SPQR Review

     Alright. I thought this book was ok. Pretty decent. Not bad. I’d give it a 3.5/5. I had tried to read this a couple of years back but fell off about 150 pages in but this time I was fresh off a Rome high from reading Marcus Aurelius and Seneca so I was feeling energized to learn about the life of these ancient brothers. Really, besides the boring wisdom and humanity of Meditations, I was totally entranced by Marcus’s passing reference to “revolving ceilings” and fish farms and I wanted to see what other crazy technology the Romans had and get some context for the lifestyles of “ancient” peoples who were starting to feel eerily similar to myself. That being said, I’ve never read any other Roman history, nor did I really know anything other than Julius Caesar being stabbed and something about some babies sucking a wolf tit. So I set off with my expectations low but my hopes high.

I have to admit, it wasn’t the easiest read. All of the unfamiliar Roman names and places could be overwhelming and I basically had to read with a pen in hand in order to not float away halfway through a chapter. I think I was dreaming of more “characterization” of the inner and outer lives of Roman people and was periodically underwhelmed by the lack of humanity and color to come out. This probably means that I should go back and read the works of the Romans themselves, like Caesar or Cicero, and not a semi-technical popular history book trying to compile a thousand years of information together. What this book did, and did pretty well, was provide an overview of the development of Rome from it’s origin in 753 BCE, through the first “regal” period, to the early Republic and the periods of military conquest and growth that established Rome as THE Mediterranean power, to the late Republic and the internal power struggles leading up to the rise of Caesar and fall of the Republic, and finally touching on the empire under the rule of formal Emperors, before closing at 212 CE with the Emperor Caracalla giving citizenship to all free men of the empire. There are clearly a lot of details to cover here and, throughout the book, Beard did a respectable job providing an overview of the life of Roman civilization, focusing on the changes in Rome’s politics and social organization both inside and outside of the city itself, while also paying due diligence to both the famous and less famous players driving these changes. Much to her credit, she came off as pretty level headed and seemed to respect different historical interpretations, accepted knowledge limitations when they were there, and wasn’t pushing an obvious agenda. That being said, this wasn’t the most fun read and I think I’d have preferred an overview book to spend less time weighing and balancing interpretations. Being upset by a lack of pleasure in a history book…interesting. At the end of the day, I did get verification of the rotating ceilings so I guess dreams do come true after all.

Meditations on Meditations

     Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. A book written by an emperor, and surprisingly it doesn’t suck ass. Maybe I’m a product of time and place, but I don’t have a very high opinion of emperors. When I think of an emperor, or really any world leader in the 21st century, I don’t tend to associate them with wisdom, humility, balance, and especially not a respectable desire for “the good life”. But our boy Marc was the Roman Emperor during it’s peak and miraculously comes off as a nice, humble dude who is just trying his best. Famous rulers of empires like Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Alexander the Great were unarguably great military commanders but they don’t really come off as virtuous or moral. What was that about absolute power corrupts absolutely? And because I’m sure there are people who would hack my arms off for not giving FDR his due or something like that, I’ll say that even modern, ethically ambiguous but still respected leaders like Churchill or FDR or Obama may be fun and interesting and admirable in many ways but they don’t come off as being spiritually upright. But somehow with Marcus, we get the impression that in addition to being a political leader, he might also be a spiritual leader. Imagine if Obama was also justifiably respected in a way similar to the Dalai Lama. Disclaimer: I am dumb. Marcus is the only national leader I know anything about. 

