I have been very excited to read I, Claudius ever since I saw it on the list. It's one of those books I have just always wanted to read. This project may take 5 years to do, but I am having a great time doing it.
Just because you have been wanting to read a book for a long time, it doesn't follow that you will love the book once you read it. There were many things that disappointed me about this book. The first is that it reads more like a history textbook than a novel. I don't know the history of historical fiction, so it could be that this book was a forerunner in the genre and is remarkable for that reason. Related to the first disappointment is the second: for a book filled with dramatic stories, there is very little drama. Things do not unfold in such a way that you are kept in suspense at all. It's all very factual. The anecdotes are amusing and striking (and I was sent to my old textbooks and Wikipedia to see what Graves was making up), but they aren't dramatic. And connected to these first two disappointments is the third: the plot is missing. We follow the Roman Empire through three generations of emperors, and we have something of a main character in Claudius, but the unifying action that brings it all together is missing.
Now all that being said, I enjoyed the book a great deal for what it was. The unifying principle was not a character's desires, goals, or actions; the unifying principle was the moral fall of the Roman Empire. We follow the empire from the first emperor following Caesar to the installation of Claudius as emperor. Even as Augustus rules, Claudius believes that the hope for a rebirth of the republic is simply a fantasy. And what we see is that the absolute power of being emperor corrupts absolutely, even if it does so through generations instead of through one single person.
This focus on the corruption of a government and the corresponding erosion of civil rights makes perfect sense in its historical context. In 1934, when this book was initially published, we are heading into the second World War. Europe is uneasy and Germany's chancellor is Adolf Hitler. Central government powers are being consolidated and strengthened and many heads of states are strong personalities. In many ways the novel seems prescient, as Graves discusses treason trials and informers and a whole people seemingly powerless to stand up to one man. He even discusses the army being consolidated under Tiberius and Sejanus, disconnecting the army from the people and aligning it instead with the ruler. At times I would have told you this novel was written in 1948 when Orwell was publishing 1984.
From my brief research on the subject, Graves seems to have had some views on gender politics . . . with which I would have to disagree. I find it fascinating that Livia becomes the big villain in the first half of the novel. Apparently Tacitus's Annals made some suggestions about Livia's influence over Augustus, but Graves took it all to a whole new level, making her a villain that Shakespeare would love to include in a play. The women who are good in this novel are ridiculously good, and the those who are bad are near evil. The men who do wrong are mean, and Sejanus does give Livia a run for her money, but he is not nearly as accomplished as she is. Castor is a meany, but Livilla is wretched. In some ways, the men in this novel are simple. They've got honor and codes and they fight, but everything is pretty straight forward for them. The women are smarter, and when inclined, devious. I read in an interview that Graves sees women as the moral centers of our world (not a new position); if that is the case, what roles do women and men play in the collapse of this society?
And what a collapse! The moral depravity in this novel is breathtaking. Whoever wants to complain about the youth of today should give this novel a read. The youth look pretty fantastic comparatively.
I am very glad that I read this novel, and I am very excited to rent the 1976 miniseries, which must put all the drama together into something genuinely dramatic, a Sopranos in ancient Rome. John Hurt, Derek Jacobi, and even a young Patrick Stewart as Sejanus . . . seriously? How good does that sound?
Friday, July 23, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
I Need More Light, Less August!
I think that without the excellent initial musings of my husband, I would have walked away throwing this book over my shoulder like salt. This is an incredibly dense and complex book, the language twisted and inscrutable in passages, beautiful and painful in passages, poetic and enviable everywhere, though the story befuddled me thoroughly. At times, I felt like Lena, plodding along because I have to, because I need to find something - which in my case is only the last page. It took me well over a month to make my journey, and here are a few thoughts so that I can walk away respecting myself, as well as the book.
One disclaimer I must make before beginning is that I had not read Light in August before I sat down with it this summer. Since I have always believed that one must re-read Faulkner if one hopes to comprehend him, I must immediately admit that I don't. Those who do seem to be onto the same themes that Jason and I just discussed over lunch: race, religion, and a community that polices itself with rabid determination, punishing everyone whose interests or identity transgresses "sacred" racial and moral boundaries.
Light in August does seem almost entirely preoccupied with the stories of those transgressors: with Lena, who gets pregnant out of wedlock; with Joe Christmas, who was born out of wedlock and reportedly the product of miscegny; with Joanna Burden, who lives nearly in exile based upon her family's history with race and carries on an illicit sexual relationship with Joe Christmas; and with Gail Hightower, who is a whole fucking mystery unto himself, as far as I'm concerned. The savage sexism of Joe Christmas bothered me terribly, and I in my arrogance feel like I have better uses for my time than analyzing him in any detail, although I am interested in the relationship between gender and morality in the novel.
