Why Tolstoy?

The short answer is, his profound influence on others and on me.

What is that influence?

On others:

• Dostoevsky thought him the greatest of all living novelists.
• Wittgenstein once wrote a letter to a friend, asking, "Are you acquainted with Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief? At its time, this book virtually kept me alive...If you are not acquainted with it, then you cannot imagine what an effect it can have on a person."
• Gandhi corresponded with Tolstoy for one year, and like Wittgenstein, wrote a friend about the immense influence Tolstoy had on him.
• Flaubert exclaimed, "What an artist and what a psychologist!"
• Chekhov wrote, "When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone."
• Virginia Woolf declared him the greatest of all novelists.

On me:

• Each time I have engaged in Tolstoy's texts my worldview has been enhanced, expanded, changed.
• This is because Tolstoy writes of life and of himself, which is also to say he writes of contradictions and opposites, i.e., war and peace, familial happiness and familial sorrows, life and death, good faith versus bad faith, sincerity and insincerity, etc.