My retirement as a “gentleman squire” has included learning classical piano and getting around to reading those Great Works of Literature I never had time to read while working. I actually did a pretty good job of tackling Crime and Punishment, Paradise Lost and a few other classics while still in the work trenches, but I was overwhelmed the first time I tried Tolstoy, and waited until retirement to give him another try.
There are thousands of reviews by learned scholars out there, so I'll focus on a layman's review: what I expected from the book's reputation versus what it was actually like to read.
It’s Long!
Yes, it is! But here’s the interesting part: there is rarely a chapter over ten minutes long. It is basically a collection of A LOT of short chapters, so it isn't like you have to carve out hours at a time to read it. You can actually read one or two chapters at a time for 15 minutes a day and get through it in a couple of months.
There Are Hundreds of Characters!
Not quite true. There are about ten major characters and another two dozen or so who support them. The “hundreds” mostly come from the historical figures who drift in and out of the story. Some you already know, like Napoleon. Others you get to know as you go, particularly the Russian and French military leadership. And then there are lots of politicians, generals and other historical figures mentioned literally once in passing.
There is no need to keep a cheat sheet.
The harder part is the Russian names. People can have a formal name, a social name, and a diminutive used in personal circumstances. So Andrey Nikolayevich, Prince Andrey, and Andryusha are all the same person. I will admit that reading The Brothers Karamazov first made this much easier as this naming convention was drilled into my head with that reading experience.
It’s About Napoleon’s Invasion and Retreat from Russia!
Well, the back half of the book is, and that is where I found it most interesting.
The first half sets up all the characters through a lot of social and parlor settings, along with the events leading up to the Russian invasion. Some of that was mildly interesting, some of it was downright funny, and some of the romance and high-society drama dragged.
But the book has a sort of “Forrest Gump” quality to it. It follows a relatively small group of Russian aristocrats who go out into the world and keep running into major historical events and people. One character meets Napoleon, another meets the Russian Emperor, another major military figures. These fictional people are essentially wandering through actual history.
That was one of my favorite aspects of the book. The historical scenes and battles are what really made it for me, although I did feel a bit bogged down in the salon and romance drama between Austerlitz and Napoleon’s invasion, including an extended hunting scene and Christmas scene. But hey, "Peace" is in the title too.
Tolstoy Goes Off on History Lectures!
This is true.
“Professor Tolstoy” makes periodic appearances to expound on his theory of history, rejecting the “Great Man” arguments that had grown up around Napoleon. Tolstoy argues, essentially, that great historical events emerge from the actions of countless individuals and circumstances rather than being directed by a single extraordinary figure.
These side diversions reminded me a bit of the whale-lecture chapters in Moby-Dick. They are mildly interesting and often fairly short, although the second Epilogue which ends the book, and after the story ends, is a different matter. It is a lengthy philosophical essay that I admit I mostly skimmed.
You Need an Encyclopedia to Read It!
True, but that was half the fun, and it is much easier with the internet these days.
During the battle scenes, I literally had something like a 5:1 Wikipedia-to-book ratio as I went down historical rabbit holes.
“Who was this general?”
“What happened to him after the war? OMG, he was executed?!”
“What do modern historians say about Austerlitz?”
“What do they say about Borodino?”
And so on.
The book basically incited me to do deep historical reading on the Napoleonic Wars, what led up to them, and their aftermath. I ended up learning as much about the actual history surrounding the novel as I did from the novel itself. Totally fascinating, but again, I am a retired guy without a job, and I understand that at this stage of life one either gets into military history or smoking meats.
And Then There’s Pierre
Besides the war history, I found the moral struggles and life arc of Pierre, one of the major characters, extremely fascinating. His story gives you the existential Russian literature experience you expect, although not quite on the scale of Dostoyevsky.
And that may ultimately be what surprised me most about the book. I went into War and Peace expecting an enormous historical epic about Napoleon and Russia. I got that, but I also got a novel about people trying to figure out what the hell they are supposed to do with their lives.
Overall, a very enjoyable read, with some patience required here and there and a calendar commitment. At roughly 1,500 pages, plus all the fascinating encyclopedia research it inspired, it is certainly a major project.
But yes: War and Peace belongs on the bucket reading list, but I rank it below Dostoyevsky's two major novels and better than Anna Karenina, but read that one first to get your Tolstoy training wheels.
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