Patti Abbott requested that I write a book review of an ignored or forgotten book that I believed needed to be resurrected.  Below is the review, as well as a link to her site. 

War Music

By Christopher Logue

An Account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad

I set before you a translation.  No, not a translation – the author does not read Greek – an account, of Homer’s Iliad.  How tame that sounds.  How shall I convey to you the roaring language, the rousing intensity, the sudden, vivid visuals?  Among extraordinary versions of The Iliad, Christopher Logue’s is my favorite; it is alive, lively, and athrob in my hands. 

I was first introduced to Mr. Logue’s work as I read Guy Davenport’s The Geography of the Imagination.  In the essay “Another Odyssey”, Davenport compared Homer translators, mostly of The Odyssey, but in a quick detour to Mr. Logue’s Iliad, Mr. Davenport sang his praises and included an example of his power.   

Mr. Logue immediately caught my attention in his introduction to the text, as he quoted a translator’s inspired bit of profanity:  “—Chapman had tried to abort the charge that his translation was based on a French crib by calling his judges “envious Windfuckers.”  Logue continued on, discussing the response to the first portion of his published account:  “After Patrocleia was published I began to get critical support not only from those connected with the composition and publication of verse but from those whom we may choose to count among the hopelessly insane:  the hard core of Unprofessional Ancient Greek Readers, Homer’s lay fans.” 

I count myself among the hopelessly insane.  I am a particular fan of Robert Fitzgerald’s translation, and I quite enjoyed Robert Fagles’ more recent version as well.  I quoted from Alexander Pope’s translation in my novel Sweetsmoke, which takes place in 1862.  As a writer I have been decidedly influenced by Mr. Logue — in Sweetsmoke, I named a character after him. 

To give you a feel for Mr. Logue’s language, I must share.  I have limited myself to the moments when Gods unexpectedly appear.  Even now, knowing the work as I do, I still encounter moments that elicit delighted gasps of appreciation.  I catch myself staring off, holding the book aside as his words settle in my brain. 

Early in the narrative, Apollo has brought plague to the Greeks as a recently captured female slave was the daughter of one of Apollo’s priests.  Agamemnon, forced to return this slave to save his men, insists she be replaced with another female slave, this one belonging to Achilles.  Enraged, Achilles leaps 15 yards to push push-push push, push Agamemnon’s chest with his fingertips, then grabs the mace from the king’s hands, and as he is about to strike a death blow, Mr. Logue writes:

            But we stay calm,

For we have seen Athena’s radiant hand

Collar Achilles’ plait,

Then as a child its favourite doll

Draw his head back towards her lips

To say:

“You know my voice?

You know my power?

“Be still.

Sudden swift violence, as God grabs man by the hair and wrenches back his head, stopping time.  Gary Wills, in his introduction to War Music, compares Mr. Logue’s version of this moment to Chapman and Pope: “those great poets, make Athena’s intervention in Book 1 a symbolic checking of Achilles’ passion with the voice of reason.  But Athena grabs him by the hair and jerks him around.  It is as if his father’s ghost tackled Hamlet as he railed against Gertrude.  Only Logue catches the weird interplay of god and human at that point.”

Later on, Greeks and Trojans agree to end the war, its outcome to be determined by a one-on-one battle between Menelaus and Paris.  Menelaus quickly gets the upper hand. and it is at that moment Aphrodite steps in. 

Menelaus shatters his sword on Lord Paris’ mask:

            No problem!

A hundred of us pitch our swords to him…

Yet even as they flew, their blades

Changed into wings, their pommels into heads,

Their hilts to feathered chests, and what were swords

Were turned to doves, a swirl of doves,

And waltzing out of it, in oyster silk,

Running her tongue around her strawberry lips

While repositioning a spaghetti shoulder-strap,

The Queen of Love, Our Lady Aphrodite,

Touching the massive Greek aside with one

Pink fingertip, and with her other hand

Lifting Lord Paris up, big as he was,

In his bronze bodice heavy as he was,

Lacing his fingers with her own, then leading him,

Hidden in wings, away.

What power in that one pink fingertip!  This is no gentle Goddess of Love.  A 2006 article about Mr. Logue by Liz Hoggard in The Observer refers to his modern references as “cheerfully anachronistic.”  For some, those references may take a bit of getting used to, but Gary Wills makes a case that the spaghetti shoulder-strap is true to Homer.    

And now to Logue’s treatment of Apollo’s sudden rage against Patroclus.  You may recall, as the Trojans pressed the Greeks back and began to burn their ships, that Patroclus, friend and lover of Achilles, begged to disguise himself in Achilles’ armor to bring hope to the Greeks and push the Trojans back.  Achilles reluctantly agreed, but warned Patroclus to do only that; he should not to try to take Troy.  But deep in the heart of battle, successful Patroclus heeded not the words of his dear Achilles.  His bloodlust was up and he pressed on and on, at first amusing Apollo, who flicked him back three times, then four. 

