How Much Land Does a Man Need

I was a little bit surprised by How Much Land Does a Man Need. Not so much the story but the fact that it was so admired by Joyce. One might expect him to like Chekhov and he certainly did like Ibsen but this sort of Tolstoy isn't much like them. A farmer is offered as much land as he can walk round in a day, goes for it, just gets back before sunset and qualifies for the biggest tract of prime, fertile land he can manage but collapses and dies at the finish. It's a parable. As indeed are the other stories in this collection once you realize and then, you think, that's what War and Peace is and it's what Tolstoy does. In understanding anything 'major' one can begin by simplifying down to something too simplistic and build back from that. Finnegans Wake is a vast scurrilous bit of wordplay, Hamlet is two botched revenge plots, Middlemarch is the acceptance of less than she might of had by a diligent young lady.

These Tolstoy stories don't take much reading or maybe it just seems like that in a break from the Wake. Perhaps all such common-sensical fiction will seem like a pushover once one's sat in rapt ignorance in front of Joyce as he indulges himself ad infinitum.

But, of interest to all those who follow horse racing as well as C19th Russian literature, the painting on the cover of this Penguin Classic is Midday by Ivan Shiskin (1832-1898). Not because Midday, trained by Henry Cecil, won some big races in 2009/10 but because Shishkin is the top UK two-mile chaser at present. So now we know.

The painting is mainly sky but not quite as much sky as this masterpiece by Gluck,