Leo Tolstoy's War & Peace

Currently I am reading the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. In the introduction they write that theirs’ is the most accurate translation to date. Tolstoy would often use the same word over and over in one paragraph. Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky retained all the repetitions, unlike most of their predecessors.

Many years ago I read the Constance Garnett translation. She pretty much set the standard for translating Russian authors into English. Of her translations I read Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov. When I heard about this much praised translation I went out and bought a copy. Re-reading Tolstoy after so long is a pleasant surprise. His style is very readable. It can get confusing with all the characters, but there is a glossary of the major players in the front of the book, to which I constantly refer. The best way to keep track of who is who is to remember which family people are in.

The novel has several plot lines, going back and forth between, obviously enough, war and peace. It is the period of the Napoleonic wars, between the years 1806 and 1812. There are lots of epic scenes of battle, but also lovingly described nights at dances and balls with all the beautiful gowns, the glittering lights, the men in uniform, the perfume in the air described to the littlest detail. One of the most evocative scenes for me is a sleigh ride at night through a landscape covered with snow under a full moon. The people are in costumes to entertain the children at another estate. The bells are jingling, the people are laughing and the horses snort thick clouds from their wide nostrils. It was, as they say, magical.

Long books can be intimidating but War and Peace is broken down into small chapters of just a few pages, so there are lots of places to break off reading. I am reading just a few pages a night before going to bed. It’s taking me a long time to get through it but, as John Barrymore once said: It may take longer, but I don’t begrudge the time.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I am in the midst of an F. Scott Fitzgerald reading jag. After finishing a forty story collection of his best stuff, I read "The Great Gatsby" and the Pat Hobby stories, some of the last stories he published. "Tender is the Night" left me cold. The first section was disjointed and appeared to reflect the turmoil in Fitzgerald's life at the time. And I can't figure out what triggered Dick Diver's descent into mediocrity. And, by the way, who cares? He was an irritating character as it was. "The Last Tycoon" is an enjoyable read. Too bad Fitzgerald died before finishing it. The romantic elements were slow going, but everything else was riveting. He had Hollywood nailed but good. I'll have to revisit Elia Kazan's film version with Robert DeNiro. It seemed like a failure when I first saw it. Maybe I'll appreciate it more now.

Fitzgerald's prose at times sounds like poetry it is so elegant and beautiful. Time and time again I find myself amazed at his unique turns of phrase. No other writer, before or since, had written such beautiful descriptions.

What I am enjoying is reading the short stories. Presently I am halfway through "The Price Was High," a collection of previously uncollected stories. None are great, not a few are disappointing. But all of them are worth reading. Fitzgerald's worst story is better than some people's best story.

It was a pleasant surprise to find out how funny some of his stories are. His novels are practically without humor, so reading "The Offshore Pirate," about a man and his outlaw jazz band taking control of a yacht with a spoiled rich girl aboard was a delight. "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" had an appropriate revenge at the end after poor Bernice has been tricked into bobbing her hair. The Basil and Josephine Stories, semi-autobiographical in nature, have a nice feeling of melancholy. Fitzgerald wrote them about the time Zelda had her first mental breakdown. They have a flavor of wistfullness tinged with sadness. Fitzgerald is thinking about more innocent days, but with a knowledge that the future is not always as sunny and bright as we hope it will be.

The Pat Hobby stories were written in his last years when he was living in Hollywood. He was considered a washed up has-been by then. Fitzgerald wrote his frustration and anger into a series of stories about an old hack writer hanging on in Hollywood long past his prime. Pat Hobby scrambles and begs for work from his former bosses who give him short assignments purely out of pity. The saddest story has Pat stealing another writer's screenplay and retyping it with his own alterations. When he submits it the producer is more thoughtful of how the botched script reflects Pat Hobby's wounded psyche than angry. The funniest is when Pat Hobby, wearing a false beard, is mistaken for Orson Welles. Seeing Welles as his evil doppleganger, the comparison drives Pat to distraction.