NP - Anna Karenina translations

[Mark Kohut]

Unsolicited advice on reading War & Peace. Which I did, for the first time, this summer past.

What is called The Inner Sanctum edition was the one I (mostly) used, however I also used the new P & V. translation. The Inner Sanctum is the Maude translation.

Why I chose it was not only for the respected Maudes, but because the French is translated---I recommend that if you do not know French---BUT ALSO because my edition had a character list with short definitions.

War & Peace is a so-easy read EXCEPT for keeping the characters straight, imho. (I remembered a high school friend who read it when I thought it had to be beyond me and what he said, "all those characters to remember"). They come in and out of chapters like in a play and there are many, many. 

I just kept referring to who they were until I had internalized them---and, even then one had to come back to the crib when they came back into the novel)

Pat Conroy's introduction in a new (American) signet edition is also so good, imho, for any 'common reader', that is, me. He shows how it lived  and lives for him.



--- On Thu, 1/21/10, John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: NP - Anna Karenina translations
> To: "Dave Monroe" <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Thursday, January 21, 2010, 6:07 PM
> Ah, just found this:
> 
> http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/s280459.htm
> 
> Wouldn't you know it? Our old friend James Wood comes into
> it....
>