Traditionally, in America, the woman's consolation for her social and political inequity was her unchallenged command of the moral domain. She was to know morality, to embody it, and to imbue it in her family, as well as her community; this was God's intention. In this novel, women do function in this way - but only to a degree. Armstid predicts when he gives Lena a ride in his wagon that "womenfolks are likely to be good [to Lena] without being very kind. Men, now, might. But it's only a bad woman herself that is likely to be very kind to another woman that needs the kindess." His wife, Martha, is in fact very good to Lena without being kind, giving Lena her own egg money in a fit of fury - and emphasizing that it is her own, as if to dare Armstid to stop her. Men do treat Lena fairly well, but in that respect, Lena is alone. There are many "bad men" in the novel, and they make savage and terrible moral guardians, committing acts of appalling violence and cruelty in the name of upholding their own codes.
In a sense, Joe Christmas fits in with those men, insofar as he loathes himself and tries to provoke others to loathe and reject him, too. Of course, Joe also asks a central question, which he poses to Joanna Burden: "Just when do men that have different blood in them stop hating one another?" He himself isn't sure he even has "different blood," but if he doesn't, he says, he has "wasted a lot of time." Doing what? Exposing that hatred? Showing the absurdity of racism by revealing the violence that comes at the mere suggestion, the mere statement of racial difference?
It's almost as if I don't want to ascribe that to Joe Christmas because he is so deeply unlikeable - and because the novel itself is saturated with descriptions of blackness as a tangible, undesirable state. Gah!
To be sure, this novel is critical of the policing roles that Hines and Grimm and McEachern play, but what is the novel really about, in the end? I disagree vehemently with the idea that Lena is somehow a symbol of life that carries on in spite of all. Lena is delusional. She rejects Byron on some unstated basis, which I suspect is that he lost in his fight with Lucas Burch. He is not masculine enough for Lena, so she will go on searching (without actually searching) for a man she knows won't have her. I don't quite get it, which makes this whole blogging process seem frustratingly pointless.
Sigh.
One disclaimer I must make before beginning is that I had not read Light in August before I sat down with it this summer. Since I have always believed that one must re-read Faulkner if one hopes to comprehend him, I must immediately admit that I don't. Those who do seem to be onto the same themes that Jason and I just discussed over lunch: race, religion, and a community that polices itself with rabid determination, punishing everyone whose interests or identity transgresses "sacred" racial and moral boundaries.
Light in August does seem almost entirely preoccupied with the stories of those transgressors: with Lena, who gets pregnant out of wedlock; with Joe Christmas, who was born out of wedlock and reportedly the product of miscegny; with Joanna Burden, who lives nearly in exile based upon her family's history with race and carries on an illicit sexual relationship with Joe Christmas; and with Gail Hightower, who is a whole fucking mystery unto himself, as far as I'm concerned. The savage sexism of Joe Christmas bothered me terribly, and I in my arrogance feel like I have better uses for my time than analyzing him in any detail, although I am interested in the relationship between gender and morality in the novel.
Traditionally, in America, the woman's consolation for her social and political inequity was her unchallenged command of the moral domain. She was to know morality, to embody it, and to imbue it in her family, as well as her community; this was God's intention. In this novel, women do function in this way - but only to a degree. Armstid predicts when he gives Lena a ride in his wagon that "womenfolks are likely to be good [to Lena] without being very kind. Men, now, might. But it's only a bad woman herself that is likely to be very kind to another woman that needs the kindess." His wife, Martha, is in fact very good to Lena without being kind, giving Lena her own egg money in a fit of fury - and emphasizing that it is her own, as if to dare Armstid to stop her. Men do treat Lena fairly well, but in that respect, Lena is alone. There are many "bad men" in the novel, and they make savage and terrible moral guardians, committing acts of appalling violence and cruelty in the name of upholding their own codes.
In a sense, Joe Christmas fits in with those men, insofar as he loathes himself and tries to provoke others to loathe and reject him, too. Of course, Joe also asks a central question, which he poses to Joanna Burden: "Just when do men that have different blood in them stop hating one another?" He himself isn't sure he even has "different blood," but if he doesn't, he says, he has "wasted a lot of time." Doing what? Exposing that hatred? Showing the absurdity of racism by revealing the violence that comes at the mere suggestion, the mere statement of racial difference?
It's almost as if I don't want to ascribe that to Joe Christmas because he is so deeply unlikeable - and because the novel itself is saturated with descriptions of blackness as a tangible, undesirable state. Gah!
To be sure, this novel is critical of the policing roles that Hines and Grimm and McEachern play, but what is the novel really about, in the end? I disagree vehemently with the idea that Lena is somehow a symbol of life that carries on in spite of all. Lena is delusional. She rejects Byron on some unstated basis, which I suspect is that he lost in his fight with Lucas Burch. He is not masculine enough for Lena, so she will go on searching (without actually searching) for a man she knows won't have her. I don't quite get it, which makes this whole blogging process seem frustratingly pointless.
Sigh.
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