I Dislike Your Favorite Team

People who don't recognize the intellectual challenge of football aren't welcome in my world. From the overall strategy to the in-game tactics, adjustments and anticipations, football is a chess match. The difference is, a rook doesn't just take a knight -- he has to tackle him.

Still, an NFL player reading a book in 2010 is apparently newsworthy. Especially if the book is the archetypal Thick Lit masterpiece by Tolstoy, War and Peace.*

Titans backup RB Alvin Pearman is reading the book and enjoying it. He is about a third through, though he claims to not be a fast reader.

“You know what? It’s very enjoyable. And that’s the bigger point. It is intimidating, that’s the one thing. But when you’re working your way through it, you can lose yourself in it."

Like Pearman, when I picked up the tome a couple years ago, it was half out of perversity: Yeah, you mugs, I'm reading War and Peace. Gonna make something of it?

Yet I was quickly consumed in the world of Russia in 1804. Napolean, the antichrist, is taking over Europe. Divided against herself, led by incompetents, Russia struggles to fight back.

But it's not just men in war, it's also people in peace. The characters are well-crafted: human, flawed, amusing, inspiring and disappointing. There's love, betrayal and heavy drinking. The book is proof positive that human beings are exactly the same now as they were two hundred years ago. Somehow that's heartening. And I really wanted to sleep with Natasha.

Do yourself a favor if you'd like to immerse yourself in this extremely lucid, engrossing classic: don't buy it from fucking amazon, go down to your local used bookstore and buy the Verestchagin/Eichenberg translation for five bucks. Be like a professional athlete, and read it.



* original title: War: What is it Good For?