(no subject)
* "Monastery unearthed in Taxila valley:" http://tribune.com.pk/story/527525/mystery-unfolds-monastery-unearthed-in-taxila-valley/
* Doubting the Blood Eagle: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2013/03/the-vengeance-of-ivarr-the-boneless/
I'm not sure if this is news as people have been doubting the blood eagle for decades, but it does a nice summary of the reasons the evidence makes it look like a later invention.
* This one has huge implications for dating pottery and remains. "Fish based diets cause archaeological dating problems:" http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2013/fish-based-diets-cause-archaeological-dating-problems
* "Last letter of Captain Scott finally revealed in full-101 years on:" http://phys.org/news/2013-03-letter-captain-scott-revealed-full101.html
* "The Top 10 Papal Conclaves:" http://m.historytoday.com/blog/2013/03/behind-closed-doors-top-10-papal-conclaves
* I have just finished the Song of Achilles. Those of you who remember my infamous Troy rant, may be nervous of clicking. This book has it's problems, but that isn't it. I can't tell you what I thought about this book without getting into spoilers, but honestly, if you haven't read the Iliad, the Aenead, and a variety of the surviving Greek plays, it's not my fault you are 2500 years or so behind on your reading. I'm keeping my orthography, because in my head as I read I pronounce the names in Greek without thinking and looking at what I wrote below, going back and switching the spellings to match the novel will clearly be more hassle than it's worth.
The book felt to me like it was split in half. The first half was difficult for me. This was not my Patroklos, though certainly he could be someone else's Patroklos. The Classical Greeks themselves spent a lot of time arguing these points, so while it was hard for me to get used to this interpretation. I also found the pervasive homophobia rather ahistorical even for Homeric Greece. I rather felt like the lovers had enough to overcome without dragging in both modern pervasive homophobia and the Classical Greek discomfort with same age male lovers. It stuck out especially when it was running concurrent with my third issue, which is that the first half of the book has a very Ancient Greek attitude towards women. They are cyphers with little or no agency and the male characters never think to ask what they think or feel about what's going on. It's accurate to the source material, but to swallow in a modern novel, that reads like a modern novel and not something translated out of Greek. My interest in Greek civilization has never blinded me to all the ways those societies were monstrous. While the thoughts of women, slaves, and the poor in general were never recorded and the opinions of folks not from the big city states didn't survive, I never forget their suffering and humanity and how fundamentally shitty life can be when you have little or no say in what happens to you.
This is a fundamental problem with historical fiction. Do you leave in the prevailing prejudices and injustices of a time and culture? Do you toss a tablecloth over them and pretend they aren't there? Do you present them, but challenge them? As I gritted my teeth through sections in the first half I assumed the book was going with the first approach, but the second half turns it o it's head and comes around to the third approach. This made the second half a lot easier for me. Even knowing how this was bound to end, and the way I knew that was going to hurt because of my genuine emotional involvement with the characters. It was at this point I realized why the first half was like it was. Having the ancient greek prejudices meant that it was also easy to swallow the religion as real within the world of the book. The modern feel of the narration of the love story seemed a bit jarring beside the more ancient feeling elements, but somewhere on mount Pelion, it started to feel more natural, and by the time we reach Scyros, it never occurs to question the reality of Gods and their magic within that world. I am not convinced it had to be inelegant as it was in the early section, but I do think the reality of the religious elements within the framework of the modern narration had to be established to carry Troy and in particular the final chapters.
The Troy section was extremely well done, BTW, weaving material from a wide variety of ancient Greek sources and bits of the Aenead with a modern sensibility and surprisingly strong characterizations. This was skillful, powerful, and forms a commentary on the way the first half of the book and the source material often silence the women characters. My modern mind couldn't reconcile young Patroklos' view of Peleus as a really great guy and the sort of husband any woman would be happy to have, when I know that he raped Thetis. Oh, I can get that in this novel it's in the context of the abusive situation Patroklos has just left with his father and his treatment of his mother, but it was fundamentally dissonant to my modern ears. I look at Patroklos' rather more modern horror at the fate of the Trojan women, and I see it as an indictment of the conventional ancient Greek views of women in the earlier sections. Whether that's enough to make up for the earlier sections, I leave to the individual reader. I do like that it captures not only the more obvious assholery of Agamemnon and Neoptolemus, but the more subtle douchery of Odysseus. I like that it captures the arbitrariness and moods of the Greek gods and the fundamental unfairness of them meddling in human affairs. I do like the love story and the fallibility of the lovers as men. I do genuinely like adult Patroklo in a way that I could not connect with the boy.
In short, I do not agree with all the choices made and I think there is some unevenness that detracts, but it's a powerful piece of writing with a bunch of things running under the surface worth pondering.
* I also finished Daughter of Smoke and Bone. They are making a lot of YA books into movies. I rather wish they'd make this one instead of the more lackluster offering I've been seeing lately. This is so tactile and visual and delightfully ambiguous and complicated on a world level, but elegant on a character level. I need to read the sequel. I need to know if I've guessed right.
