Literary Summits

A good war story?

Posted on December 16th, 2007 in War & Peace by benmc

This week, I plowed through the remainder of Part Ten, which focuses on the Battle of Borodino from French and Russian perspectives. It’s the heaviest war section so far, and I suspect it is the climax of the war section of “War and Peace.”

I was captivated by parts of it — Pierre wandering and watching it all happen from the epicenter of the chaos, Napoleon struck by unfamiliar doubts, and Kutuzov (the Russian commander-in-chief) caught up in the spirit of the Russian army. It also reminded why “good” war stories are so difficult to find.

First, what makes a war story “good”?

It’s got to be more than a matter of the right side prevailing against the wrong side. In this case, it’s clear that Tolstoy wants us to think that “Russian” equals “good” and “Napoleon” equals “bad.” But he goes beyond that, by showing the depths to which Napoleon has twisted his perspective so that 50,000 deaths are a sign of progress, not a massive tragedy. And simply showing carnage and chaos doesn’t make it a “good” story for me — I remember walking out of Saving Private Ryan because even if it was “true to life” as all the critics were saying, I was overwhelmed by having to sit and watch without being able to respond in any other way.

Even the recent film Letters from Iwo Jima was an example of the difficulty of showing the hell of war, in this case, from a Japanese perspective; one friend and co-worker argued that it was simply too much blood, too many explosions, too many flying body parts — “gorifying war,” if you will. No matter how empathetic/beautiful the story behind the combat scenes is, it’s marred by the ugliness of war.

I read an article last year about the resurgence of war stories on Broadway and in screens that have failed — failed to bring audiences in spite of earning critical acclaim and awards galore. The article stated that at a time when people are seeing snippets of real war on TV and documentaries, there’s little incentive to pay extra to be exposed to another “humanizing” war story, no matter how heartwrenching.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we cut out the heart and just tell a “jolly good war romp.” It is good that you care about the people involved — I mean, when I saw Star Wars Episodes 2: Attack of the Clones, I couldn’t appreciate the battle scenes — I couldn’t feel much of anything when row after row of faceless droids were mown down. There is nothing at stake, no tension.

Another parallel — peewee hockey. Nobody goes to watch preteens play hockey because they want to see the game played at its finest. The people who shiver in the stands game after game are there because they care about someone — their son or daughter is on the ice. That’s what makes the game exciting. You’re pulling for someone.

That’s probably Tolstoy’s biggest accomplishment with this book — he’s brought me ringside to the battlefield of a war that seems pointless, in the scope of history. Yet I care about the outcome because I care about Pierre, about Prince Andrei, and about what’ll happen to the other families whose lives I’ve followed during the uneasy peace. And that keeps me reading.

So does that make this a good war story?

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Let me count the ways . . .

Posted on November 8th, 2007 in War & Peace by benmc

I have to admit that at the halfway point of War & Peace, the character that I like most is Pierre, Count Bezuhov.

He’s got his quirks, for sure; and my first impression of him was not favorable. But it’s a tribute to Tolstoy’s power of persuasion that I find Pierre the most endearing one of the cast.

I like that he’s a skeptic who’s also gullible at times. He like the smart-aleck friend who forgets to bring his passport to the airport.

The scene that cracked me up today was when Pierre is feeling vaguely stirred by the news that Napoleon is threatening to attack Moscow, and the whole town is aflutter. He seems to remember, deep within, his youthful admiration for Napoleon and starts to think that maybe this turn of events is the start of something big — very big, perhaps even the Apocalypse. Thanks to the suggestion of one of his friends in the Masonic Lodge, Pierre starts dabbling in numerology (ascribing values to each letter of the alphabet) and discovers that the phrase “L’empereur Napoleon” adds up to exactly 666. Amazing!

It gets better when he asks himself: Who will be able to “put an end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon”? And he starts trying to make his own name numerologically significant — Pierre gets within 5 points of the magic sum with a mangled version of his name, “Le russe Besuhof”; he decides to drop the “e” (creating “l’russe,” just like “l’empereur”) and — VOILA! — it adds up to 666. So he imagines a face-off between the French beast and “l’russe Besuhof,” hoping that he will be led “to some great achievement and great happiness.”

I suppose some might be annoyed by this passage, but I think it’s funny. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent whole afternoons huddled with my cabin mates during torrential rainstorms at summer camp, reading the Book of Revelations (as we called it) from start to finish, and speculating at which of the dragons was Hitler, which Stalin, etc. Everything John of Patmos describes, someone had an explanation: the large locusts — “helicopters!” It was great fun and it scared me at the same time. That same kind of apocalyptic satisfaction found in the R.E.M. song, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine…”

And then there’s Pierre’s size — he reminds me of Quoyle in The Shipping News. Tolstoy can’t help but remind us about every third scene that Pierre is no lithe officer like Bolkonsky. Rather, writes Tolstoy, Pierre is “so stout that he would have been grotesque, had he not been so tall, so broad-shouldered, and so powerfully built that he carried off his bulky proportions with evident ease.” And morally, Pierre is suspect. He is swept away by the Masons and their esoteric practices. He is not swayed by what everyone else in court is doing, yet he lives in easy dissipation from day to day. He keeps up casual acquaintances with most everyone, but is hardly involved in anything.

And finally, Pierre is shortsighted, literally. His glasses fall off at critical moments, and he can’t quite make out people’s expressions at key moments.

Right now he’s in love, and I think it’s doomed. But that’s part of his charm, isn’t it? I as the reader can see what he can’t.

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“Called” to war?

