It has been six years, almost, since I last read The Ides of March, in part because I found it a jolting experience last time, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to step back into that river. Or, rather, I was sure I wanted to, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to yet.
What led me back to the book, oddly enough, was nothing to do with the experience of last time, but an ongoing niggling interest in the representations of famous historical figures in fiction that started, I suppose, with Count Belisarius and then with Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, in which the historical figures are given new names and a more obviously fictional world along with an essay by Guy Gavriel Kay on the issue. And then I went back to The Last of the Wine. And I suppose Leviathan approaches the idea, with a fictional son-and-heir to Archduke Ferdinand, but I didn’t pick the book knowing that, nor did I think about the idea when I was reading it, so it doesn’t so much count.
Anyway, I picked up The Ides of March because it is one of my favorite books, and because it very much portrays the inner mind of famous historical figures. I don’t think Thornton Wilder is claiming that his Caesar is the Caesar, really, but he clearly crosses Mr. Kay’s line.
…YHB was about to write about how historical fiction is not one of the Fave Rave genres, but it turns out to be not so much true. Amongst my favorite books, after all, are this one, two of the Mary Renault books, A Tale of Two Cities, the Laurie R. King novels about Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, Prince of Foxes, probably some other ones I’m not thinking of. It’s true that I don’t pick up new historical novels, or generally pick up historical novels by authors I don’t already like, but I wonder if that’s a mistake on my part. The problem is that I have had some unpleasant experiences when I do pick up straightforward historical novels, or even historical mysteries. Perhaps the issue is that the deviance is so high, and I prefer genres with a higher floor, if a lower ceiling? Or perhaps, again, the problem is mine, that I have never learned to quickly identify a book that I will dislike and cut my losses on the thirtieth page.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.