The Mount Everest of Novels

 

Is War and Peace.

Back in September of 2018 I wrote my fiction and nonfiction “bucket list” books here in these electronic pages. Sadly, War and Peace was overlooked. I’m not sure as to why this travesty happened, yet happen it did. I certainly was well aware of the book, having giving it the old college try back in 2011. So the bucket list contained great works of literature such as Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Huck Finn, Crusoe, Drood, the Maltese Falcon, Gravity’s Rainbow and the multi-volume history of Middle-earth, yet Tolstoy’s great work is missing.

This is in the process of rectification.

I picked it up about 10 days ago and am now finishing Book I. (There are fourteen Books comprising the novel’s 1,400+ pages.) This puts me up to around page 110 or so. Way back in 2012 I managed to make my way to Chapter XII of Book III, or roughly page 288. I hope to surpass that goal in another two weeks or so, and eventually look to complete the grand novel sometime around mid-April.

Why War and Peace, why now?

Well, it ties in nicely with the Sharpe novels I’ve been reading. Sharpe is an English soldier clawing his way up the ranks while managing to stay alive and gain military success and renown during the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century. My fascination with Napoleon has been fed off and on over the years, going back to a neat history class I took in college, and I read an excellent book on the Battle of Waterloo this past November. This led to my discovery of Sharpe and the reading of five of those novels (out of thirteen I purchased) in the past two months.

Now, War and Peace.

It also fits well with the great project I’ve been working on in my spare time since October of 2020. Peripherally that is, not directly. Even in translation I’d like some of the great writer’s powers of description and dialogue to wash off on me.

How does War and Peace rank length-wise with other great works?

Well, I decided to invest my time in it primarily based on its relation to The Lord of the Rings. Check this out:

Depending on the translation, War and Peace clocks in at around 585,000 words, give or take a couple thousand.

Tolkien’s Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings tallies these numbers:

 

The Hobbit – 95,000

The Fellowship of the Ring – 188,000

The Two Towers – 156,000

The Return of the King – 137,000

For a grand total of 570,000 words.

 

Wow! Imagine that. Almost a perfect match.

Since it takes me anywhere from six weeks to two months to wend my way through the Tolkien cycle above, I made the decision to leap into Tolstoy’s masterpiece.

So far I am pleasantly pleased. The first book establishes our set of main characters (something like twenty of them). The next book, which I’ll probably start in a day or two, begins the actual “war” part of War and Peace. After intense visions of Napoleonic war from the pen of Bernard Cornwell (author of the Sharpe books) I’ve very interested to see a comparison with the great Tolstoy.

Should be very interesting reading.

 

And one day, when asked why I read War and Peace, I’ll be able to say:

 

“Because it’s there.”