family. In what ways are their situations more alike than it would appear on the surface? How do their religious differences play into the relationship?

12. Consider some of the other couples in the novel—Jeff and Richard, Hannah and Ed, Yolanda and Chad. How do Tracy's observations of these very different relationships influence her thinking about her relationship with George? What does each of these couples offer as evidence for Tracy's larger theory of happiness?

13. How does the literary correspondence between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville factor into the intradepartmental tension among the English faculty? What ironies are inherent in the episode involving the letter? What comment does it make about the relevance of literature?

14. Tracy speculates at various points in the novel that Joanne might be jealous of her, jealous of love, jealous of life. What, in your opinion, is the truest source of Joanne's animosity? Do you think her actions are justified?

15. Tracy's professional life is marked by conflict and betrayal, yet she tries to stay above the political fray whenever possible. What are some examples of actions that could have damaged her career? Do you think she made the right decision in helping Elizabeth?

16. Who, in your opinion, is ultimately correct about happiness—Tolstoy or Tracy Farber? How does the novel
Tolstoy Lied
itself support Tracy's claim that the opening line from
Anna Karenina
is misguided?

R
ACHEL
K
ADISH
's many honors include a Koret Award, a Pushcart Prize, and citations in the 1997 and 2003 editions of The Best American Short Stories. Her work has been published in
Zoetrope: All-Story
,
Tin House
,
Story
,
Bomb
,
Moment
,
Sh'ma
,
Congress Monthly
, and
Lilith
. Kadish, a graduate of Princeton University, earned her M.A. in fiction writing at New York University.