There is nothing that fails like success. -- G.K. Chesterton

Another of my big dozen books is Tolstoy's War and Peace. There are several books that have been watershed events that changed my world view. I read War and Peace when I was in my mid-forties. By most measures of success in life, it is fortunate I did not read it earlier. On the other hand, had I read and understood and applied Tolstoy's lessons when I was in my twenties, I could have avoided a couple of decades of hollow pursuits, meaningless losses and empty victories.

The immediate impact of reading the book was wrecking my view of history; Tolstoy destroys the Great Man approach to history. I was not completely sold on Great Man histories, even before Tolstoy. I had read enough economic determinism to figure economics was the real driving force. But I did think the big names must have made some difference.

Tolstoy showed that Napoleon, regardless of what he thought he was leading, was just the guy stuck in the front of the mass movement of people from West to East. If anyone had any control of a battle or political victory, it was some guy in a trench who was deciding whether or not to fight or run. The heroes at the top, regardless of what they thought, were not controlling events.

Reading Tolstoy was a full summer's effort. I had to stop and read a biography of Napoleon and a history of the Napoleonic wars to follow the story. I had trouble following name changes and family relationships and military ranks, so circling back in the book took me a while.

Whether or not it is "The World's Greatest Novel," I don't know. I am still haunted by certain scenes. A death at battle. The burning of Moscow. I also read some of the critic's surveys. Harold Bloom, for instance, in The Western Canon, features the short story Hadji Murad. Bloom basically took the approach, "That Tolstoy is an unmatched writer, but if you read his essays on law, religion and politics, he's just a nut." (I can't find the quote, but this is the impression I got). Many other critics seemed to take a similar view of Tolstoy's later work.

The approach is much like what you see written about Ezra Pound--good poet, but insane and a fascist traitor.

After I finally worked my way through War and Peace, I could not get enough of Tolstoy. I still rank Resurrection by Tolstoy as my favorite novel. It is about the legal system, a murder case, prison and the interaction between classes, so it harmonizes well with experiences in my life. Tolstoy wrote a version of the gospels, The Gospel in Brief, that I preferred to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He wrote essays on government, politics, war and religion such as The Kingdom of God is Within You that word for word persuaded me that I should change the way I lived life. I decided not to run for County Chairman (or anything else) again, I quit trying to get rich and began to try to get broke, and within a couple of years I quit filing lawsuits and started representing indigent criminal defendants (this greatly facilitated the prior goal).

Kathy was surprisingly accepting of all of this weirdness.

As the years have past, I have had to back off (at least for now) on some of the Tolstoyan lifestyle to sort of a Tolstoy Light. I found I was too middle class to suffer so much. It was a pain trying to live without a house, so the bank and I have been buying another one. I got tired of the long hours. And I kept getting rid of more money than I had to give, not so much out of generosity, but out of not really knowing how much money I had.

After I became powerless and broke, as you might imagine, I got a whole new set of friends. Not a lot of the old ones stuck around, but the ones who did were keepers. Another change was I was able to quit spending time with people I didn't like. I have to lie a lot less, even to Kathy. A don't take Prozac anymore. I don't have to worry about how to invest the 401K plans or keeping up with a beach house, a Hummer, a Rolex or a swimming pool. That junk is fortunately all gone. I sleep through the night. I am willing to get out of bed in the morning.

Some book!