Just Like Us

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer.

He was also a Count when things like Counts weren't all that uncommon. He fought in a war which still employed horses, lived on an enormous estate and eventually decided to form his very own version of Christianity.

In other words, he was just like us.

Don't believe me? Just read some of his works. Novels like War and Peace and Anna Karenina observe humanity with an honesty unseen in most books, films and reality television programs. In fact, only Shakespeare seems to have had such insight into human nature.

Like Shakespeare, Tolstoy knew to place real-seeming characters in hyper-real situations in order to entertain as well as inform. Napoleonic wars and upscale scandals are generally far more interesting than life on the farm, after all. The important thing is that we relate.

Of course there are those – myself included – who sometimes feel that serious writing has become disengaged from the real world. What people like me need to remember is that classic literature is living literature and that as long as we can get Tolstoy on our Kindles, serious writers will have something important to say about the here and now.

A word of warning to the uninitiated: Tolstoy's most famous works are long. As in real long. As in give yourself some time to read them. Anna Karenina is a challenge to finish. War and Peace is an even greater challenge. You don't have to be professor of Russian literature in order to appreciate these titans, though. All you have to be is a part of the human experience.

Like Tolstoy.