As one of the few fortunates to stock up at the local library before they were shuttered due to the coronavirus, I decided to return to reading classic Russian novels. A book I’m currently reading quoted some passages from Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” which I struggled, and failed, to read in high school .

An avid reader friend suggested a new translation supposedly much more readable, so I checked it out. I had left it in my Jeep for a few days and, when I retrieved it, I found that a mouse had gnawed some page edges — in fact, to page 408! That is almost half the book, further along than I had managed back in the 1960s.

Although I respect any creature that will make the effort to devour such a masterpiece , I didn’t want the varmint to do further damage in the vehicle. So I set a trap, figuring that if he found a way in, he could find his way out. The next morning, mission accomplished: He lay there spread- eagled, dead as a frozen Bolshevik, fallen on the field of battle.

Could things have turned out better for him had he started with Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”? As for me, I am donning my latex gloves and returning to Book IV, Chapter XIII, to see what foul intrigue that dastardly Anna is about.

Ed Klein

Shanksville

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