War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869)

Obviously I won't recount plot. It has been 14 months in the reading. And I guess the overweening conclusion coming from that is the question of whether or not it was worth it. I wouldn't be without the experience on the one hand. On the other, there is a serious question in my mind as to whether the net result feels like it has enough inherent inspiration to justify the time spent. I'm pretty sure it doesn't. That is built of a couple of things, again two sides of a coin: on the one hand, it was never completely uninteresting, and managed to keep up a low hum of basic worthwhileness; on the other, there were things like what I would call 'foreshortening' of character in it, where no-one felt particularly compelling. Almost all the characters are only mildly interesting, with perhaps the exception of Pierre, who occasionally reaches to higher heights. One is certainly not rooting for anybody overly, but then again that may be the effect of the Russian approach to literature, which is one in the classic sense at least of no character being anything other than mixed, and their 'negative' aspects being well marked. I wonder whether this foreshortening of which I speak is also influenced by the broader notion of "the epic", and its inherent constraints. Because we have to look at such a wide scene, is there also a somehow necessary lowering of individual height in the characters? Are they 'seventy-five percenters' by dint of their breadth of background? There are, however, moments of concentration where normal novelistic intensity is approached, which are wonderful. One in particular I remember is the scene of the shooting of some prisoners in burning Moscow after the French have conquered. Powerful stuff. But those moments are comparatively rare. Also to be mentioned is the last section of the book, the second epilogue, which is a philosophical treatise on the understanding of history, and leaves all the characters, and fiction, behind. Tolstoy's instincts here are brilliant, in terms of his wish to break down how we understand history and therefore what we see as its motive forces. He does this with as much atomising as was possible in his times I think, with many of his lights and their terminology reflecting those of philosophical works I have read, even quite recent ones. Some of his conclusions are quite wobbly, though. Whether this piece belonged in a work of fiction is a moot point, I guess, given that it appears that he was all about breaking down some of the distinctions between types of writing. An experience, but a highly flawed one.