About this title: Leo Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE is an epic war novel, an exploration of family ties, and a manifesto of Tolstoy's beliefs. Against the background of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in the early 1800s, WAR AND PEACE spans the social spectrum, depicting three families--their love affairs, intellectual struggles, and personal conflicts--and the cataclysmic ...
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"Anyone who wants to try to understand the Russian soul must try to read this book. The Russians were not then, nor are they now, people like us (i.e. people raised in the English tradition."
"When I was growing up, the conventional wisdom was that War and Peace was the sine qua non of difficult books: the scope, the length, OMG the length! Conquering this Everest was The Test of whether you were a Man/Reader.
I have now read it. Thump chest and make Tarzan yell.
Actually, you know chump, big deal. The mountain really wasn't so large after all.
There are love affairs, there is a war, peace eventually returns to the Shire Russia. Sorry, got confused there for a minute with Lord of the Rings, another 1,000+ page work where there are love affairs, war and an eventual peace. (That's hardly a spoiler by the way. Not unless you've been hiding under a rock and don't know that Napoleon didn't succeed in conquering Russia.) Which is my point: With every half-penny fantasy potboiler these days weighing in at several hundred kilogrammes of war and peace (*cough*Wheel of Time*cough*), how can we still look at a book this size and feel fear? 1,000+ pages? Only? Pshaw! That's nuthin!. Spit out t'baccy chaw.
And yet, the notion still lives on about how HARD War and Peace is. So, if anyone out there still buys into that, is intimidated and deterred by that notion, well, really, don't be (unless, of course, the last thing you read was Green Eggs and Ham).
The thing is, to my surprise, I found it a rollicking good read. There are star-crossed lovers, suicide attempts, heart-rending death bed scenes, and battles aplenty where our heroes get knocked on the head and taken prisoner. Instead of Middle Earth, you get a fantasy-land of wholesome, loving Peasant Russia and you learn how True Self comes from Loving the Russian Soil. Okay, there's also the rather irritating and interminable philosophizing by Tolstoy about History and Its Causes, but you got through the interminable side songs in Lord of Rings didn't you?
In case any of you are thinking that I'm mocking War and Peace by this comparison, please note that it's not intended to be (wholly) facetious. I loved Lord of the Rings. If anything I'm mocking the awe with which we approach "Great Works". So, yeah, if you ever thought of reading War and Peace but were put off by its reputation, don't be. It's actually quite fun."
"There is a lot of war in "War and Peace," and quite a lot of uneasy peace. This is a Russian novel, and it has the characteristics of all Russian novels: -- There are a great many characters. -- They discuss everything they do at great length. -- They talk about God a lot. -- They cry a lot. -- The characters have long names. -- Each character has at least two names, and the author seems to decide which name to use at a whim. This confuses me, but it doesn't seem to bother Tolstoy. Then there are characteristics that might apply just to Tolstoy: -- He describes women's clothing in greater detail than any other male author I've encountered. But then, Tolstoy describes everything in great detail. -- Sooner or later, practically all of Tolstoy's women, and a few of his men, have heaving bosoms. -- Tolstoy doesn't hesitate to kill off major characters. Sometimes it takes a hundred pages; sometimes it happens in a paragraph. It's not easy being a Tolstoy character. Something that particularly struck me in "War and Peace" is that the Russians are at war with France through much of the book, yet the Russians are Francophiles. The upper-crust Russians speak French as much as they speak Russian. They read French novels. They adopt French customs and dress. They are in awe of Napoleon, although some of them think he is the Antichrist. "War and Peace" is an intimidating book because of its length, but it's not at all difficult to read. Yes, there are dry patches -- such as the entire second epilogue. But Tolstoy's ability to bring a scene to life more than makes up for those dry patches. While reading one section, in which a character is led off to what he believes will be his execution, I felt that queasy feeling in my stomach I get when I'm about to face a situation I've been dreading. You know the feeling I'm talking about ... the feeling you get when the boss says, "Can you step into my office?" Tolstoy made me feel that way, with only words on a page. What I appreciated most about his description of battles was the sense of confusion the combatants felt. I've never been in a battle, so I don't know what it's like. But I can well imagine that it would be as Tolstoy describes it. There's the huge battle going on, but what the individual soldiers experience is disconnected from the big picture. They don't really have any idea what's happening. They aren't following a plan, they are just reacting. "War and Peace" is a remarkable book and a great winter read."
"In Tolstoy's appendix to War and Peace, he specifically states, "It is not a novel." Having finished reading this long work, having perceived its broad historical sweep, having appreciated its rich characterization, and having navigated its long philosophical passages, I certainly agree that it is unlike most novels, although perhaps more unlike most novels of the late 19th Century than the early 21st Century, when postmodernism has produced so many "novels" that defy easy categorization. In Tolstoy's book, the entertainment resides in the narrative, the engaging and well-developed characters, almost none of whom is easily described as "good" or "bad" except perhaps Platon Karataev, whose actual presence is brief but whose influence looms large; his exquisite depictions of persons' psychological responses to death and suffering as well as to love and intimacy; the broad historical panorama on which is painted specific almost intimate battle scenes; the social minuet that migrates from salon to salon while yet remaining always much the same. Yet this narrative is really almost window-dressing for the core of the writing which is the historical philosophy and analysis, the most interesting part of the work from my perspective, in which Tolstoy explicates his conviction that the "Great Man" philosophy of history is unconvincing, taking a position opposed to that of Thomas Carlyle a generation earlier, and instead positing that history develops and evolves from within itself, root causes never being fully identifiable inasmuch as they are multifactorial and their investigation simply an exercise in infinite regress. His discussion, to which he returns again and again throughout the work, includes explorations of the concept of history itself, its writing, its very "construction." He clearly has a theistic agenda, sometimes boldly stated, sometimes hovering at the edges of his arguments but apparent and influential nonetheless. In the Appendix, which must be read as an integral part of the book, he extensively explores free will (probably, in his ultimate analysis, illusory) and its relationship to history. He does, on occasion, take pot shots at the Enlightenment.
The book is fascinating and engaging, sometimes enigmatic, sometimes preachy, but fully worthy of being read, wrestled with, and pondered over, an invigorating if somewhat exhausting literary trip."
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