I recently met a second person who re-reads War and Peace on a regular basis. Both of them have commanded huge respect, (one a long-standing Labour MP and the other an electric personality I don't know well enough to describe better), so I thought I’d give it a go. At the book's opening there are lots of descriptions of ‘society’ salons and gatherings. I can’t stand that sort of thing in real life, so they’re pretty painful on paper, but especially so because weaknesses of character of every sort are laid out in gorgeously observed detail, and fault after fault I recognise my own total lack of social grace and other flaws. Apart from all the ways in which the book can’t be described as a ‘timeless’ read from a feminist perspective, which does rankle, I’m sorry, but it does… I’m finding it a difficult read, but continue because it is nevertheless gripping, and not just the way that magnifying mirrors are: painful but fascinating. I also hope that it'll help me be a better person. There are lots of books like that - Barbara Kingsolver's non-fiction essays spring to mind - please suggest others everyone… But if two people whose intellect completely dwarfs mine rate it highly, then I'm willing to take it on faith that there's something to be learned here. The first time I read it I was 17 and Planet Brain 1 encouraged me to skip the battle scenes, explaining that on his re-reads, he sometimes did. Planet Brain 2 was aghast at such blasphemy - he's more of a purist, and anyway, it's not so easy to flick through the kindle edition. The book is turning towards a battle. You know that it's coming. How will these innocent young men acquit themselves in the face of horror? How will the silly women cope while the men are away, and even the plain but not silly ones? We shall see.
Tuesday was a typical example of my total social ineptitude. It was made worse by my poor French: I thought my friend had already had her supper, when she hadn't… but, I said we'd stop by for half an hour and we were there for about an hour and a half. My poor friend, and worse, her two and a half-year-old child, didn't get their dinner until way past dinner time. My social skills are dreadful to non-existence. I think it's because I'm practically blind with ego - so worried about what I'm doing that I don't think about others, but also because I have a very odd relationship with time. I'm not sure if it's a head injury thing, or if I'm just rubbish, but my sense of time passing is very dicky indeed. Social stuff in another language is even more difficult because there are many ways in which you don't read the body language clues or have the references. At least I try to avoid social situations where at all possible, especially with people I don't know very well. This has various self-limiting properties, particularly when one doesn’t get asked back much. I suppose that what I'm really hoping is that reading War and Peace will stop me talking so much. Perhaps if I get hold of a paper version and take pages to try and eat whenever I go visiting that’ll help to shut me up. It should last a while. Given that I aspire to what people far smarter than me are capable of, then clearly diplomats are where it's at when it comes to crossing cultural bridges. I wonder if they get special training on how to behave at parties. Probably. I think I'll start by Googling that first… I suppose we can learn anything, it's just a question of finding the most interesting way of learning it. That or an electric collar for every time I do something stupid. Yes! A big ZAP! Followed by a metallic voice saying. 'It. Is. Not. A-bout. You.' F***k.
So, back to the point… I'm still going to keep reading, despite the following passage:
"As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women of Prince Bolkonski's household felt that their life had not been real till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling and observing immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full of significance.'
How can Tolstoy be such a great observer of character in men and yet so completely miss the mark with 50% of the population? Even if the powers of reasoning thing is a joke, which is must, surely, be, the Anatole character in question is a stupid, shallow wanker, something that even the ugly but not silly character is too blinded by testosterone to see. Is the prevailing cultural wind a good enough excuse for blowing such an intelligent man as Tolstoy off course? He was a bit funny about sex and all that, but really! We're even talking about a man who liked women here.
That smart people can get some things so desperately wrong is an enduring paradox which should humble all of us. Part of the point must be that the more segregated a society is the harder it is for people to connect properly - not just in terms of understanding each other, but also in terms of being able to see what is right in front of them. That is what prejudice and stereotypes do. That is why we cannot subscribe to them. They make us stupid. That is why we have to stand up and say, politely, hang on a minute, I've just thought about that and actually it's a bit fishy. I think I might go so far as to say it's a load of fucking carp.
Tuesday was a typical example of my total social ineptitude. It was made worse by my poor French: I thought my friend had already had her supper, when she hadn't… but, I said we'd stop by for half an hour and we were there for about an hour and a half. My poor friend, and worse, her two and a half-year-old child, didn't get their dinner until way past dinner time. My social skills are dreadful to non-existence. I think it's because I'm practically blind with ego - so worried about what I'm doing that I don't think about others, but also because I have a very odd relationship with time. I'm not sure if it's a head injury thing, or if I'm just rubbish, but my sense of time passing is very dicky indeed. Social stuff in another language is even more difficult because there are many ways in which you don't read the body language clues or have the references. At least I try to avoid social situations where at all possible, especially with people I don't know very well. This has various self-limiting properties, particularly when one doesn’t get asked back much. I suppose that what I'm really hoping is that reading War and Peace will stop me talking so much. Perhaps if I get hold of a paper version and take pages to try and eat whenever I go visiting that’ll help to shut me up. It should last a while. Given that I aspire to what people far smarter than me are capable of, then clearly diplomats are where it's at when it comes to crossing cultural bridges. I wonder if they get special training on how to behave at parties. Probably. I think I'll start by Googling that first… I suppose we can learn anything, it's just a question of finding the most interesting way of learning it. That or an electric collar for every time I do something stupid. Yes! A big ZAP! Followed by a metallic voice saying. 'It. Is. Not. A-bout. You.' F***k.
So, back to the point… I'm still going to keep reading, despite the following passage:
"As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women of Prince Bolkonski's household felt that their life had not been real till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling and observing immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full of significance.'
How can Tolstoy be such a great observer of character in men and yet so completely miss the mark with 50% of the population? Even if the powers of reasoning thing is a joke, which is must, surely, be, the Anatole character in question is a stupid, shallow wanker, something that even the ugly but not silly character is too blinded by testosterone to see. Is the prevailing cultural wind a good enough excuse for blowing such an intelligent man as Tolstoy off course? He was a bit funny about sex and all that, but really! We're even talking about a man who liked women here.
That smart people can get some things so desperately wrong is an enduring paradox which should humble all of us. Part of the point must be that the more segregated a society is the harder it is for people to connect properly - not just in terms of understanding each other, but also in terms of being able to see what is right in front of them. That is what prejudice and stereotypes do. That is why we cannot subscribe to them. They make us stupid. That is why we have to stand up and say, politely, hang on a minute, I've just thought about that and actually it's a bit fishy. I think I might go so far as to say it's a load of fucking carp.
Now that he was telling it all to Natasha he experienced that pleasure which a man has when women listen to him - not clever women who when listening either try to remember what they hear to enrich thier minds and when opportunity offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt it to some thought of their own and promptly contribute their own clever comments prepared in their little mental workshop - but the pleasure given by real women gifted with a capacity to select and absorb the very best a man shows of himself. (From War and Peace, @92% in my kindle, loc 26764, or just search 'clever women'. Unsurprisingly, the phrase only comes up twice...)