Literary Summits

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]