Posted on November 6th, 2007 in War & Peace by benmc

Tolstoy puts war in its place early on. It seems like he was ahead of his time, showing the pointlessness, frustration and the “Catch-22″ nature of being in a real war. He shows from the opening conflicts that what young men think will happen in war (what they’ve heard in the war stories) is not at all the way things play out on the battlefield.

There’s a war passage early on where Tushin, a short, scrappy officer in the Russian army, is commanding four cannons from a hilltop while the French are clearly winning the battle. A higher ranking officer rides up quickly to give the order to retreat, but is so scared by the cannonfire all around that he rides off more quickly than he arrived.

Captain Tushin is not fazed, though — he’s in his element, and he’s convinced that he’s got a job to do, and he’s not going to be stopped from carrying out his duty, even though his crew of gunners is taking heavy losses. In fact, he’s gleeful. In war, Tushin’s found his focus, his center. Everything becomes clear. He even has a pet name for his big cannon, Matvyevna, and he urges his men to keep on firing away.

It doesn’t seem like Tushin is intent on killing others — he’s just happy to do his job to the best of his ability. When another officer, Andrey Bolkonsky, rides up with the same orders as before — Retreat at once! — Tushin follows these orders because Prince Andrey sticks around with the artillery crew and helps maneuver the cannon out of harm’s way.

Tushin seems “called” to war. It reminds me of the book by Chris Hedges, “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning” (a book I never read, but the title sticks with me.) Every action takes on significance, and the possibility of death brings clarity.

Yet within a few pages, Tushin is brought before a council of officers to explain his actions. The staff-officer says he can’t account for why they lost two cannons — and it looks like Tushin is going to take the fall for his superior’s lack of resolve in passing on the command. The commanders are looking to pin it on a lesser officer, and Tushin is put in a tight spot. He’s speechless and has none of the spirit he displayed earlier. He’s out of his element.

But Bolkonsky speaks out, standing up for Tushin in front of the general and shaming the other officer. Tolstoy hints that being brave isn’t good enough — you have to have connections in court to win “the battle after the battle” — the battle of perceptions.

In another passage a few hundred pages later, Tolstoy exposes the meaninglessness of war and grieves the many, many people who suffer as a result of petty rivalries between emperors. These war sections (when the theory of war is being debated endlessly by generals who have little data to work with and often little battlefield experience) are filled with pointed critiques — what’s it worth? Why are so many being killed so pointlessly? Who benefits?

Yet I like the passages where the characters like Tushin come to life — I like his flushed face, his concentration and his spirit. We see (as he picks up a wounded Count Rostov on the weary retreat following the battle) that he’s compassionate as well, a leader who inspires others by his own commitment and care for those in his vicinity. Tushin is idealized, sure, but he exemplifies what Tolstoy admires in the “journeyman soldier” — the one who is not in it for advancement or fame, but one caught up by the moment.

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In it for the long haul

Posted on October 27th, 2007 in War & Peace by benmc

A few months ago, I decided that this would be the year that I (finally!) would read War and Peace. It’s been sitting on my shelf for about 10 years now. All 1386 pages of it.

Maybe it was because I spent a Saturday morning reading without distraction, and I got far enough that I could figure out who was doing what.

It helps, too, that I have a daily train commute where I’m sitting in one place for about 20 minutes each way. I had to switch backpacks to find one with a War & Peace sized pocket to carry the big boy around.

Whatever the reason, I’m hooked. I’m in it for the long haul.

Occasionally people on the train will ask, “Is it good?” Last weekend, on the flight home from Oakland, the guy folded into the seat next to me — a big, twitchy guy — turned and asked: “Isn’t that about Napoleon? I like watching that stuff on the History Channel.”

I’m not toting it around as a conversation piece. But it has been interesting to get beyond “what it’s about” to really get to know the people inside the book.

Reading a book like this is sort of like living with a new family or discovering a TV series on DVD for the first time. Unexpected, intriguing. Fun.

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Getting started

Posted on October 26th, 2007 in Literary Summits project by benmc

Ten years ago, my brother gave me a book to celebrate my graduation from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. The book was War and Peace. Since then, I’ve started it at least four times, and it didn’t stick.

This summer, however, was different. I pushed through the first 60 pages, and all of a sudden, I was into it. I made it to base camp.

Mountain climbers set their sights on Seven Summits — the tallest mountain on each continent. The big ones. For a city-dweller like me, it’s books that loom large: War & Peace, Don Quixote, The Tale of Genji — these are my Everest, Denali, Kilimanjaro.

I’ve selected seven literary summits:

Tolstoy’s War & Peace [finished 02/14/08]
Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji [started 02/25/08]
Dante’s Divine Comedy
George Eliot’s Middlemarch
Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
Cao’s Story of the Stone (or Dream of the Red Chamber) and
Cervantes’ Don Quixote

Though not all the books are novels, they each have a reputation for standing out as monumental works in their respective languages. I’ve already completed two of them and read parts of several others for classes along the way, but I hope this blog will offer a fresh chance to enjoy them individually and in contrast with one another.

How long will it take? Who knows? They are big books, so it’ll be a while. I hope this blog will be a motivation to keep things moving and keep it fun.

One other note: I’ll be reading the books in English (big surprise!). When it comes to literary expeditions, I’m a generalist. Unlike Ed Viesturs (climbing legend who scaled the seven summits without oxygen tanks), I’ll use any assistance (i.e., translation, commentary, maps, family trees) needed to get the job done and to see over the peak to the other side.

Just as any mountain has many routes to the top, so each of these works has multiple translators. Part of the fun is in choosing the particular route, and comparing it with other people’s experiences.

I hope to hear from you along the way.

Join me!

Here are the translations/editions I plan to use:

[mouseover for title & translator name, click for full info]