Another new year. Hopefully one that will involve more posting than last year, though I had better not promise anything. Even this update I am scrambling to throw together at 1:30 in the morning:
"A" List: William Congreve--Love For Love....................................82/88
"B" List: Between books. Currently working on report.
"C" List: Tom Holland--Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic...365/378
Congreve is the most modern in style (or maybe just the least silly) of the comic dramatists of the Restoration period, relying more on psychological sophistication and relatively understated wit than the bombast that was more typical in this era, though I am fond of many of these goofier works as well. And in truth, even Congreve's plot in this is rather far-fetched and madcap, albeit cleverly constructed. Also I have grown to have a certain fondness for this time period, especially the later part of it which this comes from (1695). This play especially seems to me to be good-humored, none of the characters are evil, though a few aspire at least to be mildly naughty, and most of them possess some humor. So I am enjoying it.
Tom Holland is a contemporary English writer, two years older than I am, who seems to have gotten a pretty good, and by the standards of our time outstanding classical and literary education at fine schools, going on after that to a highly successful and prolific career as an author of both fiction and popular non-fiction reminiscent to me of A.N. Wilson, among other British writers who do similar kinds of things, a niche which doesn't seem to exist to the same extent in this country. He has also worked some in television, mostly on documentaries. The book isn't bad, though it is a popular history, so anybody who has read and retained some of Plutarch and Cicero and other classical authors, and even Shakespeare, will not come across a lot that he won't have encountered before, though I welcomed the refresher on the period of Sulla and Lucullus and Marius and Mithridates, etc, a generation or so prior to Caesar. Holland does tend to write in that supremely confident, cheeky, Economist magazine style that is the mark of the modern well-educated Englishman, which I don't like all that much, because I don't trust its authority. Being cleverer and more successful than someone like me is great, and this glib style at least conveys that, but it is not the same thing as having important insight or understanding with regard to the Romans or even one's self. He does emphasize how many people were actually slaughtered in the period's wars of conquest, and how cheap human life was held, especially if you weren't a person of the very highest rank, but as with so many modern books, this is all informed by our conception of these things, which just isn't helpful, because obviously these people didn't have our conception of these things at all, and we cannot begin to try to understand them through that lens. But that's just my impression, obviously the guy is very brilliant. I followed him on Twitter, where he has already dropped more than 109,000 tweets (I'm around 210, I think). He seems to be pretty liberal, anti-Brexit, pro-immigrants, quick to jump on stupid things reactionary types say or do. But why wouldn't he be, the modern world works well for him, his children are going to be great, probably, and you know what, probably so are most of mine, and I hope they will be confident and open liberals, and thrive in the global community. I really do. I think that is where happiness lies for people like us, if we can get there, and I haven't been able to get there. But anyway, I got to go to bed. I'll leave you with Tom Holland giving a short interview about the origins of Islam:
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