Caesar

For a project I have on the go I've been dipping back into Caesar's commentaries. Once again, I am struck by the immediacy of the observations, the depth of information, and the quality of the insights. Such a pivotal figure in history, and we are lucky enough to have accounts of his campaigns, and in his own words. It's just astonishing.

Picture from here.

As works of history they are invaluable; as works of literature they are brilliantly composed; as persuasive, case-building and legacy-securing texts they do their job to this day. They are an astounding achievement.

The man was of course a butcher in a time of butchery, but he was not a spiteful one. He preferred to win loyalty and exercise clemency when he could. By comparison to the murderously vengeful Sulla who came before him and the callous and devious Octavion who came after, he was an honourable man.   

But that's not really my point: my point is that when you read Caesar you begin to understand on both an intellectual and a visceral level the kinds of things that an ancient commander had to deal with. You see what he had to take into account before a battle, during a battle, and after the fight was over. You see what went into a successful campaign. You see what led to failure. 

Anyway, whenever I get back into reading him I am always made forcibly conscious of how fortunate we are that the commentaries survived, and how much poorer our understanding of the man and the era would be if they had not.

Author of the Month: Galadrielle Allman

The recent death of Gregg Allman prompted me to go back and read Galadrielle Allman's brilliant and moving Please be with Me, about her father, Gregg's brother, Duane Allman.

(Image snaffled from same Amazon link as above)

It's a beautiful book, and one of the most wonderful, saddest things I've read. I don't know if you've ever fallen into a great book or a great movie so much that you start to live it, and find that at some point in that world you join something awful happens, and that that awful thing affects you deeply, and when you come back to that book or movie at some later point and go through the experience again you dread that moment, and sort of hope that this time, maybe, that thing won't happen, that the cup will pass, but it doesn't, and it damages you all over again, and yet in some way the whole experience is life-affirming.

Well, that's what this book is like.

I'll leave the second last word to Gregg Allman:

The last word I'll leave to Duane himself. He's on guitar here accompanying Wilson Pickett.

Anyway, next post will - I promise - be wargame related!

Author of the Month: Patrick O'Brian

Picture borrowed from The World of Patrick O'Brian website.

As a kid I used to enjoy reading tales of adventure and derring-do on the high seas. The defeat of the Spanish Armada, tall tales about various pirates, books on men-of-war - HMS Victory in particular - and accounts of Trafalgar all passed before the eyes at one point or another.

But sometime during the teenage years my tastes changed and gradually I forgot most of what I had read and even why I had read it in the first place.

An interest in stories naval was however recently rekindled when, after my wife gave me a well-known e-reader as a Christmas present, I discovered the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian amongst a massive stash of mobi-format books sent by a friend.

I hadn't read any of the books before, but having heard them mentioned favourably I started reading "Master and Commander".

It was an immediately engaging book. Witty and at times genuinely funny, O'Brian employed an array of voices and beautifully drawn actors to portray the character of a ship and the men who sailed and fought her. I was hooked from the beginning.

Over the next few months I read through the books one after another, rejoicing in Aubrey and Maturin's triumphs, laughing at their quirks and feeling their tragedies. I came to know them both: their loves and their families; their interests, hobby-horses, idiosyncrasies and struggles; their ships, shipmates, and enemies; and, as far as you can with fictional persons, what was in their hearts.

Last week I finished the last of the series, "Blue at the Mizzen", and have been pining a little, in the way you can when something that you don't want to end eventually must.

If the books are taken as single items they are not going to come across as masterpieces. But when read as part of a whole they have a cumulative effect that is wonderful. I can't remember having laughed as much at any books since I was a kid reading Billy Bunter, nor having been as deeply moved by scenes since I first read Lord of the Rings way back when I was ten.

Although I'm writing this as an author of the month post, in Patrick O'Brian's case it should really be author of the year.

Author of the month (March)

Author of the month for March is Thomas Hardy. As part of my bookshop browsing in NZ I was fortunate to turn up some excellent secondhand books that I'd never think to search for through Amazon. The Mayor of Casterbridge was one of those. I'd not read any Hardy since university days, when Tess of the D'Urbervilles made an appearance on my side table (or what passed for a side table in student flats), so I was curious to see what my reaction would be.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the book. After many years of reading Classical history in my spare time, interspersed with the odd historical or modern novel, it is wonderful to read something that has been structured so surely. I love seeing well-implemented literary devices at work: irony, foreshadowing, contrast, well-worked metaphor, litote and dialect are just some of the ones to be found in Hardy. I'd forgotten how rewarding 19th Century novels are, and I'm actually more at ease with this traditional style of novel than with the more modern forms.

To close, thank you Mr. Hardy, and thank you to the secondhand booksellers of Christchurch!

Author of the month

My author of the month is Shelby Foote. I recently finished his three volume treatment of the American Civil War and found it very impressive. It's not often these days that I will finish a book and feel a sense of loss. Foote comes across as a decent and humane man who writes with wisdom and learning. I believe he is considered to have a bias towards the South, but it seemed to me that he was fairly catholic in his sympathies. The trilogy is a lot of reading, but it was the best thing I've read in quite a while. Grant's memoirs are next on the Civil War reading list (after Bloody Crucible of Courage) though I still have to get around to actually ordering them.