Tolstoy, writing. And writing. And writing...
The new thriller by Justin Cronin, The Passage, tops out at 765 pages.
That’s quite a chunk. The last time I read a book this long, I think it was, Harry, Hermione, and Ron were fighting a desperate, final battle against you-know-who, their frenzied efforts matched only by those of J.K. Rowling’s readers (including yours truly) pulling all-nighters across the globe.
I wanted to read all 765 pages of The Passage. It has vampires, of a sort. It takes place on a post-apocalyptic earth. And yet, despite these genre conventions, it’s been called “literary.” The author, Justin Cronin, picked up a PEN/Hemingway Award for his 2002 “novel-in-stories” Mary and O’Neil. That one is about human relationships, and, as far as I know, there are no terrible lab accidents or children with psionic superpowers involved, as is the case with The Passage.
The latter is an ambitious hybrid effort, combining meticulously presented insight into the human condition with sci-fi, end-of-the-word melodrama. It sounded intriguing—and the author is coming to Maryville University to read from and sign his tome at the end of the month.
I picked the thing up and immediately thought, “yep, it’s a burglar-brainer,” which is what I always think when I see a fat book that holds the promise of slogging through, say, more than 400 pages.
That’s work. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read for pleasure, it’s just that 765 pages is more than a novel, it’s a journey. Guess what you’ll be doing for the next two to three weeks? Reading The Passage, if you start today and make a daily commitment to 30 to 50 pages a day.
So, despite its formidable size, I took a deep breath and dived in. At first I got into the teaser beginning, the story of a hard-luck prostitute eking out life in a cheap motel with her six-year-old daughter. The intensity of the tale and of the prose reeled me in. Gradually, though, it just started to take on a touch of that Nicholson Baker-esque slow-as-sludge pacing. At page 150 or so, I looked down that endless Appalachian Trail of the 600 pages still to go, and me still in the metaphorical Maine of the experience, and said, “nah.”
It was a purely subjective decision, and now, those of you who finish the book may officially pity me—you will know how this epic-length beast of a book ends. You will fully grasp the MacGuffin and the pre-climax and the real climax (I’m assuming it works like most thrillers), and, if you’re in luck, you will know the deep satisfactions of its literary, resonant qualities, too. You will know, and I have chosen—at least until the movie comes out—not to know.
(Buyer beware: you will only know so much, though. Turns out The Passage is merely the first in a planned trilogy. All three volumes together could conceivably weigh five pounds.)
Reading an epic novel is a serious commitment, and in a way, the more serious the novel, the more daunting the commitment. No one’s going to judge you for having read or not read The Passage. War and Peace, so to speak, is another story.
Have you read War and Peace? Do those who have digested the whole, massive Tolstoy classic acquire the right to look down their noses at those who haven’t? Is it like certain exquisite foods, or exotic world destinations? If you’ve tried them, or been there, you gain something that cannot be conferred in the telling, but only in the rich, unique, life-altering experience? Is War and Peace a long, slow, epic journey like Ulysses or The Aeneid or Moby Dick or The Lord of the Rings or Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, which must, by all accounts, be read in the original French to fully appreciate its majesty?
Depending on the edition, War and Peace averages 1,200 to 1,600 pages, and is often split into three volumes. That’s twice the size of The Passage. It’s a mountain of a book that most people (who aren’t forced to read it in college) take one look at and say, “Um, no thanks.”
But most people are not the ambitious organizers of the University City Library’s ominous-sounding “Summer of War and Peace” book discussion group. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to knock off Tolstoy’s tale of “the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families” in three months, by Labor Day. War and Peace, the diametric opposite of a beach read, just became one.
Last week, the U. City Library hosted a kickoff party for the book group. It was announced that there will be three discussions of the book, one each in June, July, and August. You read the first third of War and Peace and discuss, then the second third and discuss, then, finally, finally, finally finish the whole darned thing and discuss.
In the same way that volunteers hand cups of Gatorade to marathoners every few miles, the sympathetic librarians are offering ongoing support to the intrepid readers. There is an online discussion forum where readers can confab about the events of the book. You can download the audio version if that’s any easier for you to handle.
And this is the best part: “Summer of War and Peace” book-clubbers can “sign up at the reference desk to be included in our occasional motivational emails.”
Yes, you may need a little hand-holding to make it through all 1,200-plus pages. The U. City Library gets it.
There are not many classic novels of the Western World longer than War and Peace. Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables is one of them, and Ayn Rand’s yucky ode to selfishness, Atlas Shrugged, is longer still. Should you start to read anything this huge, you deserve a medal for the attempt, and for committing your nights of reading to a single book for an epic period of several months.
Is it worth it? You’ll have to ask someone who’s read War and Peace. I can’t even get through anything by James Michener.