Patroclus fought light dreaming:

His head thrown back, his mouth – wide as a shrieking mask –

Sucked at the air to nourish his infuriated mind

And seemed to draw the Trojans onto him,

To lock them round his waist, red water, washed against his chest,

To lay their tired necks against his sword like birds.

–Is it a god?  Divine?  Needing no tenderness?—

Yet instantly they touch, he butts them,

Cuts them back:

–Kill them!

My sweet Patroclus,

–Kill them!

As many as you can,

            For

Coming behind you through the dust you felt

–What was it? –felt Creation part, and then

APOLLO!

Who had been patient with you

Struck.

The power bursts through the page, head thrown back, shrieking mask, sucked at the air to nourish his infuriated mind.  The Trojans cannot resist him but are no match for him, with their tired bird necks aching for the blade.  When Creation parts, that APOLLO! covers two full pages.  You have been waiting for it, sensing it, and when it comes, Mr. Logue does not disappoint, Apollo who had been patient with you.  Struck.  From there, the death of Patroclus concludes brilliantly, and I could (and do) go on and on, wishing to share Mr. Logue with you over a glass of dark red wine, enthusiastically reading and exploring more favorite passages…

And so I urge you to rediscover the genius of Homer through the prism of Mr. Logue, and I envy you your first time.    

*   *   *

David Fuller’s first novel, Sweetsmoke, is about a slave in Civil War Virginia who seeks vengeance against the murderer of a woman who once saved his life and taught him how to read.  It was preceded by eight years of research.  Sweetsmoke has been nominated for an Edgar award for Best First Novel by an American Author. 

http://pattinase.blogspot.com/

I was sent a package of the reviews of SWEETSMOKE yesterday by my wonderful editor, Leslie Wells.  Within the package was a review I had not seen.  It was from Historical Novels Review, and written by Jeff Westerhoff.  

I offer it to you now.  

SWEETSMOKE

By 1862, a slave named Cassius has worked his entire life for the white plantation owner of Sweetsmoke.  Because of his experience as a carpenter and his unusual relationship with Hoke Howard, his master, he is able to obtain small favors unattainable by the other slaves on the plantation.  When his friend, Emoline, a free black woman, is murdered, he feels compelled to find the murderer, despite resistance from the white community, his master, and even other slaves on the plantation.  Because Emoline was black, no one else seems interested in solving the crime.  

The author has uniquely described the degradation and horror of slavery as it existed in the 19th century.  He has captured its indignity, the sharp contrast between the white and black population, and the humility of slavery as an accepted way of life. 

The novel is well written with excellent descriptions of the slave-versus-master conditions that existed at the outbreak of the American Civil War.  Cassius is a strong, principled black man who feels the wrongs and injustices but is impotent to change his status.  His quest for determining his friend’s killer, while he himself is held in bondage, had me enthusiastically turning the pages to find out how or if he would discover the murderer’s identity.  This is a very convincing novel about the trials and tribulations of plantation life.  I highly recommend it to those who enjoy a good mystery and who want to learn more about the treatment of blacks in the South during this tumultuous time in American history.  

Jeff Westerhoff

I have not been blogging about Little League lately because it’s been just too darn painful.  We have a terrifically talented team, but as often happens in baseball, breaks don’t go your way, a call at the plate goes against you, a strike-out that you would insist should have been a walk… well, you know how it is when you’re on a losing streak.  We just couldn’t get out of our own way, including losing a game when the other team tied it up in the bottom of the 6th inning when we had been ahead 5 to 1, all their runs coming on defensive errors on our part.  Defensive errors!  That had been our strength last year when we won the championship.  We went into extra innings and lost the game on a wild pitch.  Man, we were tight.  That translated to every aspect of our game, batting, defense and pitching.  Our mental condition had gotten very shaky. 

We are a dangerous team, in that we have guys who know how to win.  This adversity may well stand us in good stead as the season continues.  Our 1 through 7 hitters are scary good when they’re not doubting themselves. 

All that said, last night we played against another team that has been struggling, and with a misplayed ball in center field, suddenly found ourselves down 2 to 0.  We hit the ball hard, but right at the center fielder playing deep, and came up with only one run in the bottom of the first.  They loaded them up against us in the top of the second, but we squeaked out of that, and then exploded in the bottom of the second with six runs.  They snuck one across in the top of the third, we did nothing in the bottom of the third.  We held them, one two three in the fourth.  Up 7 to 3, we had the meat of our order up, and we went nuts, bats exploding, running bases aggressively, scoring six runs again with nobody out yet, to mercy rule them in four innings.  The guys in the dugout actually wanted the next batter to get out so we could continue playing, that’s how much fun it was for our team.  It was an important win for us, making us 2 and 5 (one loss was a forfeit), but significantly loosening up the team.  We can only hope that we will build on that and stay loose as the season progresses. 

Amazing, by the way, how a man’s mood can be affected by a game being played by his sons… a game he cannot actually control.  But I’m feeling much better today, thank you. 

