"War & Peace" ....

[Bullwinkle925]

Have you read (and finished) this tome? I've been giving it some thought lately and almost purchased it the other day. If you have waded through it - would you recommend it?

[patricia92243]

1. I love Tolstoy (sp) War and Peace is good, but lots of it were just saying the same thing over and

over - let's you skim over some of it if you want to. All in all I would recommend it - if and when you are in the mood for this type of thing.

[Igel]

2. I've tried to read it a few times.

I bought the block of pulp in high school, and carted it around with me for, oh, around 15 years. I tried to read it a few times. Never got past p. 100 or so.

Then my Russian got good enough to read it in the original. Started it a few times, never got past p. 100 or so.

Eventually chucked the English copy (I chucked almost all my Russian lit in translation ... stupid me, now I get to teach a survey class in English and have to rummage and scrounge for readings).

I can't recommend it or not recommend it. It's simply so thoroughly not to my tastes that I can't read it; I have the same problem with Gogol'.

[hedgehog]

3. I loved it.

It's one of those books i go back to from time to time like Moby Dick, Les miserbles and The Lord of the Rings.

I have heard that there is a new translation out. I'd like to buy a copy; can anyone recommend a translation?

[sarge43]

4. Yes

It takes a few chapters, but it will grab you.

[whistle]

5. Now you must rent or buy the DVD of the 1966 Russian version

....8 hour movie of War and Peace. It was made to follow the classis novel almost page for page, character by character.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Savelyeva/dp/B00006JO77

[China_cat]

6. Don't read it if you're already depressed.

[JerseygirlCT]

7. Read it years and years ago. I liked it.

But I like big, fat, juicy books. I want to dive in and not come out for a while. This fit the bill!

[Zorro]

8. Yes

You have to slog through the first 200 pages before it really gets its hooks in you, though.

But well worth the effort when you come out on the other side.

[PATRICK]

9. Read it a few times

I think it may help to read up om Tolstoy's life and perhaps his other works posted on the web(Gutenberg project). Just knowing his own war experience certainly explains his perspectives. I come to a deeper appreciation of the story and its artistry when reading it at different stages in my life.

What still is a painful slog is the unsatisfactory philosophical tract tacked on the end. The ideas are great but the argumentation and examples abysmal. Then, like an annoying enthusiast who knows he hasn't made himself "perfectly clear" he repeats and tries again and again. One would have thought, without the author being to condescending to his characters, that the ambling fecklessness of survivor Pierre Bezuhov would have taught him something. Better to have cut the author's intrusions to a minimum and surrender to the natural flow of the narrative as the passing years and life changes fade away from the war. The pontificating about Napoleon is apt but very nationalistic, as was Victor Hugo's from the French perspective. The setting of a large work in the preceding generation, in this case involving people very similar to Tolstoy's forebears, from a class of the upper middle class nobility. Naturalism, introspection, all characters with pride and flaws with an utmost emphasis on the goodness of heart that will survive and grow. Which is good because one gets the constant impression no human is ever very good at claiming to have the answers and the wrap around judgment on what everything is all about. Something the narrator also does not seem to succeed at which strangely most makes him part of the fictional cast.