Leo Tolstoy. He's so hard to read.

[floppa21]

"Leo Tolstoy. He's so hard to read."

A woman said this to me today when I was at lunch reading my book. Why do people say this? I have heard this before. Now granted, it isn't Cat in the Hat, but hard to read? He doesn't have any 1500 word sentences ala William Faulkner. I never understood this. He's no different than Stephen King or John Grisham. Short of a short attention span, how is it difficult? War and Peace was not a tough read nor his shorter stories which I am reading now.

 

[jpowers]

I think it's because there are frequently 200 pages between explosions, instead of 200 words.

 

[Padma]

jpowers has a point.

I think it's also that a lot of people are "forced" to read him in school, when reading at all, let alone a serious work, is near the bottom of their personal priorities. Thus, they have an unfair, biased memory.

 

[Pillager]

Well, there are no big, pretty pictures and there are words of more than two syllables. If you leave school unable to spell your own name, reading Tolstoy would probably present quite a challenge.

If someone finds Tolstoy too hard to read, he shouldn't be allowed to get his grubby mits on a copy of it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I think that the sentence structure is important. Language has changed a lot over the centuries and dialogue that was "natural" at the time can often be difficult to read now.

 

[Bifrost]

I think tolstoy isn't that hard to read, btw he's included in my "top five" authors list.
About War'n'Peace... Well, I couldn't start for a long time - boring beginning, but then... I spent hours reading it. Some people even reread such books as War'n'Peace for a couple of times - it happens that the main Idea can't be understood after you've read it once.

 

[MCdread]

Unfortunatelly, people do not read for the pleasure of it, and do not try to achieve a better understanding of the world and themselves through reading. People read to occupy (sp?) their time, while in the bus, or when they have insomnia, or on those sunday raining afternoons when the fewer the effort the better. Therefor, the so-called light reading takes a very big share of book market. It's no surprise, the same thing happens with other cultural activities such as films or music. Enjoy it while you're living it, forget it when it's over, and come back next week for more of the same, and in the meanwhile do not think too much about it, as there are already many things to think about.
So, great classics like this one are not taken into account, as they demand too much focus.

 

[Stormbringer]

I don't know, the only problem I had when I read War and Peace in Russian, were a lot of French he used, as at that time most people understood/spoke French, so for me who speakes 4 languages, but not French it was a bit hard, but I got used to it by the end of the first book.

 

[Pongui]

That Russian characters have many different names and nicknames confuses me at first. Also, I think english readers who read phonetically would find some of the names tiresome. I rarely bother to pronounce newly read words or names in my mind - I just remember where the letters are - so that's fine with me.

 

[polymath]

When at school I had to read Balzac's 'Le Pere Goriot' in the original French - this would be my preferred punishment for any transgressors of my laws - but I am now actively considering Tolstoy in any language as a suitable option.

 

[animepornstar]

my 'le pere goriot' was strindberg's 'the people of hemso'. there is no other book that i hate like i hate that on, even if i've started to like some strindberg's other works.

 

[Rodgers]

I haven't read Tolstoy's works but the most common complaint I hear about War and Peace, for instance, is the sheer volume of characters involved makes it tough to keep track of what is actually happening. Maybe that was what she was on about...

 

[col]

And the names of the characters arent easy for english speakers to pronounce inside their heads - which I find means that I lose track of who is who.

 

[jpowers]

Since I never seem to have 18 consecutive hours free anymore, I keep a cheat sheet with an entry for each new mention of a character and some basic relationships.