That is, until the Mystery Writers of America banquet.  Then two weddings follow soon after, so I will be on the East Coast a bunch this spring.  Two visits to New York, one to Miami. 

How is it that Jon Stewart is the only guy, the only guy, standing up for us in this mess?  Did you see him?  He was brilliant in his conversation with Jim Cramer.  Mr. Stewart is a decent man, a courtly man, I would venture to say, and when he has a guest, he wants to treat that guest with respect.  Mr. Cramer came on knowing he was in the wrong and it had to be difficult, oh difficult indeed, for Mr. Stewart to press his feet to the fire, but it was also warranted.  Why didn’t CNBC act as reporters and follow up on… okay, watch the show, you don’t need to hear it from me. 

But why is Jon Stewart the only guy doing something to change how ‘the media’ (I hate that term) deals with the world? 

This is a foolish and pointless post, I suppose, but where is the outrage? 

The Civil War revisited in a Virginia slave’s rage

FICTION

SWEETSMOKE.By David Fuller. Abacus.

309pp. $32.99.

Reviewer: MARK THOMAS

Some events in nations’ histories are too big-too daunting, inexplicable, blood-soaked and intimidating- to be rendered easily into fiction. So far, the most defining, dramatic event in American history, the Civil War, has produced only four memorable novels: The Red Badge of Courage, The Killer Angels, Lincoln and The March.  David Fuller seems far too modest to claim kinship with Stephen Crane, Michael Shaara, Gore Vidal or F. L. Doctorow. His first novel, though, is a worthy and clever attempt to peer at the Civil War from a tangent, through the eyes of a Virginia slave on a tobacco plantation, a man who experiences not only the quotidian horrors of slavery but the liberations occasioned by learning to read, enlisting the aid of the Underground Railway and fetching tip on the outskirts of the Battle of Antietam.

We first meet this slave, Cassius, far into the depths of the war (in July 1862). The reader is duly warned that Cassius has become “a raging, bitter, cold-hearted man” but he makes the most out of those unlikely attributes. Rage sustains Cassius in his  hunt for the killer of the woman who made him literate: bitterness hones his loathing for slave overseers and their black lackeys: a cold heart enables him to abandon, in what passes for tranquillity, a woman he loves.

A French review recently complained that, at a certain point, a novel had “resorted to” and “deteriorated into” melodrama.  What an idea: Dickens, for one, would never have worried about that predicament. Fuller relies on melodrama, as he embroiders around Cassius some artful twists to age-old plots. A serial killer tries to eliminate witnesses: true love is thwarted, then spurned:  a long and painful journey returns our hero home, but ensures he can never call that place home again.

Because Fuller has worked for a quarter of a century as a screenwriter, you might assume that his novel would be organised

around scenes of dialogue, interspersed with intense incidents of action which could play just as well on a movie screen.  That  would be a serious mistake. Fuller is  certainly skilled with dialogue, but his real focus is on the weird interior lives of his characters. He knows them inside out. An old man discovers that “age and gravity crept in relentlessly, tugging at his

neglected edges”. Insulted, but hoping to remain impassive, Cassius “probed his own facial expression from within”. The

way white patrollers ride horses reveals them “wearing their strength and authority and supremacy on their sleeves”.

In addition, Fuller confects a remarkable corpse. The murdered teacher is gradually revealed as much more besides: a hoodoo

woman: a conjuror and fortune-teller: a dealer in potions and women’s things: a brave spy for the Union cause. Although she is never seen or heard alive in this narrative, her spirit seeps into every page and informs every shift in the plot.

Novelists who turned to screenwriting have often had a bad time of it: both Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler present

cautionary tales. Having moved the other way round, from writing screenplays to novels, Fuller is already much more than

an apprentice at his adopted craft. It is meant as a compliment to say also that Sweetsnaoke would make a terrific movie.

Mark Thomas is a Canberra reviewer.

Saturday, 2-21-09, page 13, Panorama

If you go to today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, you will see the Lunar X.  I think we can start an internet conspiracy theory — do you think people will believe there’s pirate treasure buried under the X? 

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

By the way, to Joan Grayson — happy happy birthday. 

My father’s birthday is today.  I believe he turns 40.  Hard to believe he could be younger than his children, but isn’t that the miracle of today’s science.  Happy Birthday, Papa. 

The UK version of Sweetsmoke will drop April 16th, so fly on over there to pick up your copy! 

I was incorrect yesterday.  Hachette Australia just published there, and the reviews, I hear, have been wonderful.  I have only seen one, but this inter-company bulletin from Hachette gives more information.

The reviews for David Fuller’s Sweetsmoke have all been outstanding, with the Sydney Morning Herald saying ‘This is a gripping novel of the American Civil War’ and the Gold Coast Bulletin calling it ‘a stunning debut novel’. Last weekend the Canberra Times added ‘It is meant as a compliment to say also that Sweetsmoke would make a terrific movie’.