1,400 Pages of Tolstoy · Oct 6, 1956 — 📚 Jazz for Reading

1,400 Pages of Tolstoy · Oct 6, 1956 — 📚 Jazz for Reading    • 1,400 Pages of Tolstoy · Oct 6, 1956 — 📚 J...   October 5–11, 1956 · This week, New York was reading "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy, all fourteen hundred pages of it, because Audrey Hepburn had just become Natasha on the big screen. ❄️📚 Manhattan Reading Room 1950s: a historical reading room of 1950s New York, with soft piano jazz to read along. 📖 OCTOBER 5–11, 1956 · NEW YORK WAS READING "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy (1869) Russia, 1805 to 1812. Three young people grow up through Napoleon's wars: Natasha Rostova, bright and impulsive, who wants to love everyone; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, proud and restless, who wants glory; and Pierre Bezukhov, clumsy, kind and suddenly very rich, who wants to know what life is for. Balls and battles, Moscow on fire, and hundreds of characters. On Broadway, the new film runs three and a half hours, and still people walk out and go straight to the bookshop. 🗽 WHERE NEW YORK IS READING IT · OCTOBER 5–11, 1956 An old Russian tearoom on West 57th Street, a few steps from Carnegie Hall: crimson leather banquettes, emerald walls, gold frames, a brass samovar, and Christmas ornaments hanging from the lamps all year round. They say it was opened by dancers from the old Russian Imperial Ballet who came to New York after the revolution. You have a glass of tea, a dish of cherry jam, and the thickest book you have ever carried. An hour ago you were at the movie palace on Broadway at 51st Street. Audrey Hepburn as Natasha. Henry Fonda as Pierre. Mel Ferrer, her real husband, as Prince Andrei. Thousands of soldiers and horses crossing the screen in color. The critics grumble that no film could ever hold this whole book. So you walked up to 57th Street to read the rest of it. Natasha is sixteen at her first great ball, terrified that no one will ask her to dance, and then Prince Andrei does. Pierre never fits in anywhere. He is too big, too honest, too lost. He spends half the book searching for a meaning to his life, and finds it in the strangest place of all. Prince Andrei, wounded on the battlefield of Austerlitz, lies on his back and looks up at the high, quiet sky, and suddenly everything he wanted seems very small. Tolstoy wrote it for six years on his country estate. His wife copied the enormous manuscript out by hand, again and again, late into the night, so it could go to the printers. Outside, the rain shines on 57th Street. The samovar hums. You have only read two hundred pages. There is no hurry at all. 💬 BOOK CLUB QUESTION Which big classic did a movie finally make you read? 📚 ALSO ON NEW YORK'S NIGHTSTANDS, OCTOBER 5–11, 1956 "The Outsider" by Colin Wilson, the young Englishman's book about restless thinkers and artists, the most-argued-about bestseller of the season "Amelie in Love" by Henri Troyat, a gentle French novel about a blacksmith's daughter who marries and opens a little café in Paris At the Morgan Library, "Thoreau and His America": Thoreau's journals on view in full for the very first time 🎹 THE MUSIC Two and a half hours of calm, soft piano jazz for reading, studying and long rainy evenings, with a little Russian winter and a glass of tea in it, written to sit quietly behind the page. 🗽 ABOUT MANHATTAN READING ROOM 1950s A historical reading room and book club of 1950s New York. Every day we open one real week from the past: the books New Yorkers were reading, the places they read them, the stories behind them, and music to read along. Monday is 1950, Sunday is 1959. #jazzforreading #bookclub #1950snewyork #readingmusic #pianojazz #studymusic #booktube #classicbooks #literaryhistory #oldnewyork #warandpeace #tolstoy