War and Peace Finale

 

Ah! Two days ago, Wednesday the Eleventh of May, Two Thousand and Twenty-Two, Hopper joined an elite club. An exclusive club. Yes, a somewhat snobby club, but only because entry into that club involves a singular devotion and willpower not found in the common man.

 

Yes, two days ago I finished War and Peace, the Mount Everest of novels.

 

1,392 pages. Fifteen “Books” containing 337 chapters, followed by a First and Second Epilogue and the 28 chapters they hold. A cast of 559 characters, both fictitious and historical. A time span of seven years (fifteen if you count the Epilogues). Five grand Napoleonic battles. Napoleon himself.

 

Took me 86 days as the crow flies. In reality, though, since I paused three times to put away smaller books, I only read Tolstoy for 66 days. That comes to 21 pages a day, but in reality I averaged about 13 pages a day for weeks on end. I think I read 100, 120 pages the last two days. A marathon of verbiage. Read so much I had severe eye strain Wednesday night. The dangers of literature …

 

So I am now a member of Those Who Have Read War and Peace.

 

Which made me think, just how many people alive today have read this masterpiece of literature, originally published serially but in complete form in 1869, 153 year ago?

 

I had no idea, but I wanted to know the exact size of this exclusive club I had just joined.

 

Googling it I did discover that a poll was done, tricksy-like, to determine the books people most commonly brag about reading but don’t necessarily read. Surprisingly, the number one book was 1984 by George Orwell. Don’t we all have to read it in high school, and write essays ad nauseum on it? The third was also a surprise, for me, since I love the book and have read it full through twice: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. By now you’ve guessed the second most popularly lied-about-having-read novel. Voyna I Mir.  (That’s War and Peace phonetically in Russian. I think.)

 

Interesting, but it doesn’t tell me how many did read the book. So I had to use some intelligent guesswork (“guess” being the prominent part of that sentence).

 

I started off with assuming 1,000 people in each state alive have read it. The majority of which being college professors, students, and literary aficionados. Some states more, some less, but that’s the average. 50,000 people in the United States.

 

Sound good? Yes? No?

 

I doubled it for Europe, thinking Europeans would have a greater connection to the historical sweep and drama of Tolstoy’s work, and more interest would be there. 100,000 people in Europe.

 

And for Russia herself, I doubled the European figure, for I assume the interest there is even more likely, the novel actually being about that Motherland. I’m guessing right now there are 200,000 people in Russia who have read War and Peace.

 

Which brings us to 350,000 people. I add another 150,000 for all those collegians and aficionados of literature in South America, Africa, Australia, and the rest of Asia.

 

All told, 500,000 people are in the Club. Half a million. Agree? Disagree? The figure feels right to me.

 

But just how exclusive is the club?

 

Hmm.

 

I see that there are about 7.9 billion people alive now on Planet Earth. Let’s say 6 billion are old enough and not too old to read the novel. 500,000 divided by 6,000,000,000 is

 

0.00008

 

Eight-tenths of one percent of one percent of the reading population of earth.

 

Well, that doesn’t tell me much, at least in an easily comprehended picture or analogy.

 

How about this –

 

Out of every group of 12,000 people, there is one dude (or chick) who’s read War and Peace.

 

That’s a little more satisfying.

 

My current corporate employer has an employee base of 27,500. Which means that me and one other lone individual in the company has read it. And another cubicle denizen (or truck driver, who knows!) is a third of the way through.

 

There were 19,000 fans at the Calgary Flames / Dallas Stars NHL playoff game on Wednesday. One hockey fan there had read it, and another was two-thirds done, and might have a lot of free time in the near future to finish it if the Stars keep playing like they played that night.

 

All right, enough of this. I’m trying to convince the Mrs. to watch the 2016 BBC miniseries with me. She’s into all those English soaps on Netflix and whatnot, so it might happen. Otherwise, I’m putting Tolstoy to bed.

 

Except –

 

The Second Epilogue has nothing to do with the plot of the novel, but instead is a 12 chapter, 42 page dissertation on Tolstoy’s Philosophy of History. A subject of which I haven’t really read since my sado-masochistic reading of Hegel 14 years ago. As opposed to the Napoleonic-era philosopher Hegel, I think I understood about half of what Tolstoy was trying to get at (or got at, not sure). It deserves a re-reading, especially since … it plays a huge role – or could, possibly – in that great project I’ve been hinting at here and working on since October 2020. So a re-reading it is, at some unforeseen time in the future.

 

For now, though, some little fare is in my foreseen future time. Easier on my brain, easier on my eyes.