Books: "The King Must Die"

[teenybuffalo]

I've finally had the time lately to look into Mary Renault's work.  It's been literally years--since 2004 Worldcon, when it played local in Boston, I've been meaning to read Renault.  There was a literary panel on slash (not a guy in the room, for some odd reason), and all the speakers were so pleasantly up-front about it that I asked something I'd

Comments

[asakiyume]

The world of Crete and the Court of the Bull is internally consistent, and riveting.

That's the *only* part I remember, and I remember loving it, and loving the notion of learning to be a bull dancer.

[teenybuffalo]

Yes--I can tell that in five years' time, I'll have forgotten a lot of this book, but that will be the part I remember well. It makes me say, "Yes! I would do this, even at the risk of my life! I want to be part of the Cranes' team."

[negothick]

Renault is carrying on the ancient process called 'euhemerism", after Euhemerus (and being lazy I quote from William Harris, Prof. Em. Middlebury College) a Greek philosopher who lived about 330-260 B.C. who is known mainly for his radical interpretations of the Greek myths, which he felt were part of a long historical tradition by which the Gods were originally men, known for some great historical feat or some important social and cultural advancement and later raised to god-hood

[teenybuffalo]

Well, Euhemerus has a lot to answer for. (I broke my euhemerus and have to spend two weeks with my foot in plaster. There is a brief euhemerus before Jocasta re-enters. There were bottles of retsina and euhemerus on the table. Would you like to look at this paramecium and all these fascinating euhemerai under the microscope?) But I like that we have a technical term for it. "Euhemerizing fantasy" is an excellent term and people should just use that when they need to refer to it.

I'm impressed with Snorri Sturluson. I've never actually read his take on the sagas, just modern writers' versions of the stories he passes on. But I'm a big fan of ancient historians writing and speculating about still more ancient times...

[hippediva]

*G* I adore Renault. She always does the most incredible world-building. She operates, like most literary historians, upon the premise that those myths were likely predicated on real events, propagandised and changed through politics and oral transmission over time. It's a likely place to start if one is attempting to make reality out of mythology. (For a REALLY fun take on myths, the gods and human responses thereto, check out Julian Jaynes: http://www.julianjaynes.org/bicameralmind.php. UTTERLY fascinating!)

In many ways, she is the way a lot of us older (sic) slashers came to understand m/m relationships. Read The Persian Boy. You'll get what I mean. *wink* That, along with Wil and Ariel Durant's "Life of Greece" volume of their western civ books were absolutely my wide-eyed into to the concept of guys and sex and all that when I was about 8. LOL!

[teenybuffalo]

Mind you, I'd rather make mythology out of reality, any day. But I guess Mary Renault will write her own work and I should write mine if I want it that way!

I may well look at the Durant book too, thanks for the reference. (The Persian Boy, for def.) My own introduction to the, well, arresting world of Greek guy-love was in "The Cartoon History of the Universe", when I was about the same age. The author played it for squicky laughs, I have to warn you. Cartoons of a middle-aged Spartan warrior groping an adolescent boy and saying, "Don't fight it--it's classical civilization" are the sort of thing you don't forget in a hurry. Then again, the "Older lover helps younger lover choose a wife" sequence was pretty funny (the old guy is saying to the woman, "You're gettin' a hot one, sweetie!").

[sovay]

I read The King Must Die for the first time in sixth or seventh grade and The Last of the Wine early in my first month of high school-I grew up with some of Renault's books in the house-but from the day I discovered it in a used book store in Provincetown in the spring of my senior year, my favorite has always been The Mask of Apollo (1966). Some of its information on fourth-century Athenian theater has since been outdated, but that doesn't change its value as a novel or a romance or a snapshot of an actor's life; and it forms a bridge between her earlier historicals and her later trilogy about Alexander, of which The Persian Boy (1972) is the most famous and practically a form of code. I read the novel because someone I was interested in once handed me a copy. At the time, I missed the allusion.

[teenybuffalo]

Not that there's anything wrong with finding them now, but I could really have used these books' particular brand of escapism at that age. (I made do with Anne Rice novels, sigh, what were you thinking, younger self?)

They have "Mask of Apollo" at the library. I'll get that one next, seeing that it comes with your recommendation.

I read the novel because someone I was interested in once handed me a copy. At the time, I missed the allusion.

Strange, I was just thinking about an allusion I once missed at the time it was made, myself. It wasn't as classy as that, though.