One of the most unpleasant stories ever written : The Kreutzer Sonata

It takes him a while but at last - 1/2 of the way into the 100-page story The Kreutzer Sonata - Tolstoy gets down, or lets his insane protagonist get down, to telling the story. The first 50 or so pages are an unrelenting rant against women, marriage, sex, culture, a misanthropic diatribe that is so extreme as to be almost comic. We learn near the outset of the story that the protagonist is a well-known killer (gradually we become aware that he was apparently acquitted of killing his wife on the grounds of insanity - easy to believe!). Why exactly the narrator would sit back and listen to his fulminations over a two-day train ride I don't know - I read the story a long time ago and seem to remember that there's a twist and that they arrest the guy at the end of the journey on some other charge? Anyway, as we at last get down to the plot the protagonist begins to tell of his wife's boredom and how she begins to play the piano again and takes up with the music instructor - and how he becomes increasingly jealous (why? who knows? till then, he seemed to want nothing to do with his wife, but I guess it's a blow to his ego). Honestly, this has to be one of the most unpleasant stories to read, ever - definitely Tolstoy's worst. We know that Tolstoy was an eccentric with some odd view of marriage, especially about his own marriage, but he also had high standards for his art and this story falls well below those standards - I really don't know why it is famous and anthologized so often.