I read “Anna Karenina” on 
the school bus when I was 
13. I took it a chapter a ride, 
shining a flashlight I kept in 
my backpack over the pages in 
the winter when the mornings 
were dark. It was my favorite 
part of the day — a stolen quiet 
moment, with just me and 
Anna and Kitty and Vronsky. I 
knew pretty much immediately 
that this would become the 
best book I would ever read, 
and even though 13-year-old 
me was wrong about a lot of 
things (I wore a lot of vests that 
year), I was right about this. 
The book grabbed at my heart 
in a way few pieces of writing 
— or anything, for that matter 
— have since. It made me feel 
full — like I was about to burst 
with all the feelings it incited 
in me. When I finally finished 
it, huddled under the covers at 
3:00 in the morning, I cried for 
an hour, hugging the book tight 
to my chest. I woke up the next 
morning still holding it.
I’ve read “Anna Karenina” so 
many times that I’ve lost track 
of the number in the six years 
since that first encounter. It’s 
like my Bible, and I keep it by my 
bed for emergencies. The book 
is high melodrama — a story of 
infidelity, passion gone wrong, 
obsession, 
life, 
death 
and 
suicide. It’s grand enough that 
the most recent film adaptation 
placed the whole thing on a 
stage, putting the theatrics of 
the story to the foreground. But 
despite the opulence and drama 
of it all, Tolstoy’s magnum opus 
remains the most achingly 
human story I’ve ever read. The 
characters are so fragile, so 
delicately spun to life it’ll break 
your heart.
It took me a couple rereads to 
be able to see the cracks running 
between lines of the story 
proper, but eventually I saw 
that “Anna Karenina” exists 
in two dimensions. There’s the 
famous narrative of adultery 
and obsession and divorce and 
twisted love. But then there’s 

also this complicated web of 
the 
characters’ 
interiorities 
running in between all of that, 
filling in those cracks. It’s not 
till the very end of the book that 
you realize the two layers are 
inextricable, how the minutiae 
of the characters’ thoughts and 
feelings and interactions stack 
on top of each other to create 
such a towering tragedy. In the 
end, it was her inner world that 

ruined Anna. She just couldn’t 
stand the weight of her feelings.
An early scene, shortly after 
Anna and Vronsky first meet: 
“She felt as though her nerves 
were strings being strained 
tighter and tighter on some 
sort of screwing peg. She felt 
her eyes opening wider and 
wider ... something within 
oppressing her breathing, while 
all shapes and sounds seemed 
in the uncertain half light to 
strike her with unaccustomed 
vividness.”
Or this moment later on that’s 
not even a scene; it’s really 
more of an offhand description, 
but it’s one of my favorite lines 
of any book I’ve ever read. Kitty 
is lying in bed after she realizes 
the scope of her feelings for 
Levin, and it goes like this: “‘It’s 
late, it’s late,’ she whispered 
with a smile. A long while she 
lay, not moving, with open eyes, 
whose brilliance she almost 
fancied she could herself see in 
the darkness.”

