Fab, 08 Mar 2007
In response to the review from 'a reader' below- have you never heard of a satire?? I read this in the first year of an english degree and have to say that I found it really thought provoking as it has a very dry witty theme throughout and it is meant to be taken lightly after all!

a modest mistake?, 26 Jan 2007
The book A Modest Proposal, written in the first instance by Swift in pamphlet form, is a wonderful piece of social commentary. The reviewer "a reader" appears to have completely missed the point, however, in not recognising the desired effect of this pamplet on the citizens of London. Plagued by crime and poverty, London of Swift's time was a place run as an autocracy, with many politicians and other people with high and influential social standing of a mentality far removed from reality. Swift's intended readership was these people, of upper middle and higher status, and in offering them a "solution" to the problems involved with mass poverty and crime, was actually illuminating their own misconceptions and haughtiness concerning the issue. His "modest proposal" was designed to shock and cause a reconsideration of opinion, rather than to amuse in the same way a horror film does today. Indeed, it is in this fashion that Swift is one of the first employers of "shock tactics" in politics.

The book was an insight., 23 Mar 2001
This book opened my eyes to ideas that hadn't even occured to me before. Even the thought of some of the suggestions that were mentioned made me cringe with a gripping fear that someone could think of things like that. I thouroughly enjoyed the book as it takes a great deal of guts to wrote what he did and I only hope that his proposal is not prophetic! It amazes me that someone could create such ideas, but the way that he proposes them is clever and well thought out.

Fab, 08 Mar 2007
In response to the review from 'a reader' below- have you never heard of a satire?? I read this in the first year of an english degree and have to say that I found it really thought provoking as it has a very dry witty theme throughout and it is meant to be taken lightly after all!

a modest mistake?, 26 Jan 2007
The book A Modest Proposal, written in the first instance by Swift in pamphlet form, is a wonderful piece of social commentary. The reviewer "a reader" appears to have completely missed the point, however, in not recognising the desired effect of this pamplet on the citizens of London. Plagued by crime and poverty, London of Swift's time was a place run as an autocracy, with many politicians and other people with high and influential social standing of a mentality far removed from reality. Swift's intended readership was these people, of upper middle and higher status, and in offering them a "solution" to the problems involved with mass poverty and crime, was actually illuminating their own misconceptions and haughtiness concerning the issue. His "modest proposal" was designed to shock and cause a reconsideration of opinion, rather than to amuse in the same way a horror film does today. Indeed, it is in this fashion that Swift is one of the first employers of "shock tactics" in politics.

The book was an insight., 23 Mar 2001
This book opened my eyes to ideas that hadn't even occured to me before. Even the thought of some of the suggestions that were mentioned made me cringe with a gripping fear that someone could think of things like that. I thouroughly enjoyed the book as it takes a great deal of guts to wrote what he did and I only hope that his proposal is not prophetic! It amazes me that someone could create such ideas, but the way that he proposes them is clever and well thought out.

Tall stories from the Court of Nero, 07 Aug 2001
If like me, you have never quite recovered from the tedium of school Classics lessons a dose of Petronius will swiftly restore your jaded appetite for the great writers of Greece and Rome. To begin with, I prescribe Paul Dinnage's lively translation of "The Satyricon" (circa 60 AD) which provides a vibrant mosaic of the age of Nero.

Wherever a canon of literature is prized, a sort of literary reflex results in parodial imitations. In "The Satyricon", Petronius parodies "The Odyssey", weighing the journey of Homer's Odysseus against the picaresque adventures of Encolpius, the bisexual yet impotent narrator, while the wrath of Poseidon is set against that of Priapus. Petronius alternates verse and prose in an explicit exposé of literary form by interpolating short tales of sex, superstition, and lost legacies. Indeed, this internal story telling is developed to such a degree that the poet not only parodies "The Odyssey" but also satirizes the external narrative of Encolpius so that the parallel with Homer's Odysseus is doubly parodial.