Anyway, the book deals with a slew of philosophical topics ranging from the nature of the universe, the acceptance of death, and practical advice for living a good life. By it’s nature as a diary that was probably not intended for publication, the book was written with very little structure and tends to alternate between short aphorisms and longer, multi-paragraph sections illustrating a single point. The chapters have loose themes, which seem more reflective of Marcus’s mental state during a particular writing timeframe more than any intentional ordering. It’s often clear that Marcus is speaking to, and often chastising, himself: “Enough of this miserable way of life, enough of grumbling and aping! Why are you troubled? What is new in this? What is it that drives you mad? The cause? Then face it. Or rather the material? Then face that.” (Book 9, Section 37). What immediately impressed me about Meditations was the humanity of it. It’s clearly written by someone genuinely seeking knowledge. Marcus had considerable wisdom and many answers, but he was clearly still struggling with life in a way that I assume is familiar to every human on earth, in one way or another. It’s a very personal piece of writing and it’s incredible that it was passed down to us almost 2,000 years later. Again, this author was, at the time, one of the most powerful people on Earth. To feel genuine humanity coming out of someone like that is actually incredibly inspiring to a quirked up cynical dude like me.

In general, the writing is clear, descriptive, and vaguely funny at times. Structurally, however, it’s a bit of a mess and you often find the same ideas (or sometimes even the same sentence) repeated throughout the book, which made the second half of the book feel almost extraneous to me. Despite this, however, the book of wholly justified by the consistent turnover of wise little nuggets, such as, “Change: nothing inherently bad in the process, nothing inherently good in the result.” (Book 4, Section 42) and “It is ridiculous not to escape from one’s own vices, which is possible, while trying to escape the vices of others, which is not” (Book 7, Section 71) and “Remove the judgement, and you have removed the thought ‘I am hurt’: remove the thought ‘I am hurt’, and the hurt itself is removed.” (Book 4, Section 7)

As a whole, the book deals with a variety of themes including the acceptance of external events, the acceptance of death, cyclicity in human affairs, the power of thought or, “all is as thinking makes it so”, and man’s kinship with man via his “true” nature as a rational and social being, and more. Regarding external events, he’s of the mind that they are largely ignorable and should not have undue influence on your mental state, as feeling negative emotion caused by something out of your control is not rational because there is nothing that can be done about it. “Things of themselves have no inherent power to form our judgements” (Book 6 Section 52). As a corollary, the only area where one does have control is regarding their internal world, where their thoughts, actions, and beliefs actively shape their experience of life. This is also captured by Marcus tantalizingly simple subjectivist quip: All is as thinking makes it so. Regarding the acceptance of death, he does battle with the dark eternal largely by minimizing it and rationalizing around it. He minimizes it by regularly referring to the transience of human lives, compelling the reader to consult the infinite list of famous dead people such as Socrates, Heraclitus, and everyone’s fan favorite Eudoxus, and then to ask “where are they now?” before reminding us that they are now dust, either forgotten or on their way to being forgotten (Book 6 Section 47, Book 8 Section 25). “Mount Athos is a spadeful of earth in the universe. The whole of present time is a pin-prick of eternity. All things are tiny, quickly changed, evanescent.” (Book 6, Section 36). Furthermore, ideas about the impermanence and the cosmic insignificance of humanity tie neatly into the theme of cyclicity with lines like: “Look back over the past–all those many changes of dynasties. And you can foresee the future too: it will be completely alike, incapable of deviating from the rhythm of the present. So for the study of human life forty years are as good as ten thousand: what more will you see?” (Book 7, Section 49). Putting aside his ancient Stoic metaphysics about turning air into fire and the benevolence of the God(s), Marcus’s worldview is coherent, thoughtful, and morally admirable. No complaints.

I think the most interesting theme for me was the one about man’s need for community and connectivity. Probably because this is a point that I largely agree with but struggle to manifest myself. Marcus describes helping others as more than a need–a duty and obligation justified due to the nature of human beings as “rational and social.” Is it possible, however, that the recurring emphasis on one’s duty towards the community and social good have anything to do with the fact that the man was emperor of Rome and not some random cobbler? Probably a bit. Does that mean that it is wrong? No. Am I trying to weasel my way out of this point? Yes. Why? Uhh…not the place. Look! Over there, it’s a line from Book 6, Section 13: “Sexual intercourse is no more than the friction of a membrane and a spurt of mucus ejected.” Haha, yeaaaa. Anyway, a great read. I lowkey fuck with Ancient Rome.

