Reading Tolstoy's War and Peace: Murat

Showing posts with label Murat. Show all posts

Friday, November 11, 2011

Vol I, Part Two, Ch. XII: Murat Makes a Cameo

Napoleon's brother-in-law Murat appears... something fun for me, since he also appears in my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. Murat seems so obscure to us now, but he was a great celebrity of his time. A sort of military David Bowie.

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WHY READ WAR & PEACE? WHY THIS BLOG? AND WHO IS C.M. MAYO?

Anyone with a brain in their cranium and a high school education will have heard of Tolstoy and his epic novel War & Peace and yet very few of even the most exquisitely educated have actually read it because it is... beyond... humungous. (Read about how I cut it in half with scissors.) So why read War & Peace? To experience one of the reputed great works of Western culture; to check it off the bucket list; and, as Mallory said of Mt Everest, "because it's there." But more: in my case, as a writer, to learn from its both its successes and failures.

This blog is my exercise in reading as a writer-- a very different endeavor than merely reading to be entertained.

>START READING HERE.

Who am I? Herewith the third person boilerplate:

C.M. Mayo is the author of The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (Unbridled Books), an epic novel based on the true story and named a Library Journal Best Book of 2009. She is also the author of Sky Over El Nido (Univ Georgia Press) which won the Flannery O'Connor Award; Miraclous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico (Milkweed Editions); and Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution (Dancing Chiva) a work of creative nonfiction that won the National Indie Excellence Award for History. For several years she has taught a popular one or two day workshop, "Techniques of Fiction" at the San Miguel Writing Conference, for Dancing Chiva in Mexico City, and at the Writer's Center, where she is a long-time faculty member.

>Download her free ebook, C.M. Mayo on Creative Writing: The Best from the Blog.

>Visit her other blogs, Marfa Mondays, Madam Mayo, Maximilian ~ Carlota, and Giant Golden Buddha.