The Important Thing is that I Still Have My Eyesight

Both of these books were read on my computer via Google Books. I'm not exactly sure what I think about Google Books. On the one hand, it's so slick to be able to access books like that, and if they are pre-Disney you can get them for free! So, really, Google Books is pretty incredible and an easy-to-take for granted luxury. On the other hand, I find it a really hard way to read. There are some serious trade-offs here, and I definitely still am in love with libraries over the internet. Speaking of, the library and I need to have a date really soon here. I am going through withdrawal.

Apparently, The Golden Ass is the only Latin novel to survive in complete form; thanks, Wikipedia, for that tid-bit! I must say, if The Golden Ass is at all an exemplar of this particular literary tradition, I don't think we're missing much that this is the only entire Latin novel that we've got. I think I've mentioned before that I find the pre-1700s to be some of the hardest of the books to read, and this was definitely no exception.

Novels have just improved so much! I am not a classics person, I don't think. I mean, there is something to be said for them, and I did enjoy The Odyssey and The Iliad has some beautiful parts, but a little goes a long, long, long way. In this case, I was pretty over the story before he even became an ass. It was all so incredibly random and meandering, and there was absolutely no character development to speak of. Definitely a slog for me.

Maybe it was more the fact that I was coming off of The Golden Ass, but I found A Lear of the Steppes to be quite engaging and an easy read. The premise is that a group of friends are discussing examples of Shakespearean characters in their everyday lives, finding many Othellos and Falstaffs, but no Lears. Then the narrator recounts the Russian Lear that he knew. The story has the same essential plot and characters of King Lear, so if you're familiar with the play this will be easy from a plot perspective.

There is one HUGE exception, though, in that there isn't exactly a Cordelia. One of the daughters has some Cordelia and some Regan, I guess. In meshing those characters, Turgenev does something rather interesting. There is no one to route for now, exactly. I mean, you can feel some sympathy for the Lear character, but he really does bring it on himself in some ways (I know there are arguments that he has a mental illness, and I think he really must or else it's rather mind boggling), but you can't route for him, and his tragedy seems less avoidable than Cordelia's. Paradoxically, though, by not having that clear character to cling to, everyone else is more humanized somehow.

The other main change is that the focus is so much tighter, since Turgenev's tale is not a sweeping epic but rather a story of an isolated family drama. Again, this has the almost ironic result of showing the core immortality or timelessness of the themes Shakespeare raised.

Of course, the main interesting question here is, can you think of any Shakespeare characters in your own life? It's an interesting game to play.