Occasionally, when I don't really have much to write about involving Australia, I will post a book or movie review or some other meaningless exercise.
Everybody should read War and Peace. Granted, it is very long, but so is life. Sacraficing just a reletively small chunk of ones life for this book is well worth the effort.
First off, it is War and Peace. It is probably the most famous novel that nobody reads. Many are very intimidated by its 1000+ length (although they shouldn't be). There are many long novels in the canon, but only one War and Peace. Telling somebody that you have read James Mitchner's Chesapeake just doesn't elicit the same response. Reading War and Peace will propell a person to the elite of readers.
Even without the bragging rights the come with it, War and Peace is a very good novel. Is it the greatest novel of all time? I don't think so; modern writers are much more concise with their messages. After a thousand pages and endless hours of reading, Tolstoy's message gets blunted a bit.
This is not to say that Tolstoy wastes space with lots of filler or embarks on endless internal struggles like those of Dostoyevsky. War and Peace does not have an unimportant page (well, at least until the second part of the epliogue). It is 1000 pages of endless plot. This is a dense read, no skimming allowed. Tolstoy rewards patient readers with many beautiful passages for those who slow down to admire them.
War and Peace features numerous protagonists (although by the end, you have to wonder if Tolstoy even believes in the idea of a "protagonist"). Each represents a level of involvment with life and position of influence in the world. Unfortunately, Tolstoy ignores peasants, but they don't really matter much anyway. All the characters are trying to find meaning and happiness in their lives against a backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Characters try to control and manipulate an uncontrollable world; not even Napoleon can succeed. In the typical Russian fashion, those who get it become fat, those who do not die.
The philosophical message of the book is one that can be very comforting for a soul searching young adult or really anybody at any age or status: be happy with your sphere of influence. Just live your life. Searching for the truth only takes you further from it.
It is an ambitious novel that surprisingly does not implode under its own weight. He finds a fine balance between showing minute details of many characters lives and the complexity of European history of the early Nineteenth Century. Seeing a writer pull of such a achievment makes it worthwhile by itself.
3 comments:
what happened to the daily blogging plan?
Yeah, I can only read this one three times and then I need another post.
Dude, I just finished the excessively symbolic wolf hunt. It's pretty.....umn....symbolic.
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