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| Ever read War and Peace? No need... | Ever read War and Peace? No need... |
| (40 minutes later) | |
| It's World Book Day, a time to promote the enjoyment of reading. But who has the time these days to pore over a tome like Tolstoy's 1,500-page classic War and Peace? You don't need to, says one book bluffer, who below takes on an expert. Read their conversation then vote for who you think is the bluffer. | It's World Book Day, a time to promote the enjoyment of reading. But who has the time these days to pore over a tome like Tolstoy's 1,500-page classic War and Peace? You don't need to, says one book bluffer, who below takes on an expert. Read their conversation then vote for who you think is the bluffer. |
| name="link"> In our time-poor age, many people wish they were more well-read. And World Book Day, with its polls on the nation's favourites, can compound this feeling of inadequacy. | |
| But help is at hand. A bestselling book in France by academic Pierre Bayard, How to Talk about Books that You Haven't Read, claims anyone can have an intelligent conversation about novels they have never even opened. | But help is at hand. A bestselling book in France by academic Pierre Bayard, How to Talk about Books that You Haven't Read, claims anyone can have an intelligent conversation about novels they have never even opened. |
| We put his theory to the test by pitting one of the country's most respected literature experts against an unashamed "bluffer". Below is an edited transcript of a conversation between Professor John Sutherland, former chairman of the Booker Prize judges, and Ross Leckie, author of The Bluffer's Guide to the Classics. | |
| MEET THE SPEAKERS John Sutherland (left) is professor of literature at University of London and regular Guardian columnistRoss Leckie wrote the highly-acclaimed Hannibal and is a full-time writer living in Edinburgh The subject? Tolstoy's 1,500-page epic War and Peace, which has an abridged version published next month... and which Leckie has never read. | |
| So who is the expert and who is the faker? Read their conversation then vote for who you think is the bluffer. All will be revealed on Friday, when Leckie will explain his strategy and share his tips. | So who is the expert and who is the faker? Read their conversation then vote for who you think is the bluffer. All will be revealed on Friday, when Leckie will explain his strategy and share his tips. |
| A: The central character Pierre is, I think, a fascinating and major fictional figure. There's something in him that speaks, I would argue, to all of us. His paradoxical behaviour - one moment he's religious, the next moment he's atheistic. One moment he's in love with Elena, the next moment he wants to be in love with Natasha. He's very volatile. One moment he is for the war against Napoleon, one moment he's against the war. So in Pierre I think Tolstoy has created a character who speaks to all of us. B: I would more or less agree with that but the pity about Pierre is that he's such a bumbler. He's not a hero. A: (chuckles) Isn't that why he's so empathetic for us? B: But I have this theory that Tolstoy is very influenced by Thackeray. He read three huge Thackeray novels in one week while he was in the siege of Sebastopol in 1855. At one point in his life he steeped himself in Thackeray and I think that "novel without a hero" idea took root when he came round to doing War and Peace. I think Pierre is very like the kind of character you would find in Thackeray or even Trollope, the hobbledehoy. It would have been so tempting to have someone who was dashing and who cut down the French enemy with his sabre. A: And he doesn't of course. B: No, he doesn't. He wanders around in the battlefield without the faintest idea what he's doing. The other point is he becomes a Mason. He's a complete duffer and yet incredibly interesting because of that. Tolstoy, I don't know if you'd agree, has a theory that war is a gigantic cock-up. Napoleon is not a great strategist he's just rather lucky and things go very badly for him when he arrives in Moscow. A: And then he makes the mistake of staying in Moscow instead of trying to defeat the Russian Army in the field. I love the whole section of the novel when Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its appalling retreat from Moscow and the meditations he has then on the misery of war and pointlessness of war. I love his ambiguity. B: Back in Moscow, there are people who admire Napoleon and regard him as a hero and Tolstoy is very scathing about that glamorisation of the enemy. A: And belligerence. B: And belligerence. A: It's very moving I think. And the juxtaposition by Tolstoy of Napoleon with the Russian general Kutuzov who is his chiaroscuro, both the same as and the opposite to Napoleon is fascinating and beautifully done in the novel. B: The great thing about War and Peace is you don't have to have, whether you've read it or not, you don't need to have a mastery of Russian history. All you need is the great events of the early 19th Century and the Napoleonic fiasco. A: Well it is just 1805 to 1813, isn't it? It covers a very small period of Russian history, which is one of the novel's triumphs, to pack so much human experience into eight years. B: Why isn't it more read? Why isn't it at everyone's fingertips? Because it's so long or because we have an insular contempt for anything which doesn't originate in our own country? A: I think it's because the novel is so audacious. Nobody else - not nobody, Joyce certainly tries it but I find Joyce utterly unreadable - nobody