{"id":1368,"date":"2011-09-26T10:10:34","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T09:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1368"},"modified":"2011-09-27T10:38:37","modified_gmt":"2011-09-27T09:38:37","slug":"the-war-and-peace-o-meter-week-fourteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/the-war-and-peace-o-meter-week-fourteen\/","title":{"rendered":"The War-and-Peace-O-Meter: Week Fourteen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nPrevious weeks: 0<\/a>, 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>, 4<\/a>, 5<\/a>, 6<\/a>, 7<\/a>, 8<\/a>, 9<\/a>, 11<\/a>, 12<\/a>, 13<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

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\nAs one nears the end of an epic piece of literature, I think there’s often a small sadness, that your time in another world, with its cast of wonderful characters, is coming to an end. Certainly, a book can be re-read, but with so many books in the world, it’s hard to justify reading War and Peace<\/em> many times over; and while there is a different sort of pleasure to be had in becoming very familiar with a text, it’s not the same experience.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis sort of feeling is not confined to books, of course; I think The Wire<\/em>, and perhaps The West Wing<\/em>, have the necessary ambition, grandeur and epicality<\/a>*<\/sup> to prompt mildly melancholic thoughts at their completion. And epics do tend to make one feel like rather a small cog in humanity’s colossal machine; but as Tolstoy highlights when recognising the crucial contributions of overlooked generals, it’s the small cogs that keep the world turning…\n<\/p>\n

\n*Epicality<\/em> is clearly a more epic adjectival form than epicness<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Previous weeks: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 As one nears the end of an epic piece of literature, I think there’s often a small sadness, that your time in another world, with its cast of wonderful characters, is coming to an end. Certainly, a book can be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1373,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions\/1373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}