There is a special class of books on my shelf that particularly mocks my reading addled brain. Sure, all those books of poetry, the discarded philosophy tomes, and that copy of Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality (the book that shouts "you will never understand me, so don't even try!") have their particular styles of fingers waving, thumbs in the ears taunting, but there is this other category of books, that by shear poundage alone, conspire to kick my literary ass.
They are, of course, the doorstops.
Now, I'm not even talking those books that are just 600 or 700 pages, but the real monsters - those 1,000 page Gargantuas that have spines roughly 3 inches wide. Now I have read a few books in that range with no trouble: The Lord of the Rings, and I knocked off Stephen King's Under the Dome in about 8 days last year, but those are a bit less arduous than some of the following:
- War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
- Les Miserables Victor Hugo
- A Glastonbury Romance John Cowper Powys
- Islandia Austin Tappan Wright
- Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
- A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
I'm sure there are others, too, but those are the ones that come to mind immediately. And, if I set the bar a little lower, in the 800-900 page range, I think the accumulated square footage of paper would put me on trial at the Hague, if they ever decided to tackle deforestation. So let's just leave it at the thousand-pagers, then.
Of these, I have started each at various times, read dozens, maybe hundreds of pages, before moving off to greener pastures. In Tolstoy's case, I have been particularly cursed. When I first moved to New York, all those many years ago, it was going to be the book I started on my trip, and read it on the week or two of downtime that I had before classes started. I ended up either leaving the book on the plane, or in the cab that took me to my student residence. Several years later, I sprung for the acclaimed Pevar/Volokhonsky translation (in hardback, no less), and got a few hundred pages into it, when the job I had at an essentially now defunct music label ended, and lugging five pounds of book when you are heading out for job interviews just isn't much fun. So, book abandoned again.
This week, I was looking for something other than the minor doorstop book I have been reading, Peter Mathiessen's Shadow Country. It's interesting, but the novel, which is told in a very disjointed, multiple voices manner, just wasn't grabbing me right now. It occurred to me that what I wanted was a real narrative, something to really get me involved with a great big group of people, and watch their lives unfold, and (unlike the Mattiessen) in a roughly chronological way.
It was then that Tolstoy started the shelf mocking again.
I'm not sure why that book looms this way-I could have gone for the slightly less cumbersome copy of Anna Karenina, or hell, dozens of other titles on those shelves of mine. But War and Peace has always been that particular literary Everest for me, and suddenly I wanted another attempt at the summit.
So, the Doorstop Project begins. Whether it makes it much past this book, or even through this book, is one of those unknown knowns that Rumsfeld was no doubt referring to. But my intention, is to run through the acres of several books, and post a few things about the journey here, and I am resolved. For the next few minutes, at least.
So, I'll most likely be back soon with some updates on my journey through War and Peace, and I hope to reach the conclusion and tell you about it. Hell, if I manage to make it through book one, I will have accomplished something.
And yes, it is still the hardback. In these days of Ipads and Kindles, I'm riding the subway reading one of the largest books that wasn't made to display on a coffee table. Hardcore, that.
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