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guojing's review
5.0
This book is amazing. It is consistently amusing and often funny, as its purpose seems to be, being a comedy about a Comedy playwright in Ancient Athens. The perspective it offers is that of an ugly, excluded, little man with a beautiful, truly nasty wife, which sets it apart from all the tales of beautiful, muscular men playing around nakedly in the gymnasium, so there's always a touch of irreverence where elsewhere you might expect respectful contemplation.
I had just finished reading another book on Ancient Athens by Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine, which is just about my favorite novel ever. I think I read them in the wrong order, for this book ends with the smashing of the Hermes immediately prior to the Sicilian Expedition, just as that book nearly begins with that event. But where Renault showed the homosexual side of the city, filled with philosophy and nude wrestling and male love (especially of older men for younger), Goatsong offers a glimpse at the life of Athens for its not-so-favored sons.
My great appreciation of this novel snuck up on me gradually, about halfway through. At first it seemed like a weaker, albeit funnier, alternative to Renault's masterpiece, but now I see how they so perfectly complete each other. I say that before having read the sequel, which deals with the same disaster which is the focus of The Last of the Wine and thus may ultimately change my overall perspective to a degree.
Eupolis of Pallene is the narrator, and we follow his life from the time he loses his family (and his hair and a finger) in the plague, inheriting a lot of small lots of land from lots of different now-dead relations until he has quite some wealth, we witness the process of his composition of and finally production of his first play, mixed in with some interactions with the Spartans and Sicilians, his rivalry with Aristophanes, and his friendship with Little Zeus, who becomes his body guard after Eupolis offers to pay for him to get his farm back on track (lest Eupolis should be struck down by some accident and the gift never materialize).
All in all, the reader is treated to a delightful view of a time in history everyone has heard of but which few seem to know nearly well enough. Ancient Greece, and especially Athens, have become cliches in modern society, but with novels like this, they finally come back to life. Highly recommended.
I had just finished reading another book on Ancient Athens by Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine, which is just about my favorite novel ever. I think I read them in the wrong order, for this book ends with the smashing of the Hermes immediately prior to the Sicilian Expedition, just as that book nearly begins with that event. But where Renault showed the homosexual side of the city, filled with philosophy and nude wrestling and male love (especially of older men for younger), Goatsong offers a glimpse at the life of Athens for its not-so-favored sons.
My great appreciation of this novel snuck up on me gradually, about halfway through. At first it seemed like a weaker, albeit funnier, alternative to Renault's masterpiece, but now I see how they so perfectly complete each other. I say that before having read the sequel, which deals with the same disaster which is the focus of The Last of the Wine and thus may ultimately change my overall perspective to a degree.
Eupolis of Pallene is the narrator, and we follow his life from the time he loses his family (and his hair and a finger) in the plague, inheriting a lot of small lots of land from lots of different now-dead relations until he has quite some wealth, we witness the process of his composition of and finally production of his first play, mixed in with some interactions with the Spartans and Sicilians, his rivalry with Aristophanes, and his friendship with Little Zeus, who becomes his body guard after Eupolis offers to pay for him to get his farm back on track (lest Eupolis should be struck down by some accident and the gift never materialize).
All in all, the reader is treated to a delightful view of a time in history everyone has heard of but which few seem to know nearly well enough. Ancient Greece, and especially Athens, have become cliches in modern society, but with novels like this, they finally come back to life. Highly recommended.
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