Category: Book Review

So I’m come deep into War and Peace now – over a third of the way through.

The characters are no longer new. I know Pierre will be Pierre. A chump. Boris is politicking. Nick is still a rich boozer and looser but they are all trying to reform. Andrew is a depressive but I think that won’t last.

There is some changes afoot. But their final turns and their climaxes are a far way off still…And I’ve decided to quit aspartame and caffeine!

But the story keeps pulling me along. Tolstoy would fit right in with the Golden Age of TV writing, working in great stories as well as profound lessons you’d be able to talk over with your smarter friends. I’ll keep reading.

Onward!

This is a brilliant guide, btw: https://medium.com/@BrianEDenton/a-year-of-war-and-peace-cc66540d9619

Andrey is feared dead but is not but then his wife dies in childbirth.
Pierre gets into a duel with his wife’s lover and loses his fortune to his wife.
Nick loses big at the gambling tables and has to have daddy bail him out.

Book Four is full of sadness. What the battlefield didn’t take, fate and stupidity does in book 4.

We learn more about men and Man in this chapter as the characters are buffeted and tossed about by their flaws and somewhat held steady by their virtues.

Tolstoy does such a good job of not creating characters but real people – with shadings of good and evil. Bad guys aren’t all bad and good guys have terrible faults.

I’m so eager to find out what happens to these guys.

Onward!

This is a brilliant guide, btw: https://medium.com/@BrianEDenton/a-year-of-war-and-peace-cc66540d9619

War and Peace’s Book Three brings to mind to me the battle scenes of The Killer Angel’s by Michael Shaara.

The complete scope Schaara and Tolstoy are able to bring from an infantryman with his face in the mud to the despair of a general. From Napolean’s victory preening as seen through the eyes of Boris to the heart rending slaughter on the dam is astounding.

I’m again annoyed I didn’t come to this book sooner. As I am with so many authors (and things) I’ve come to later in life.

The magic so far of Tolstoy is that I feel compelled to keep reading the narrative. I drags me along and in the narrative I can sense the underlying philosophy that is guiding him. He’s not just spinning a yarn, I’m going to be taught something whether I want to be or not. I’m going to have Tolstoy imprinted in my soul by the end of this whether I want him there or not.

As a reader, I’m a bit intimidated. As a writer, I’m humbled, knocked to my knees humbled.

After Book One’s endless round of cocktail parties and personal politics and kisses in alcoves and fights over wills. I was beginning to wonder where the ‘war’ in the title came into this novel but then Book Two ended up being twenty chapters of nothing but war.

And Tolstoy gives us the full gamut from buck privates to Emperors. From field tactics to international relations. Wow. The characters we met at parties in Petersburg and Moscow in Book One are now throw on the fields of battle in Austria where they are moved around to witness history and as their stories unfold we get to see it also.

And the amazing thing is that Tolstoy can keep this up over twenty chapters. It’s quite amazing. And exhausting to read.

One thing I do like about Tolstoy that I thought I might not is his minor characters. I’d recently watched a video essay on the Cohen Brother’s minor characters. Tolstoy does much the same thing. They are wonderful, unforgettable editions that added pepper to the story. They are little distractions that play off of the main characters, maybe even elaborate on them.

Onward!

This is a brilliant guide, btw: https://medium.com/@BrianEDenton/a-year-of-war-and-peace-cc66540d9619

I remember reading somewhere, likely about his novel Man in Full, Tom Wolfe wanting to write a great, sweeping novel like Tolstoy. And then he did. Man in Full impressed me and impressed upon me. It will never leave me.

My own writing has been quite different. It’s straight forward. Narrow. Very direct. Sparse. For years this was my ideal. Go for Hemingway. But it’s a limitation, I think, of youth. Impatience, maybe. I just want to get on with the story. And I’m no longer a youth.

It may be time for me to write a sweeping novel where I can reflect on reflect and explore sweeping themes.

Book One of W&P is definitely tempting me further into trying it.

Yes, I struggle with the names and I struggle a bit with the French and I struggle a bit with the culture and the history. But with a decent guide and some patience the novel’s first of fifteen books – consisting of 25 shortish chapters – sucks you into the the coming narrative.

I’ve honestly no idea what that narrative is about – obviously some war, right? – but what happens to Pierre, Andrey and Boris (I’ve simplified them to Pete, Andy and, well, Boris, in my head) and those around them? I’m a cultural nincompoop.

Yet, I’ve run ahead of my commitment to one chapter a day. The writing is not nearly as ponderous as I was expecting – maybe that’s the translation – the narrative is fairly light. Why was I expecting it to be about soldiers sitting in dirty snow eating potatoes talking about death? Heck, the first five chapters were set at the same party. Pierre is a dork. Boris’ mom is a pain in the ass hoot.

I’m sure things get a bit dark from here. The last couple chapters are hinting at it with deaths, fights over wills, guys hating on their sweet wives and what not but I feel like a jerk for not reading this sooner.

Onward!

This is a brilliant guide, btw: https://medium.com/@BrianEDenton/a-year-of-war-and-peace-cc66540d9619

This is it. The last month of poetry I read in 2018. I started a poetry noob and finished up a poetry lover….well, a lover of some poetry. Wallace Stevens is still a hard nut to crack for me.

This month I took is easy with some Blake and other more accessible poetry but not necessarily simpler poetry. It’s all in how you read it, I guess.

I’ve already started next years’s project – Tolstoy. It may just be War and Peace or it may also include Anna K. W&P has 360 chapters so that seems like a nice one year goal – but the chapters are so short…..

In November I finished with the 100 best loved poems book I was using as a guide and switched over to a youtube series on the Romantics. As I write this I’m learning to appreciate and falling for William Blake. He’s a bit mystical which is not my normal thing but seems to in an intelligent and, more importantly, imaginative and almost rebellious way.

I’ll have to read more about him.

This year my guides to what poems to read included a Yale online course on modern poetry. That was NOT a good place to start. I then moved on to poems I knew about and various top ten lists.

However, lately, I’ve just used the poems listed in a book called 100 Best-Loved Poems. It’s got all the hits. Many I’ve already read but I’d missed quiet a few. I have three more to finish in September and then I’m moving on to this blog post – the most anthologized poems. It’s a nice, broad sampling of poetry.

As normal, brief notes on each poem are provided.