I feel so holy about this. 
Sometimes when I read these 
moments in “Anna Karenina” I 
feel like I’m intruding, like it’s 
too intimate being privy to these 
intricacies of the characters’ 
most 
private 
thoughts. 
It’s 
hard to explain why my heart 
tightens whenever I read these 
moments, except maybe to say 
that it feels like a mirror being 
held up to the inside of my own 
brain. It’s just true, in a way 
that goes beyond relatability, 
but down to the bone marrow 
of what it feels like to be a 
person, to be this specific type 
of person.
Because it’s just not that I 
relate to Kitty. I’ve been Kitty, 
young 
and 
vulnerable 
and 
lying in the dark with my heart 
racing, feeling my eyes shining 
so bright I could imagine them 
brilliant enough to light up the 
room. I’ve been Anna feeling 
my nerves tighten with every 
passing breath, like the colors 
around me are too bright, like 
my body is a live wire being 
wound up.
Those 
moments 
woven 
throughout the story are what 
make “Anna Karenina” the 
book that taught me I have a 
whole internal world, secret 
and entirely separate from 
anybody else’s expectations or 
opinions of me. I’m so grateful 
I found it when I was 13, a time 
when every day contained what 
felt like a million punches in the 
gut. I spent — and still spend, 
as I think every young woman 
does — too much time paring 
down the jagged edges of my 
personality, my body, my whole 
self. It’s what so many girls 
do. Hate ourselves and hurt 
ourselves and hack ourselves 
into neat pieces that can fit 
into the tiny boxes built for us 
to live in, until we can’t take it 
anymore. A lot of girls survive 
it but some, like Anna, don’t. 
“Anna Karenina” gave me 
the language to articulate the 
moments — so rare and tenuous 
that noticing them is like 
pinning a butterfly’s wings — 
when I can feel the full capacity 
of all the secrets I carry, all the 
things I want to do and feel 
and be. Kitty felt it lying awake 
in her room, 
fully 
aware 
of herself and 
her 
shining 
eyes. 
Lorde 
sings 
about 
it in “Writer 
in the Dark”: 
“And 
in 
my 
darkest hour / 
I stumbled on a 
secret power.” 
Fiona Apple, in 
“Every 
Single 
Night”: “I just 
wanna 
feel 
everything 
/ 
So I’m gonna 
try to be still 
now.” 
Kesha, 
in “Rainbow”: 
“Now 
I 
can 
see the magic 
inside of me.” 
And 
Virginia 
Woolf, in “The 
Waves”: “I feel 
a 
thousand 
capacities 
spring 
up 
in 
me.”
The shining 
eyes, 
the 
power, 
the 
magic, 
the 
capacities 
— 
they’re 
all 
just 
different 
names for that 
same flash of 
understanding, 
that 
moment 
of 
vivid 
awareness 
when you can 
see 
yourself 
clearly for the 
first 
time 
in 
forever.
Anna 
wonders, as she 
feels 
herself 
unraveling 
in 
real time, “Is it 
really possible 
to tell someone 
else what one 
feels?”

By Frank Virzi
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/17/18

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

10/17/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, October 17, 2018

ACROSS
1 Recurring theme
6 Contemporary of 
Dashiell
10 Apple debut of 
1998
14 Childish retort
15 Group of two
16 Santa __: 
Sonoma County 
seat
17 2005 reality show 
featuring Whitney 
Houston
20 War on Poverty 
org.
21 “In that event ... ”
22 Kipling python
23 ’60s sitcom 
portrayer of 
Cathy Lane and 
her “identical 
cousin”
27 Spin, as a baton
29 “The Simpsons” 
storekeeper
30 Leb. neighbor
31 Looks up to
33 Show of rural 
respect
35 Army NCO
37 Little piggy
38 Ginger-ale-
and-grenadine 
“cocktail”
43 1988 noir 
remake
44 Ewe, say
45 Website with 
business 
reviews
47 Supple
51 Many a 
microbrew
53 One in the 
middle of 
Knoxville?
54 FDR and JFK
55 Chinese menu 
standard
58 Announcer Hall
59 Protein-rich food
61 Wish undone
62 Where social 
graces are 
taught, and what 
17-, 23-, 38-, and 
55-Across each 
has
68 McFlurry cookie
69 Start of a hymn
70 Creeps-inducing
71 Arms of a 
starfish
72 Over and above: 
Abbr.
73 Silvery little fish

DOWN
1 Will Smith sci-fi 
series
2 Laudatory piece
3 French pronoun
4 “You’re lying!” in 
a playground
5 “Old” old-
fashioned sorts
6 Old name for 
Tokyo
7 Cube creator
8 Bio class cost
9 Slow Churned 
ice cream brand
10 Like the vb. “be”
11 Red Sox star 
Betts
12 Like angry bees
13 Lock sites
18 Pro wrestling 
throw
19 Deepest level
23 Shell out
24 Jungle swingers
25 Rear
26 Impulse
28 Tearful
32 Team with the 
most Super Bowl 
victories
34 Central spot
36 TV host 
Pennington and 
Hall of Famer 
Cobb

39 Places to perch
40 Bangkok native
41 Big name in 
denim
42 Power co. product
46 Peruvian capital?
47 Commit perjury 
to protect
48 Former Indian 
prime minister 
Gandhi
49 “Dog Day 
Afternoon” 
director Lumet

50 Crude model 
used for public 
ridicule
52 Elicits
56 Long sentence
57 Turn a midi into a 
mini, say
60 Cries of 
discovery
63 Platform for Siri
64 Mdse.
65 Malachite, e.g.
66 Many a Monet
67 Permit

