War and Peace : BBC (BBC Radio Presents)

Rating:
Summary: A True Classic
Review: What I am about to review is not Tolstoy's actual book but an adaptation of his book by British playwright Helen Edmundson. And what an adaptation it is. As many people know, Tolstoy's War and Peace is a thousand something pages long. Well, Helen Edmundson has taken all the action of this huge paperweight of a novel and compressed it into a 4.5 hour play. And when I mean compressed, I mean she has managed to get everything into the play including a subplot about how Pierre takes up freemasonry, which is absent from Sergei Bondarchuk's 7-hour film adaptation. She wasn't able to dramatize Denisov unfortunately but she managed to make a reference. Compressing an entire book, especially a book of such immense length, is no easy feat. If you try to adapt a novel that is of considerable length, good luck. Most adaptations are so long that an audience is given an option to leave after the first part is over and come back the next day. Examples of this are the 8 1/2 hour "Nicholas Nickleby", the six hour "The Cider House Rules" London's recent six hour West End hit, "His Dark Materials", and of course, Peter Brook's nine hour long adaptation of "The Mahabharata" which has been cut down to less than 5 1/2 hours in a film version. It's also very interesting how Edmundson chooses to have Pierre and Napoleon engage in imaginary conversation. It's quite a fascinating device. I have read the actual book (which I loved), seen the opera (which I also loved even though it starts somewhere in the middle of the book. Actually, if you ever see the opera, read the book first. The opera starts 500 pages later.), seen the film (which I also also loved) and now I have this play which I bought in New York and read on the train ride home. Helen Edmundson has achieved an amazing feat. I salute her.

Rating:
Summary: Great in Spite of Itself
Review: While I consider this book a great work of literature, I understand why some readers dislike it. It is posh and elitist, set for the most part within the circles of the upper flakes of the Russian upper crust. It says little about commoners or the underclass, and what little it does say is shot through with a patronizing condescension that often shades over into caricature. In this regard, it reminds one of "Gone With The Wind", another book that recalls the past through a haze of selectively sanitized nostalgia. The difference, I think, is that "Gone With The Wind" focused on little more than the loves and lives of its characters. This turned it into nothing but well written soap opera. "War and Peace", on the other hand, speaks to a larger purpose. It tries to give us a sense of an ancient and honourable culture suffering through invasion and tottering at the edge of ruin. It is saved from triviality by its attempt to transcend the lives of its characters, an attempt at which it largely succeeds.

It is a long book, much of it given over to digression, polemic and minutiae. Judged by modern writing conventions, it is too wordy, too literal and lacking subtlety. Contrary to the tenets of "good" writing, Tolstoy does not show; he tells. There is nothing of the oblique, the restrained or the quiet voice in his style. One suspects that a modern genius would write the same novel in a little over one third the length.

But this book was written over a century ago in an age of simpler conventions. Their novels were the equivalent of our epic movies, with the same grand gestures, elaborate costumes and cast of thousands. One must be prepared to read the book in the context of its time and place, failing which the author's labours look staged and artificial. Who knows? Future generations may look upon our epic films in much the same way, seeing them as creatures captive to our times. But this would not strip these films of their greatness.

This book requires not just an investment of time, but of patience. Impatience will destroy the experience more quickly than cheap cynicism. Tolstoy confounds us with such a tangle of characters, settings, plot lines and conflicts that at times one must chart out the profusion of interdependencies. Such thickets tie us up in brambles and roots. Sometimes, we are so bewildered by this underbrush that we forget to cast our eye upward to the forested cathedral above.

And this is why this book is ultimately still worth reading. Despite its faults, it manages to attain greatness. It goes beyond the confines of singular lives to explore universal themes. It touches both the small and the large. It invests its characters with depth and strength of purpose, and it doesn't shrink from giving them human failings.

I don't recommend this book for everyone. Frankly, those who look upon its length with a jaundiced eye are justified in their suspicion. It is not an easy read and demands more concentration than is dictated either by necessity or by good taste. However, it is a worthy read if you are curious about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, the lives of the Russian nobility or just what the fuss is all about. And ultimately, there is more than enough substance to reward the determined reader.