War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

“War and Peace”, the four volume epic by Leo Tolstoy, is told as a story that is enhanced (for the most part) with historical commentary; the time period being in the early 1800’s in Russia during the wars fought alongside and against Napoleon. This book has a great deal of positive and negative characteristics, and most valuably serves as an introduction to the history, pride and culture of the Russian people.

I’ll begin with some comments on the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, published by Alfred A. Knope, as it is excellent. Everything Russian has been translated to English, and everything not appears in its original language with the translation in the footnotes. This made the transition between the languages relatively painless (although the translators had much more confidence in my ability to remember previously translated phrases than was warranted). Historical endnotes are scattered throughout to improve the understanding of certain colloquialisms and references. Having begun and failed to finish other translations of Tolstoy’s masterpiece, I highly recommend that anyone wanting to read this book seek out this version in particular (even if you are fluent in French and German). Pevear and Volokhonsky should be congratulated for putting a difficult novel in a very accessible form.

Tolstoy’s format of mixing historical commentary, personal beliefs and fiction for presenting his story is fantastic when it works and painful when it doesn’t. In the first two volumes, the historical commentary serves as a nice enhancement that only rarely detracts from moving the story forward. In the third volume, the historical commentary almost brings the story to a halt, and it is laborious to get through the slow pace of the commentary on the different perspectives and politics of different battles in the French-Russian war of 1812. The fourth volume improves upon moving the story forward, until you reach the epilogue.

The epilogue has several chapters of story that tie up the novel nicely. Unfortunately, this story is surrounded by hundreds of pages (small type) of Leo Tolstoy’s essay on determinism. Similar to Ayn Rands endless essay on objectivism in part 3 of “Altas Shrugged”, this essay feels awkwardly placed in the epilogue and makes finishing the book tedious, because even once the story has been completed there are 50 pages of essay to get through. This essay serves for nothing other than to show that Tolstoy is very strong proponent of determinism. While this essay is well written, it detracts from an otherwise enjoyable novel.

The story itself is enjoyable, with a vast number of characters that represent very different personalities and very accessible main characters that grow and make mistakes and become mature adults as we read. In fact this is initially the hardest thing about reading the book: getting used to all the Russian sounding names ( I’m still not positive I have all the Maryas straight). I do, however, take some exception to how some characters seem to be abandoned by Tolstoy. For Example, Sonya, the loveable and loyal orphaned niece of the Rostovs, is a character that endears herself early in the book, but by the end her story goes nowhere and the story ends without any sort of resolution to her affairs. It’s as though Tolstoy just couldn’t find a way to give her a good ending, so he just gave up on her and moved her to the background. The greatest achievement of this work, however, is it’s endearment of the Russian culture.

I loved how this novel pulled me into Russian culture and revealed a side of the people to which I’ve never been exposed. Like Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” which presents a rich and lovely view of Afghanistan before the Taliban, “War and Peace” presents a pleasant and homey view of Russian life in the early 19th century that makes it seem as though Russia would be a nice place to live, and like Charles Dickens’ in “David Copperfield”, Tolstoy’s writing style makes you feel like you are pleasantly moving along with the lives of the characters, with no huge climaxes or lulls, but just a consistent narrative of the interesting parts of their daily lives.
Perhaps the greatest value of this book was exposed when I was watching the Olympics in February. Being a child who grew up at the end of the “Cold War” between the USSR and the United States, I have almost always looked on the Russian people with a tinge of fear and a feeling of pride (the bad, you-lost-we-won, gloating kind of pride). After reading this book I was watching the opening ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympics, and when the Russian athletes appeared I saw a people I loved and felt a connection with; a people with whom I would like to spend time and become friends. There is probably no greater value in a work of literature than to bridge a gap between “opposing” cultures in this way.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

“Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand was a very difficult book to read, because it is not an interesting narrative whose purpose is to weave a story and suspend the conclusion for the entertainment of the reader, but is rather a very, very, very long parable designed to effectively prove the validity of a philosophy, namely objectivism. While Ayn Rand did an extremely good job of presenting her philosophy in “Atlas Shrugged” and wrapping it in a narrative that was often compelling, her book fails to be great fiction and should rather be read for non-fictional purposes as a means for understanding the intricate details of the application of objectivism. As a parable, “Atlas Shrugged” is very compelling and applicable in today’s political climate. While I don’t recommend “Atlas Shrugged” as a great novel, I do recommend you read this book if you feel that the wealthy business owners are robbing their workers of compensation that is the laborers’ entitlement.

