Books: War, Peace and those Wacky Russians

Sorry but as a bibliophile at heart, I want to talk about this book. Next post will be on roleplaying, I promise.

So, War and Peace. Almost everyone has heard of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace but not really in a good way. It's become a placeholder for 'really big book' in modern culture, and as such, is almost a cheap gag. If a TV show needs to show that a book is really big, compare it to War and Peace and how it's almost as long chortle chortle. If a character needs to look like they have time on their hands, have them start War and Peace chortle chortle. If someone needs to look like a stodgy academic, well, you get the idea.

A piffling 800 pages? Pah!

I suppose on the one hand, it does increase awareness of a book which most would know nothing about otherwise, but it's a real shame because while it's true it's a big book, it's also a good one. Using it as a prop 'big book' puts people off reading it, even people who have read longer books themselves. Lord of the Rings has the same page count in total, but more people are willing to read it. More recently, we've had The Wheel of Time series and the Song of Ice and Fire series, both stretch way beyond W&P's meagre 1500 page count. But anyway, let's talk about the book itself.

The writing style is unusual compared to modern books, mainly because Tolstoy wrote it in his apparently horrible handwriting,  furious scribbles with almost overlapping sentences written in both Russian and French (he used both, because Russia used both languages at the time), which his wife somehow translated into a working novel as he wrote, which was then translated to English. For something that's gone through the linguistic wringer, it does hold up pretty well though. One other thing I've noticed is sometimes Tolstoy forgets to add context for the part he's writing. In a recent chapter, he started by describing an older lady going to visit her friend the countess and her daughter who are having a birthday party, and spends two paragraphs talking about the two of them, then begins a paragraph with "he addressed the arrivals as". Now, he couldn't be talking about the countess or her daughter, but he hasn't described any other male characters thus far, except for a brief mention of the family friends son, and it's not likely to be him. Who is it? It's the Count, who's roaming the party talking to people, Tolstoy just forgot to mention him it seems.

But don't be fooled, that's no bad thing. Tolstoy's characters are rich, detailed and vibrant so I can easily forgive him for forgetting a few details along the way. It's in characterising that Tolstoy really shines. Every mention of a character gives us some insight into them, making each unique and memorable. Granted, I might forget some of their names sometimes so thank god there's a brief list at the beginning, but I can remember that one of them is a patriotic socialite obsessed with ettiquette, one is an outspoken young man and fan of Napoleon who's still finding his place in the upper class world, one is his gloomy friend who is unsatisfied with married life in general and so on. The story is by comparison fairly simple so far but being built around these characters, becomes a lot more complex. Helpfully, it's written from all points of view so the reader gets a good idea of what most characters think about what's happening.

There's also a subtle sort of humour running through it all. Tolstoy has created this intricate upper class setting but clearly finds parts of it silly and pokes fun at it occasionally. In a recent chapter, a count is on his death bed. A prince related to him is talking with one of the count's daughters, trying to ask "where's the new will that cuts us out, I want to destroy it" so he can inherit, but at the same time so uncomfortable with saying it outright, he only hints at it, over and over, and naturally she gets completely the wrong idea about what he means.

Wait, they did what??

Characters also make reference to some students from an earlier scene who, for a drunken prank, tied a policeman to a bear and threw them both in the river, so think about that next time someone says students were well behaved in the old days.


Anyway, that's my thoughts on it. Next post, back to roleplaying. My Hunter: The Vigil campaign will have finished by then and I'll have more thoughts on Savage Worlds and possibly a long rant on my roleplaying club.