The Attention Deficit’s Guide to Classic Literature

The CBC recently filed a story on how Leo Tolstoy’s epic masterpiece, War and Peace, will now be available with a reduced page-count (from 1,500 pages to approximately 900 pages) for those of us with a short attention span. Typically, this kind of announcement wouldn’t affect me too much, except to get me wondering where all those great Reader’s Digest Condensed books I read as a child got to, but alas, this announcement had more to it than just an editor’s take on the novel.

War and Peace: The Original Version is not just Tolstoy cut to pieces by Mister ADD; rather, it is Tolstoy’s first draft of the tome, published in all its glory — its unfinished glory. If part of the motivation behind releasing this edition is as they say — that it will be a great way to get people who are busy or have short attention spans reading a classic — then I don’t understand why Harper Collins doesn’t just hire an editor to cut out what they consider unnecessary and market it under a new “Attention Deficit’s Guide to Classic Literature” imprint. Publishing a first draft for general consumption (there was talk of releasing it “as a resource for scholars”) is akin to playing Beethoven’s 9th symphony without the strings, or releasing the prototype of a product instead of the completed, production-ready version. Releasing these things wouldn’t be a horrible act, as musical experimentation can lead to some wonderful discoveries and sometimes prototypes are all you need; the problem comes with calling them the “original version”, which implies “the correct version”, when there is a different, more complete version that the creator intended to be experienced. There is a reason Beethoven didn’t call his opus complete and release it as such to the public when it was only half done, and there is a reason Tolstoy didn’t stop after his first draft.

I have no problems with an early, unfinished version of something being released — in fact, I would encourage it, as it can be a great inspiration to others who are creating as well¹ — but when the unfinished edition is marketed to the general population as a time-saver or a boon to those with short attention spans, whoever is releasing the product is doing a disservice to their entire field. I’m not up in arms because Harper Collins is assuming (and cashing in on the fact) that readers will not read the (actual) original text and experience the completed manuscript as intended for release by the author, but because they are actually encouraging this.

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¹ To see how a first draft can act as a document of the creative process and even inspire others by demonstration, look at this example of a photographic “first draft” from The Urban Refugee. His “first draft” adds to and enhances the final picture because of the story and process involved in reaching his finished product; without seeing that final product, the story, or “draft”, is moot. [back]

Image courtesy of MarriedToTheSea.