One of the principle narratives, 'Dinner with Trimalchio', introduces the reader to the archetypal self-made man whose intellectual pretentiousness and general vulgarity is a model for many great comic characters of world literature and TV situation comedy. This section of "The Satyricon" establishes the poem as a text intriguing in its 'modernity'. Trimalchio, boasting of his improbable encounter with the Sibyl of Cumae, supplies T. S. Eliot with his epigraph to "The Waste Land" at the same time as enticing the reader into "The Odyssey" of Homer, Virgil's "Aeneid", and the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid. Petronius's character brags of meeting the Sibyl for only a few lines but this is enough to forge an intertextual association, indeed a metatextual commentary on the earlier Greek and Latin texts.

The Sibyl of Cumae, famed for her beauty and prophetic power, attracted the sexual advances of Phoebus, god of the sun. Aeneas, before beginning his descent into Hades, hears how the eloquent deity sought to lure her with grandiose promises of eternal youth. The seer continued to spurn Phoebus's lust until he vowed to grant her anything she asked without condition. Gesturing towards a mound of earth, the Sibyl demanded a year of life for every grain of sand it contained. However, overwhelmed by her desire for longevity, she failed to use her great gift of foresight. This, the most renowned of all classical sibyls, had forgotten the future and her need for youthfulness to accompany age. Aeneas and (supposedly) Trimalchio see the Sibyl caged in a perpetual present, powerless to disclose meaning, longing for death, mumbling in vain as beauty, memory and prophetic powers disintegrate like the old texts Petronius parodies throughout "The Satyricon".

Small wonder Nero dubbed Petronius 'Arbiter of Elegance'! Read this translation and you'll be hooked on Classics and licking your lips for more!

Very short but interesting none the less, 21 Jan 2000
Satyricon is a very short piece, 62 pages in total. Some of the translation is a bit odd and the translators have obviously used some poetic license to give it a contemporary feel. It is none the less quite an interesting piece on the excesses of a wealthy character called Trimalchio, who lived during the reign of Nero in Imperial Rome. It would certainly give you a good contrast to someone like Pliny the Younger.

Fab, 08 Mar 2007
In response to the review from 'a reader' below- have you never heard of a satire?? I read this in the first year of an english degree and have to say that I found it really thought provoking as it has a very dry witty theme throughout and it is meant to be taken lightly after all!

a modest mistake?, 26 Jan 2007
The book A Modest Proposal, written in the first instance by Swift in pamphlet form, is a wonderful piece of social commentary. The reviewer "a reader" appears to have completely missed the point, however, in not recognising the desired effect of this pamplet on the citizens of London. Plagued by crime and poverty, London of Swift's time was a place run as an autocracy, with many politicians and other people with high and influential social standing of a mentality far removed from reality. Swift's intended readership was these people, of upper middle and higher status, and in offering them a "solution" to the problems involved with mass poverty and crime, was actually illuminating their own misconceptions and haughtiness concerning the issue. His "modest proposal" was designed to shock and cause a reconsideration of opinion, rather than to amuse in the same way a horror film does today. Indeed, it is in this fashion that Swift is one of the first employers of "shock tactics" in politics.

The book was an insight., 23 Mar 2001
This book opened my eyes to ideas that hadn't even occured to me before. Even the thought of some of the suggestions that were mentioned made me cringe with a gripping fear that someone could think of things like that. I thouroughly enjoyed the book as it takes a great deal of guts to wrote what he did and I only hope that his proposal is not prophetic! It amazes me that someone could create such ideas, but the way that he proposes them is clever and well thought out.

Tall stories from the Court of Nero, 07 Aug 2001
If like me, you have never quite recovered from the tedium of school Classics lessons a dose of Petronius will swiftly restore your jaded appetite for the great writers of Greece and Rome. To begin with, I prescribe Paul Dinnage's lively translation of "The Satyricon" (circa 60 AD) which provides a vibrant mosaic of the age of Nero.

Wherever a canon of literature is prized, a sort of literary reflex results in parodial imitations. In "The Satyricon", Petronius parodies "The Odyssey", weighing the journey of Homer's Odysseus against the picaresque adventures of Encolpius, the bisexual yet impotent narrator, while the wrath of Poseidon is set against that of Priapus. Petronius alternates verse and prose in an explicit exposé of literary form by interpolating short tales of sex, superstition, and lost legacies. Indeed, this internal story telling is developed to such a degree that the poet not only parodies "The Odyssey" but also satirizes the external narrative of Encolpius so that the parallel with Homer's Odysseus is doubly parodial.