that springs to mind apart from Tolstoy has ever attempted so broad a sweep, so wide a canvas with good guys and bad guys and happy people and sad people. The characterisation throughout War and Peace is magnificent. We all talk about Pierre but look at Natasha as a central female character, isn't she fascinating? B: Yes she is. The whole marriage theme is beautifully handled. The fact he fumbles into a kind of terrible marriage and it breaks up. It's a very grown-up novel in that respect. There's very little simple-minded romance in it. What do you think happens to them in later life? I sometimes wonder about the aftermath and the sequence of these things. Does Tolstoy actually forecast what the afterlives of his characters are? A: No he doesn't but he leaves Pierre pretty much resolved. If you remember Pierre suddenly inherits this great estate with serfs and hundreds of miles and acres, and he doesn't know what to do with it. He agonises about how one shoulders this responsibility. Does he keep it or ought he give the estate back to the serfs; give it back to the people? How do you lead a moral life in a patently flawed imperfect world? B: Isn't it amazing that someone like Tolstoy was a master of what you call this huge gigantic canvas. But at the same time he's also a master of the miniature. The death of Ivan Illych. A: Yes, a beautiful moment. | A: The central character Pierre is, I think, a fascinating and major fictional figure. There's something in him that speaks, I would argue, to all of us. His paradoxical behaviour - one moment he's religious, the next moment he's atheistic. One moment he's in love with Elena, the next moment he wants to be in love with Natasha. He's very volatile. One moment he is for the war against Napoleon, one moment he's against the war. So in Pierre I think Tolstoy has created a character who speaks to all of us. B: I would more or less agree with that but the pity about Pierre is that he's such a bumbler. He's not a hero. A: (chuckles) Isn't that why he's so empathetic for us? B: But I have this theory that Tolstoy is very influenced by Thackeray. He read three huge Thackeray novels in one week while he was in the siege of Sebastopol in 1855. At one point in his life he steeped himself in Thackeray and I think that "novel without a hero" idea took root when he came round to doing War and Peace. I think Pierre is very like the kind of character you would find in Thackeray or even Trollope, the hobbledehoy. It would have been so tempting to have someone who was dashing and who cut down the French enemy with his sabre. A: And he doesn't of course. B: No, he doesn't. He wanders around in the battlefield without the faintest idea what he's doing. The other point is he becomes a Mason. He's a complete duffer and yet incredibly interesting because of that. Tolstoy, I don't know if you'd agree, has a theory that war is a gigantic cock-up. Napoleon is not a great strategist he's just rather lucky and things go very badly for him when he arrives in Moscow. A: And then he makes the mistake of staying in Moscow instead of trying to defeat the Russian Army in the field. I love the whole section of the novel when Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its appalling retreat from Moscow and the meditations he has then on the misery of war and pointlessness of war. I love his ambiguity. B: Back in Moscow, there are people who admire Napoleon and regard him as a hero and Tolstoy is very scathing about that glamorisation of the enemy. A: And belligerence. B: And belligerence. A: It's very moving I think. And the juxtaposition by Tolstoy of Napoleon with the Russian general Kutuzov who is his chiaroscuro, both the same as and the opposite to Napoleon is fascinating and beautifully done in the novel. B: The great thing about War and Peace is you don't have to have, whether you've read it or not, you don't need to have a mastery of Russian history. All you need is the great events of the early 19th Century and the Napoleonic fiasco. A: Well it is just 1805 to 1813, isn't it? It covers a very small period of Russian history, which is one of the novel's triumphs, to pack so much human experience into eight years. B: Why isn't it more read? Why isn't it at everyone's fingertips? Because it's so long or because we have an insular contempt for anything which doesn't originate in our own country? A: I think it's because the novel is so audacious. Nobody else - not nobody, Joyce certainly tries it but I find Joyce utterly unreadable - nobody that springs to mind apart from Tolstoy has ever attempted so broad a sweep, so wide a canvas with good guys and bad guys and happy people and sad people. The characterisation throughout War and Peace is magnificent. We all talk about Pierre but look at Natasha as a central female character, isn't she fascinating? B: Yes she is. The whole marriage theme is beautifully handled. The fact he fumbles into a kind of terrible marriage and it breaks up. It's a very grown-up novel in that respect. There's very little simple-minded romance in it. What do you think happens to them in later life? I sometimes wonder about the aftermath and the sequence of these things. Does Tolstoy actually forecast what the afterlives of his characters are? A: No he doesn't but he leaves Pierre pretty much resolved. If you remember Pierre suddenly inherits this great estate with serfs and hundreds of miles and acres, and he doesn't know what to do with it. He agonises about how one shoulders this responsibility. Does he keep it or ought he give the estate back to the serfs; give it back to the people? How do you lead a moral life in a patently flawed imperfect world? B: Isn't it amazing that someone like Tolstoy was a master of what you call this huge gigantic canvas. But at the same time he's also a master of the miniature. The death of Ivan Illych. A: Yes, a beautiful moment. |
