Books, and other things. Maybe only one book

[ricardienne]

I finally found a copy of All Roads Lead to Murder for a price I was willing to pay (read: v. cheap). Given how awful the title is, I wasn't too optimistic, and yet... Pliny and Tacitus solve murders! And the author is a semi-legit scholar (PhD, a few articles on Pliny in respectable journals on JSTOR), so how bad can it be?

The answer, one chapter in, unfortunately but unsurprisingly, is very. First, the writing is bad: unprofessionally awkward and clunky, full of "as you know, Bob Publius" info-dumping. Secondly, and I am trying not to be judgmental here from a modern liberal perspective, or a pedantic Romans-actually-weren't-like-that perspective, or a Tacitus-fangirl perspective, but perhaps it is clear that there are issues in all of these areas.

I know that Pliny always gets the short end of the Pliny/Tacitus duo because on the one hand, the greatest historian ever of Rome, and keen observer-critic of Power and Dissimulation and Realpolitik; on the other, lots of letters of a nice Roman gentleman about how nice and gentlemanly he is. (Also the Panegyric, which doesn't exactly endear him to anyone). And obviously, that isn't completely fair. BUT, making Pliny out to be the superior intellect and deeper ethical thinker just doesn't work. In fact, it's ludicrous, and annoys me, and, insofar as one might want to base these characters on their literary representations on themselves (not that one should, at all), isn't true to what Pliny depicts of their relationship. And the author's note notes that the model for this relationship was Holmes and Watson. Um. Actually, I don't think that I can argue this rationally, because my argument does come down to: "no, but Tacitus was the intellectually superior one!"

And then there is this weird business where Tacitus has bisexual proclivities, and since Pliny does not approve of either homosexuality or marital infidelity (nb as of yet, T. has not actually propositioned P., but has just made passes at pretty slave boys and women, which it seems is nearly as bad; obviously, I am holding out for the former, because if you are going to make a big deal about this kind of thing, you might as well go all the way), this is the source of some tension between the two friends. At which point, two things came to mind: (1) The author is an ordained Baptist minister, and teaches at a small Christian college, neither of which *should* be meaningful, and yet... (2) seriously, would Pliny have been likely to care about this?

Also, the plot seems to revolve around a slave girl (T. has yet to seduce here, but I'm only a few chapters in) and an abusive master, and so far Pliny has been flipping between a very modern-compassionate "slaves are people too means you shouldn't beat them" and a Roman "this is not my business." I'm afraid it won't end well. But consistency is the least of the problems I'm finding, I suppose.

Comments

[tif123.livejournal.com]

Being a scholar doesn't seem to be any indication than one can write well.

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

I suppose not. But when what you study is literature, and literature of a period that was highly rhetorical and concerned with style...