War and Peace and Pandemic, and Roger Angell on Baseball Seasons Past

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The contributor Yiyun Li is a fiction writer who also teaches creative writing at Princeton University. “The campus is empty,” she tells Joshua Rothman. “The city is quiet. It has a different feeling. And it’s a good time to read ‘War and Peace.’ ” When the coronavirus outbreak began, Li reached for Tolstoy’s epic of Russia during the Napoleonic Wars; there is no better book, she feels, for a time of fear and uncertainty. So as many of us were retreating to our homes in March, Yiyun Li launched a project called Tolstoy Together, an online book club in which thousands of people, on every continent except Antarctica, are participating. In the morning, Li posts thoughts about the day’s reading (twelve to fifteen pages), and participants reply, on Twitter and Instagram, with their own comments. “War and Peace,” Li believes, is capacious enough to be endlessly relevant. “The novel started with Annette having a cough. And she said she was sick, she couldn't go out to parties, so she invited people to her house for a party and everybody came. And so that was ironic. I have read the novels so many times. This is the only time I thought, ‘Oh, you know, a cough really means something. These people really should be careful about life.’ ” Plus, with the coronavirus pandemic delaying the start of the M.L.B. season, David Remnick revisits a conversation with baseball’s greatest observer: the Hall of Fame inductee Roger Angell.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.1	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:13.8	Ian Lee's short stories have appeared in The New Yorker for more than 15 years.
0:18.4	Lee is also a professor of creative writing at Princeton University.
0:22.9	Well, are you, are you in Princeton now? Is that right? I am. Yeah. And the campus is
0:28.8	empty ever once gone home? The campus is empty. The city is quiet. It's, it's different.
0:34.7	It has a different feeling. And it's a good time to read War and Peace.
0:39.8	A good time to read War and Peace, Tolstoy's 1,200-page epic about Russia during the Napoleonic Wars.
0:47.3	When the coronavirus outbreak began, that was the book Ian Lee reached for.
0:53.4	The novel started with Annette, you know, having a cough, and she said she was sick.
0:59.4	She couldn't go out to party.
1:01.3	So she invited people to her house for a party, and everybody came.
1:05.6	I mean, I have read it novel so many times.
1:07.9	This is the only time I thought, oh, you know, a cough really means
1:11.7	something. And these people really should be careful about life. Around the time that we're all
1:18.5	retreating into our homes last month, Ian Lee launched a project called Tolstoy Together.
1:24.6	It's kind of an online book club. The New Yorker's Josh Rothman is a Tolstoy fanatic,
1:30.7	and he recently talked with Ian Lee about the new project. What was it about War and Peace that
1:36.4	made you think this is the book that I want to be reading now? One is, it's a long book, and and I thought I do think there are people who always have
1:49.7	always meant to read it but who have not picked it up and so this is a good time. And the other
1:55.7	thing I really like about Tolstoy is he's such a solid writer. And War and Peace has this reliable structure,
2:05.0	you know, peace and war and peace and war. I feel like I can just put my trust into Toastoy's
	...

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