| THE MAGAZINE: Could Tolstoy have done anything better? | THE MAGAZINE: Could Tolstoy have done anything better? |
| A: Enormously, you could cut it. It's notoriously difficult to abridge such a great work, but the last third of the "novel" is in fact what we could call a polemic. It's a philosophical rant about the meaning of life the best form of government and so on, thinly disguised and inadequately disguised as fiction. It's Tolstoy philosophising, he's on his soapbox and my goodness, he bangs on. So you could improve it easily by cutting that out. B: That's one of the really engaging things about Tolstoy. What's that short story which is usually translated as "what for?" or "why?" He asks huge questions - "Why are we here? What is life for?" No British novelist would have the gall to stand up, well possibly Hardy but not with Tolstoyan confidence. | A: Enormously, you could cut it. It's notoriously difficult to abridge such a great work, but the last third of the "novel" is in fact what we could call a polemic. It's a philosophical rant about the meaning of life the best form of government and so on, thinly disguised and inadequately disguised as fiction. It's Tolstoy philosophising, he's on his soapbox and my goodness, he bangs on. So you could improve it easily by cutting that out. B: That's one of the really engaging things about Tolstoy. What's that short story which is usually translated as "what for?" or "why?" He asks huge questions - "Why are we here? What is life for?" No British novelist would have the gall to stand up, well possibly Hardy but not with Tolstoyan confidence. |
| THE MAGAZINE: Is there an element of soap? | THE MAGAZINE: Is there an element of soap? |
| A: The love triangle between Elena and her brother Anatoly is straight soap stuff. They conspire for Anatoly to seduce the still chaste Natasha but Pierre then gets involved to try to stop it and himself falls in love with Natasha, the woman who he is trying, out of honour, to protect. Meanwhile he's already married, which doesn't help. So yes, it's a very contemporary theme. That's why it's so strong and successful. Yes, there are these massive brushstrokes about the meaning of life and if God exists and other hardy perennials but there is also very intimate delicate brushwork in the extenuation of these minor characters and these major characters' feelings and inclinations. B: One of the problems that British readers have and one which no translators can help with is the Russian use of patronymics. They all have three names and the names alter according to context. There are various other things as well we are not used to but Russian readers would have taken for granted. They are baffling. It's a novel that needs annotation and a certain amount of patience. A: My trick is that I stick to the Anglicised Christian names so I don't worry too much about whether or not Bezukhov is a prince or a count or indeed what his surname is. But Pierre is a name we can remember. Natasha changed her surname, according to context as you say, from Rostov to Rostova to Rostovnika. I just stick personally to Natasha. | A: The love triangle between Elena and her brother Anatoly is straight soap stuff. They conspire for Anatoly to seduce the still chaste Natasha but Pierre then gets involved to try to stop it and himself falls in love with Natasha, the woman who he is trying, out of honour, to protect. Meanwhile he's already married, which doesn't help. So yes, it's a very contemporary theme. That's why it's so strong and successful. Yes, there are these massive brushstrokes about the meaning of life and if God exists and other hardy perennials but there is also very intimate delicate brushwork in the extenuation of these minor characters and these major characters' feelings and inclinations. B: One of the problems that British readers have and one which no translators can help with is the Russian use of patronymics. They all have three names and the names alter according to context. There are various other things as well we are not used to but Russian readers would have taken for granted. They are baffling. It's a novel that needs annotation and a certain amount of patience. A: My trick is that I stick to the Anglicised Christian names so I don't worry too much about whether or not Bezukhov is a prince or a count or indeed what his surname is. But Pierre is a name we can remember. Natasha changed her surname, according to context as you say, from Rostov to Rostova to Rostovnika. I just stick personally to Natasha. |
| B: It is awkward. Sometimes a whole line in the book is taken up with a row of the same character's name parts. That is a difficulty. It's a book which needs a very tactical introduction and quite a bit of annotation but there's nothing wrong with that, there's no reason why one shouldn't have some help over the style while reading. | B: It is awkward. Sometimes a whole line in the book is taken up with a row of the same character's name parts. That is a difficulty. It's a book which needs a very tactical introduction and quite a bit of annotation but there's nothing wrong with that, there's no reason why one shouldn't have some help over the style while reading. |
| So who is the bluffer? Return to vote Add your comments on this story, using the form below. | So who is the bluffer? Return to vote Add your comments on this story, using the form below. |