Tolstoy in Texas

Life is surprising. I should have learned: People can not be tied up in packages with labels like “Democrat” or “Republican”, “Catholic” or “Baptist”, “White or Black”. No individual person fits tidally and completely into one category.

When our exercise instructor announced this morning that I was going to give a program on my trips to Russia, I sat there, waving my arms and legs in our chair exercises and wondering what I would say to these Texans who have never been anywhere or read anything.

After class, as I stooped down to pick up from the floor the rubber balls and weights we used in our exercise routines, the woman next to me said, “I wish I could go to Russia. I became interested in Russian history after reading Russian novels, Tolstoy and Dostoyevski, especially Tolstoy.”

The favorite novel of this little old lady is Leo Tolstoy”s “War and Peace”

Years ago, when I was too young to really appreciate the depth of this novel, I spent a month of summer vacation – it must have been during World War II and a polio epidemic when I had to stay home and did nothing but read – I managed to read all the way through “War and Peace.”

As I grew older I realized I missed the significance of the book, but I never had the will power to make time to read it again.

The “typical” Texan in my exercise class read “War and Peace”, all 1,000 plus pages, twice.