I have finished Volume One of War and Peace. That is, I have read approximately three hundred pages of the the thirteen hundred page, tiny nine point font, volume that Geoff purchased at that bookstore on Spring Garden in Halifax that may or may not still be there.
And I think I’m finally getting into it.
Long ago, as a puny undergraduate, I read Anna Karenina and, really, only cared about the personal love triangles and machinations and the people-stuff. Levin’s lengthy digressions about emancipation, I rolled my eyes and scanned rather than read. Philosophy of something also did not manage to stick in my brain. Basically, any time people were lecturing and no one was sneaking off to have sex or throwing temper tantrums or having a party, I ignored. Thus, with War and Peace, I figured I’d be flipping through the war parts and devouring the peace. I even read a book (one of the Anastasia Krupnik books) where a character reveals she never even read the war parts of War and Peace. So I’m in good company, I thought to myself. A fictional character from a kid’s book in the eighties agrees with me.
And here’s my confession though: the war parts are so much better than the peace parts.
Maybe because I am no longer a twenty year old, the gossip and intrigue and general cattiness of the Russian aristocracy no longer hold my attention. Instead, I’m sitting there reading and saying When are we going to get to another cavalry charge? Is this growth? Have I grown as a person?
Maybe I’ve just become more violent.