All the books I read in December and what I thought of them

I read three books in December. Then I coughed for two weeks. Then I read three more books. Immediately after I stopped coughing, I pulled a muscle in my stomach. I have very good timing. I can't imagine how it would have been if I had pulled a muscle in my abdomen while I was coughing for two weeks. 

I was undertaking an intellectual exercise beginning over Thanksgiving break in which I read The Golden Ass by Apuleius concurrently with Auctor and Actor by John J Winkler (who was a monk, which kind of makes sense), which is about The Golden Ass, and my second-favorite book of all time If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (🥰) because The Golden Ass and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler are practically the same book. I will defend this claim. 

The Golden Ass is the only complete surviving ancient Latin prose novel about just a really charming and hopeless guy who turns himself into a donkey by mistake (instead of an owl, which was the goal) (hoot hoot). It's also the only complete surviving ancient Latin prose novel about anything else. Lucius suffers many indignities. I'm not going to spoil the end, because I had the end spoiled for me, and I really think the point of the book is not to know in advance the plot twist that occurs in the last book. I read maybe 20% of it for my Latin class last semester. I read the whole thing in English twice. I think it would be better in Greek, but I think that about everything I read in Latin. 

I withdraw my previous statement. If it were in Greek, it would be a similar experience to reading Argonautica (the authors have both really frivolous and idiosyncratic vocabularies that just make them a total nightmare, I think everyone should just be more like Euripides) (somewhere, an English language learner is levelling this accusation against Vladimir Nabokov). The original version of The Golden Ass is lost, but it was written in Greek by some guy named Lucius, and it was probably shorter. The original version did not contain the interpolated stories. This was Apuleius's addition. You cannot throw a stone in this book without hitting a secondary character telling a story about something wild that happened to them or Lucius relaying a story he heard. I love how the same tropes and stories will repeat over and over. I just go crazy for things happening twice. I have to admit the Latin version is probably better, although I of course haven't read the Greek original, which makes me, on a certain level, no better than those insufferable members of the EPIC the musical fandom who say that Telegony is a bad Odyssey sequel. You don't know if it's a bad sequel. You haven't read it. None of us have read it. It's my enduring sorrow that no one, to my knowledge, has written a Telegony retelling, except Madeline Miller, and only for a small fraction of Circe, which I have already read three times. 

The most obvious similarity between The Golden Ass and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler is the interpolated stories surrounded by the protagonists' repetitive indignities. I have already reviewed If On a Winter's Night a Traveler to death, so longtime readers of my blog will hopefully already know that it is about a man trying to read a book, but for various reasons he doesn't get very far, and then someone tells him he wasn't reading the book he thought he was reading, he was actually reading a different book. But once he tracks down that book, it doesn't seem to have been that book either. The problem repeats with the new book. There are interpolated stories wherein the author Italo Calvino has written the protagonist's fictional books by fictional authors. The second most obvious similarity is that both of them ask philosophical questions about transcendence and, in the last chapter, abandon the question and let the reader ponder for themself. Some people think The Golden Ass is about Platonism and union with the divine and the degeneracy of base desires. But Lucius doesn't have that many base desires, he's just nosy. The Golden Ass is about encountering a world that makes no sense and the pervasive absurdity underlying the world we feel we know. It is sort of a cautionary tale about looking too far into things (particularly supernatural things) because, once you look too far into things, you will realize that you have been set adrift in an absurd world in which nothing makes sense and you are totally out of control. I often feel this way!! This is perhaps why I have never turned into a donkey. I understand the lesson already. It is a real shame my Latin class this semester didn't have a final paper. Clearly I have so much to say. If On a Winter's Night a Traveler asks questions about the transcendent nature of books. No one becomes a donkey because they looked too far into things. But, in the other important senses, these books are remarkably similar. 

My favorite character in The Golden Ass is the magician Pamphile who hosts Lucius in her house and turns herself into an owl, setting what turns out to have been a bad example. 

I also read Auctor Actor, which is a book that explains The Golden Ass in the form of a mystery novel, to the degree that this is possible in its genre (not mystery). According to the other Goodreads reviewer, the author of Auctor Actor "is the kind of critic who wants to 'perform' his reading," which means that he doesn't tell you his thesis until the middle of the book. Winkler is really self-indulgent as an author, I bet he was a lot of fun. His thesis (I am going to save you the trouble of reading his book) (Auctor Actor is probably the most academic book that it is still possible to spoil)  is that the plot twist, which comes with no warning and makes no sense, is meant to make you understand that the experience Lucius has is fundamentally one that you can't understand, and he can't persuade you to see things his way or to make the same decision he does. I think this is a pretty good argument. He also brings up someone else's argument that the plot twist is meant to make you, the reader, feel out of control in an absurd world as Lucius has felt for six books. I actually like this explanation better. The author is a very oblique and esoteric person, so he was not able to convince me why his explanation is better than that one because I did not understand what he was saying. 

The other Goodreads reviewer is sort of a riot; you should read his review as well. I feel a kinship with him because we are the only two people who have reviewed Auctor Actor. There is a third review, but it is someone who got confused and is meaning to review The Golden Ass.

This concludes my thoughts on The Golden Ass, Auctor Actor, and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. I have actually done a version of this intellectual exercise before because I read Madame Bovary, Mario Vargas Llosa's book about Madame Bovary, and Mario Vargas Llosa's retelling of Madame Bovary. I really feel like I GET Madame Bovary. I also feel like I really GET The Golden Ass. It was a really good way to study for my Latin final. I would like to undertake this intellectual exercise with more books soon. 

The other books I read this month were Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami, the Symposium, and the Aristophanes plays The Frogs, Ecclesiazusae, and The Wasps. Hear the Wind Sing is too short. If Haruki Murakami wants to write weird books about nothing, they have to be a lot longer or else you feel scammed. I have already read a lot of the Symposium in Greek. I especially like the Aristophanes Symposium myth about how we used to be stuck together. I read The Clouds by Aristophanes once and I said such nasty things about it because it was so unfunny. I maintain that Aristophanes is unfunny, but he's such a weird guy, so I can appreciate him on that level, and it really amuses me when he takes shots at Euripides. I don't agree with him, it just amuses me. 

Auctor and Actor by John J Winkler ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Golden Ass by Apuleius ⭐⭐⭐⭐

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami ⭐⭐

Symposium by Plato ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Frogs by Aristophanes ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ecclesiazusae by Aristophanes ⭐⭐⭐

The Wasps by Aristophanes ⭐⭐⭐⭐