Imagine the hottest, most 
humid day of the summer. One 
of those days where the air feels 
like jelly, and it’s easy to sit in 
front of the A / C unit for hours, 
watching the air blow in and out. 
You’re sitting on the porch of a 
cottage near some body of water, 
listening to the cicadas buzz 
loudly through the evening’s 
soft glow. A radio is playing 
inside the house, faintly muted 
Americana flowing through the 
open screen door that’s torn in a 
few places. You take a sip of beer, 
lean back in your rocking chair 
and fade into the night, staring 
off at nothing in particular, 
comforted and happy. This is 
what it’s like to listen to Kurt 
Vile’s new record Bottle It In: an 
aimlessly successful collection 
of psychedelic folk that captures 
the happiness of uncertainty 
in amber, sunlight shining 
through even its darkest 
moments.
From the beginning of his 
career, Vile has truly proven 
himself to be the king of good 
vibes, consistently pushing 
out mellow jams that give 
listeners a glimpse into his 
rambling mind. Between his 
skill for fingerpicking, hazy 
psychedelia and his country 
drawl, 
the 
songwriter’s 
penchant for creating mood 
is unmatched on Bottle It In, 
a record that is as meaningful 
as it is irresolute. Kurt 
Vile’s seventh solo album is 
patchworked together, yet 
that’s its greatest asset. At 
face value, Bottle It In seems 
haphazard 
— 
each 
song 
follows its own twisting 
path through Vile’s psyche, 
stumbling upon nuggets of 
wisdom and funny quips alike 
in an endless daze. The warm 
ambiance of Vile’s music is 
present in all of his albums, 
but here he has achieved 
a 
perfect 
balance: 
His 
untethered consciousness is 
both amplified and grounded 
by expansive arrangements 
of guitar and harp.
“I was on the ground 
but looking straight into 
the sun / But the sun went 
down and I couldn’t find 
another one / For a while,” 
he sings on album highlight 
“Bassackwards,” a tangential 

thought that freezes one summer 
moment in time. The virtue of 
Vile’s music is in his stream of 
consciousness, one that can go 
from “Oh girl, you gave me rabies 
/ And I don’t mean maybe” in 

“Hysteria” to the “Don’t tell them 
/ That you love them / For your 
own sake” of title track “Bottle It 
In” and make the two lines just as 
heartfelt. Though Bottle It In may 
cover love, friendship, loneliness 
and 
everything 
in 
between, 
the tie between every song is 
Vile’s 
honesty 
with 
himself 
and his audience. The singer is 
unabashedly on-brand in sound 
and subject matter throughout 
the record, and it works for him 

— the ephemeral quality of his 
ambient guitar and off-hand 
lyrics veer from bright to solemn 
quickly, but everything rests on a 
foundation of truth.
It can often be said that the 
first three minutes of a Kurt Vile 
song will tell you enough about 
it to stop paying attention. For 
those who only appreciate his 
music for its chill nature and 
sweet guitar riffs, this is easy to 
accept, to turn it on and zone out. 
Of course, this is part of Vile’s 
allure — but beneath the reverb 
and soft percussion is a poignant 
message of accepting life as it 
comes. To him, life is “just like 
a song if the repeats were long” 
(“One Trick Ponies”), and he 
has a point. Everyone is floating 
through the years just like Vile 
moves from one atmospheric jam 
to the next trying to find his own 
sun, watching it fade into the 
horizon and waiting for the dawn 
to come back again.

On ‘Bottle It In,’ Kurt Vile 
is the king of good vibes

CLARA SCOTT
Daily Arts Writer

Bottle It In 

Kurt Vile

Matador Records

BOOKS THAT BUILT US
‘Anna Karenina’ & finding 
my secret internal world 

ASIF BECHER
Daily Books Editor

‘Anna Karenina’ gave 
me the language 
to articulate the 
moments when I can 
feel the full capacity 
of all the secrets I 
carry, all the things 
I want to do and feel 
and be

If I could answer her, I’d 
probably say no — you barely 
understand 
what 
those 
moments mean most of the 
time, let alone find a way to 
talk about them. Unless you 
can write like Tolstoy, you 
probably won’t be able to find 
the words. Instead they usually 

become 
a 
delicious 
secret, 
a quiet covenant you make 
within yourself that forms the 
core of your identity. It’s a part 
of your world that can never be 
damaged or tarnished, though 
it can be buried deep inside.
Maybe that’s a good thing. 
Maybe some things are worth 

hiding. Every now and then, 
though, something finds its way 
through the layers, into those 
innermost parts of you. When 
I was 13, this book worked its 
way in, and I’ve held it tight 
ever since. It’s a part of me now. 
I keep it as close as my deepest 
secrets.

ALBUM REVIEW

MATADOR RECORDS

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 — 5A