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/297399.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
* Doubting the Blood Eagle: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2013/03/the-vengeance-of-ivarr-the-boneless/
I'm not sure if this is news as people have been doubting the blood eagle for decades, but it does a nice summary of the reasons the evidence makes it look like a later invention.
* This one has huge implications for dating pottery and remains. "Fish based diets cause archaeological dating problems:" http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2013/fish-based-diets-cause-archaeological-dating-problems
* "Last letter of Captain Scott finally revealed in full-101 years on:" http://phys.org/news/2013-03-letter-captain-scott-revealed-full101.html
* "The Top 10 Papal Conclaves:" http://m.historytoday.com/blog/2013/03/behind-closed-doors-top-10-papal-conclaves
* I have just finished the Song of Achilles. Those of you who remember my infamous Troy rant, may be nervous of clicking. This book has it's problems, but that isn't it. I can't tell you what I thought about this book without getting into spoilers, but honestly, if you haven't read the Iliad, the Aenead, and a variety of the surviving Greek plays, it's not my fault you are 2500 years or so behind on your reading. I'm keeping my orthography, because in my head as I read I pronounce the names in Greek without thinking and looking at what I wrote below, going back and switching the spellings to match the novel will clearly be more hassle than it's worth.
The book felt to me like it was split in half. The first half was difficult for me. This was not my Patroklos, though certainly he could be someone else's Patroklos. The Classical Greeks themselves spent a lot of time arguing these points, so while it was hard for me to get used to this interpretation. I also found the pervasive homophobia rather ahistorical even for Homeric Greece. I rather felt like the lovers had enough to overcome without dragging in both modern pervasive homophobia and the Classical Greek discomfort with same age male lovers. It stuck out especially when it was running concurrent with my third issue, which is that the first half of the book has a very Ancient Greek attitude towards women. They are cyphers with little or no agency and the male characters never think to ask what they think or feel about what's going on. It's accurate to the source material, but to swallow in a modern novel, that reads like a modern novel and not something translated out of Greek. My interest in Greek civilization has never blinded me to all the ways those societies were monstrous. While the thoughts of women, slaves, and the poor in general were never recorded and the opinions of folks not from the big city states didn't survive, I never forget their suffering and humanity and how fundamentally shitty life can be when you have little or no say in what happens to you.
This is a fundamental problem with historical fiction. Do you leave in the prevailing prejudices and injustices of a time and culture? Do you toss a tablecloth over them and pretend they aren't there? Do you present them, but challenge them? As I gritted my teeth through sections in the first half I assumed the book was going with the first approach, but the second half turns it o it's head and comes around to the third approach. This made the second half a lot easier for me. Even knowing how this was bound to end, and the way I knew that was going to hurt because of my genuine emotional involvement with the characters. It was at this point I realized why the first half was like it was. Having the ancient greek prejudices meant that it was also easy to swallow the religion as real within the world of the book. The modern feel of the narration of the love story seemed a bit jarring beside the more ancient feeling elements, but somewhere on mount Pelion, it started to feel more natural, and by the time we reach Scyros, it never occurs to question the reality of Gods and their magic within that world. I am not convinced it had to be inelegant as it was in the early section, but I do think the reality of the religious elements within the framework of the modern narration had to be established to carry Troy and in particular the final chapters.
The Troy section was extremely well done, BTW, weaving material from a wide variety of ancient Greek sources and bits of the Aenead with a modern sensibility and surprisingly strong characterizations. This was skillful, powerful, and forms a commentary on the way the first half of the book and the source material often silence the women characters. My modern mind couldn't reconcile young Patroklos' view of Peleus as a really great guy and the sort of husband any woman would be happy to have, when I know that he raped Thetis. Oh, I can get that in this novel it's in the context of the abusive situation Patroklos has just left with his father and his treatment of his mother, but it was fundamentally dissonant to my modern ears. I look at Patroklos' rather more modern horror at the fate of the Trojan women, and I see it as an indictment of the conventional ancient Greek views of women in the earlier sections. Whether that's enough to make up for the earlier sections, I leave to the individual reader. I do like that it captures not only the more obvious assholery of Agamemnon and Neoptolemus, but the more subtle douchery of Odysseus. I like that it captures the arbitrariness and moods of the Greek gods and the fundamental unfairness of them meddling in human affairs. I do like the love story and the fallibility of the lovers as men. I do genuinely like adult Patroklo in a way that I could not connect with the boy.
In short, I do not agree with all the choices made and I think there is some unevenness that detracts, but it's a powerful piece of writing with a bunch of things running under the surface worth pondering.
* I also finished Daughter of Smoke and Bone. They are making a lot of YA books into movies. I rather wish they'd make this one instead of the more lackluster offering I've been seeing lately. This is so tactile and visual and delightfully ambiguous and complicated on a world level, but elegant on a character level. I need to read the sequel. I need to know if I've guessed right.
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/297399.html. Please comment there using OpenID.