Yes, you can.

“Atlas Shrugged” is a science fiction novel that follows the American political system through a collapse due to introduction of “emergency” laws that bring a socialistic system of rule, during which the opposition to these “emergency” laws is not to fight them, but to stop producing commodities that can be seized by those in power. People are divided into producers, competent laborers and moochers (also called rotters, leeches, looters and other names). Generally, producers create things (ore from a mine, crops from a farm, well-crafted art, realistic philosophies, scientific break-throughs), competent laborers work hard and successfully for these producers to enable there production and wealth (and are well compensated for their efforts) and the moochers try to manipulate moral codes to shame the producers and competent laborers into giving the moochers a portion of their wealth for reasons that only manipulated moral codes justify. Politicians in this book are universally in the category of the moocher (one of the leading moochers is even named Wesley Mooch). Successful and competent businessmen are producers. Dishonest and scheming businessmen are moochers. Competent laborers are highly valued by the producers and feared/despised by the moochers. This classification stems from the basic tenets of objectivism, which is, according Ayn Rand:
1) “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” – You can’t master science by pretending the laws of nature don’t exist.
2) “You can’t eat your cake and have it too” – You can’t consume something and expect it to still be there.
3) “Man is an end in himself” – Seeking your own survival as a rational being is the most basic virtue.
4) “Give me liberty or give me death” – Trading value for value by mutual consent is good; Forcing the exchange of goods with threat of force is bad. Redistributing wealth is evil.

As a novel, “Atlas Shrugged” starts with promise but ends up being boring and long. The story itself seems to grind to a halt in part three of the book and the reader must trudge through endless pages of essays on objectivism to come to the somewhat anticlimactic conclusion. If you boiled out all of the essays and made the novel to contain just the story, it wouldn’t be considered a great story.

The heroine of the story, the railroad executive named Dagny Taggart, is compelling but fairly disloyal and wishy-washy in her relationships. This is presented as a virtue, because to be loyal would be to deny her true feelings. As a heroine of objectivism I’m sure Dagny Taggart is almost perfect…but as a human hero, her desires shift a bit too frequently to make her trustworthy.

As a parable, “Atlas Shrugged” is exceptional. By placing her philosophy in a very carefully controlled atmosphere she is able to manipulate a very persuasive argument for objectivism. Her characters choices are realistic and usually believable, making the characters themselves seem much more human, which in turn makes the events seem very plausible. Furthermore, the political environment created in the story was so similar to today’s that it was eerie. “Atlas Shrugged” serves objectivism well as a parable.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the ideas of objectivism other than to say that I find it to be very interesting and to contain a lot of truth, but it is also rather self-promoting and inflammatory. Where Ayn Rand’s essays on objectivism become wearisome is when they start playing games with phrase meanings in order to illicit a response. For example, the “Love of money” in the 6th chapter of Timothy is akin to seeking to get gain without doing the work to produce, i.e. a robber loves money so he lies in wait to steal it. “Love of money” in objectivism is reinterpreted as the virtue of wanting to work hard to produce, akin to the attitudes of the first and second servants (given 5 and 2 talents) in the parable of the talents in Matthew chapter 25. The two ideas actually agree as to what the actual virtue is, so repurposing the phrase to try to create a division is frustrating.

If you want to read good fiction, pass over this novel. If you want to learn more about objectivism and have a chance to compare it and your philosophy, this novel will be a good one for you to read.

A word of warning, however: upon finishing this novel I didn’t want to read anything for several days because I was tired of trying to last through page after page of repetitive essays. No book should make you dislike reading; this one does.