A retrospective on the Dune series

Well, I did it. I finally finished Dune. Big, dry, mind-altering. WORMS. This review will serve as my retrospective for all of the books, but I’ll be using Chapterhouse (the 6th and final book) as the springboard since it’s what’s freshest in memory. As a whole, I'd give the series a 3/5 and add that they got progressively worse, or at least progressively less appealing. Simply put, it's a cool series with a lot of interesting ideas, but it's badly written. Ok, maybe it's not badly written (it is), but it definitely doesn't align with my sensibilities. I'm into stories about people, where the thoughts and feelings of the characters resonate with your own, despite differences in space, time, and reality. George R.R. Martin does this very well in A Song of Ice and Fire. Frank Herbert does not. Instead, he somehow managed to write 6 fat novels about religion, politics, heroes, villains, family dynasties, competing cultural forces, and the rise and fall of civilizations across a span of over 5,000 years and several planets, and not create a single damn character I could connect with. I shit you not that I connected more with the protagonist from Tarka the Otter (literally just a book about an otter) than any character in this series. 

Anyway, beyond that…I will gladly grant that the themes of the book are interesting and the settings are cool and imaginative. A hostile desert planet featuring giant mysterious sand worms, the life-preserving and enhancing spice, and a mysterious native population adapted to the water scarcity of the desert? It’s a sick aesthetic. And then overlay several culturally distinctive feudal lords (and other interesting powerful groups) deliberately and shamelessly competing for political control over an ecologically unique planet’s invaluable resource, spice. Again, sick. And these are the types of settings that Frank uses to explore cultural power struggles, the interplay of religion and politics, and the influence of ecology on culture. At many times, this is all bundled together into some very compelling and thought provoking stuff. But in many, many other moments it feels unnecessarily dense, a bit contrived, vaguely senile, and overly serious. For me, it’s important to not take yourself too seriously. And Dune takes itself very seriously which is almost endearing if you consider it the output of a very intelligent, possibly autistic boy man who just loves science fiction. But it still wears on you after about 3,000 pages. More charitably, I’ll call the writing tone cool, sober, and intellectual. 

Beyond the tone, however, Frank has some serious structural issues. The books are very long and the pacing is atrocious. The vast majority of the chapters are spent inside the head of one (or several, confusingly) characters as they kind of just…stand there or walk around, pointing at various objects in the desert and thinking cryptic academic thoughts like “Here is where the wild things originate, the things we cannot suppress. What daring, to think we can control this. But we must.” (Chapterhouse, page 400). I literally just opened Chapterhouse at random and this was the first passage I saw. Something about a statistically robust argument. Anyway, with pseudo-academic chatter like this filling up a significant majority of the text, the plot easily gets lost. Plus, major plot events regularly occur off page, including the culminating confrontation between Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres at the end of Chapterhouse. What the hell? That’s like if you skipped over Harry’s confrontation with the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. Moreover, major plot lines either go nowhere or somehow end up feeling disappointing. For example, Chapterhouse spends several chapters following Rebecca, a wild Reverend Mother whose plot function ends up being to secretly preserve and pass on the innumerable lifetimes of information stored in the millions of Reverend Mothers who were exterminated on Lampadas...but Rebecca’s moment of glory, when she returns to the central core of Reverend Mothers to transfer this motherload of knowledge back to the Sisterhood, happens in a few paragraphs and is barely acknowledged. Sadly, this is how Frank treats many of his potentially exciting and narratively satisfying plot events and I think that this highlights an important perspective: what Frank valued was, first and foremost, expressing his intellectual thoughts. Not a problem, as long as you’re not concerned with the plot, characters, and overall readability and enjoyability of the book you’re writing.

Anyway, I think that’s all I’ve got. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret reading it. It’s an important series in the history of science fiction and I really enjoyed reading the original trilogy, particularly the first and third books. But the last 3 books felt like an academic fever dream. Definitely recommend the videos summarizing the books from Youtuber Quinn’s Ideas. He nails the cool, serious tone and pares it down to the essentials. Far more concise and far more enjoyable than the books. Sorry Frank.