OMFG Tolstoy!

Can we just say that we're 100 pages into Anna Karenina, and now we're FINALLY fully able to vet Janet Malcolm's joke about Gossip Girl's Nate Archibald, who she describes as "a kind of Vronsky manqué, with a grande-dame mother, like Vronsky's, and a Navy-captain father who is 'a master sailor and extremely handsome, but a little lacking in the hugs department." Here's a passage from Mr. Tolstoy himself, which we just read on the train this morning and totally knocked our head sideways it was so delicious.

"There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man's calling at half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner-party and not coming in, but it seemed strange to all of them. Above all, it seemed strange and not right to Anna."

Now that is how you foreshadow a scandal the likes of which one expects and is aware of but the hints, the subtle hints! Josh Schwartz, kindly take note. We are looking forward to tonight very much.