Question by Essentially_Libertarian: Is War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy a singular novel?
Since I have chosen to include Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy’s war and peace in my readings, I have to ask, “Are there equally compelling novels written natively in English?” Tolstoy’s achievement particularly seems incredible.
Answers and Views:
Answer by Larry D
I haven’t read War and Peace, though I have read the Idiot and Anna Karrenina. I understand that War and Peace has a huge scope and is sweepingly panoramic in the story it tells of lives intertwined with the effects on Russians of the (Napoleonic?) war.
My favorite English Language novel is Moby Dick. It’s a great story, is philosophical, and a fantastic, though at times tough read. It doesn’t have the scale of war and peace, though.
Most of the English-language novels that I have read are not on this broad scale, but there are several great novels I can think of that you might enjoy.
I love D.H. Lawrence, I love Dickens, Jane Eyre by Bronte, etc.
There’s always Faulkner: a great novelist, but very difficult. (Still struggling with Joyce, but this is something COMPLETELY different.)
This is what Clifton Fadiman in “The Lifetime Reading Plan” says about James Joyce’s “Ulysses:”
“With “Ulysses” we at last reach a novel that seems impenetrable. It is best to admit that this mountain cannot be scaled with a single leap. Still, it is scalable; and from the top you are granted a view of incomparable richness…”
“Here are five simple statements…”
“1. It is probably the most organized, thought-out work of literature since “The Divine Comedy.
2. It is the most influential novel published in our [20th] century.
3. It is one of the most original works of imagination in our language
4. [defending against claims of immorality, decadence and pessimism]
5. Unlike its original, [Homer’s] “Odyssey,” it is not an open book. It yields its secrets only to those willing to work, just as Beethoven’s last quartets reveal new riches the longer they are studied.
about “War and Peace,” Fadiman says “…more frequently than any other work has been called “the greatest novel ever written.”
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