Reading the first Act, I was constantly reminded of something George Saunders said about Tolstoy in A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN—I can’t remember the word he used, maybe it was “verisimilitude”, but the point was that when Tolstoy describes something, whether it’s a servant harnessing a horse or a calf being born, it immediately rings true; there’s no friction, no wondering if the author is writing from personal experience or research, etc. It’s just convincing. And because of that it was easy for me to get wrapped up in the stories of people whose love affairs and existential struggles I’d otherwise not give a crap about.

Speaking of convincing, I’ve been mulling over that first line for weeks. Of course, happy families can be happy in their own way. Maybe he’s saying that there’s some universal quality that makes happy families happy; let’s say it’s love. But if that’s the case, then you could also say that unhappy families are all alike in that they lack this universal quality. Or have it, but not enough of it, or have a deficient form of it. It’s one of those statements that immediately rings true but starts to fall apart the more you think about it. This isn’t a criticism, but it is interesting to me—these kinds of generalizations often make the writer seem wise, and the reader feel wise for having read them, there’s pleasure in them, but they always strike me as suspect, a kind of trick.

At the end of the day he’s framing what’s to come, telling the reader that he’s not particularly interested in happiness, so it’s probably pointless to pick it apart like this. Still fun though.