One of the principle narratives, 'Dinner with Trimalchio', introduces the reader to the archetypal self-made man whose intellectual pretentiousness and general vulgarity is a model for many great comic characters of world literature and TV situation comedy. This section of "The Satyricon" establishes the poem as a text intriguing in its 'modernity'. Trimalchio, boasting of his improbable encounter with the Sibyl of Cumae, supplies T. S. Eliot with his epigraph to "The Waste Land" at the same time as enticing the reader into "The Odyssey" of Homer, Virgil's "Aeneid", and the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid. Petronius's character brags of meeting the Sibyl for only a few lines but this is enough to forge an intertextual association, indeed a metatextual commentary on the earlier Greek and Latin texts.

The Sibyl of Cumae, famed for her beauty and prophetic power, attracted the sexual advances of Phoebus, god of the sun. Aeneas, before beginning his descent into Hades, hears how the eloquent deity sought to lure her with grandiose promises of eternal youth. The seer continued to spurn Phoebus's lust until he vowed to grant her anything she asked without condition. Gesturing towards a mound of earth, the Sibyl demanded a year of life for every grain of sand it contained. However, overwhelmed by her desire for longevity, she failed to use her great gift of foresight. This, the most renowned of all classical sibyls, had forgotten the future and her need for youthfulness to accompany age. Aeneas and (supposedly) Trimalchio see the Sibyl caged in a perpetual present, powerless to disclose meaning, longing for death, mumbling in vain as beauty, memory and prophetic powers disintegrate like the old texts Petronius parodies throughout "The Satyricon".

Small wonder Nero dubbed Petronius 'Arbiter of Elegance'! Read this translation and you'll be hooked on Classics and licking your lips for more!

Very short but interesting none the less, 21 Jan 2000
Satyricon is a very short piece, 62 pages in total. Some of the translation is a bit odd and the translators have obviously used some poetic license to give it a contemporary feel. It is none the less quite an interesting piece on the excesses of a wealthy character called Trimalchio, who lived during the reign of Nero in Imperial Rome. It would certainly give you a good contrast to someone like Pliny the Younger.

Well, I very much enjoyed it myself, 19 May 2003
I have to disagree with Tony, I'm afraid. I thought Erewhon was very interesting and very amusing at times too. This was my first brush with Samuel Butler, so I did not really know what to expect, but despite the somewhat slow beginning (going into quite a bit of detail about how he reaches Erewhon), when he finally reached the lost civilisation, things really began to pick up.

The situation in which the narrator finds himself is at first curious, but quickly becomes outright bizarre. The values of the Erewhonians seem alien to us (sickness is punished by imprisonment, crime is merely frowned upon, beauty and manners are equated with morality) so that we are presented with a people who are both detestable and fascinating. At the same time, however, the Victorians who first read Butler's book would have come to realise the parallels between Erewhonian culture that of Victorian Britain, and it is the satire of the novel that is really interesting. The absurd institutions mentioned - the Musical Banks, the Colleges of Unreason, the Museum of the Machines - and the hypocritical nature of the Erewhonian religion, all would have reminded readers of their own world. For instance, at the Colleges of Unreason, the hypothetical language is taught, and the reader wonders why people would learn a language that has no use outside of the colleges. Then they realise that the same could be said for languages like Latin and ancient Greek. These are languages that are irrelevant to today, but are still studied in higher seats of learning.

In Erewhon, Butler created a satire of his own society that is both enlightening and entertaining. The characters are hardly very rounded and the story is not particularly filled out, but that hardly seems to matter. What Butler has to say is interesting, even now, and the way he says it is a delight to read. As E. M. Forster wrote concerning the author, "He wanted to write a serious book not too seriously". There were even times when his narrative had me giggling quitely to myself.

I would very much recommend this book.

GREAT IDEAS MADE TEDIOUS, 18 Mar 2000
This is a very stodgy and prolix 19th-century book, which none the less contains some excellent ideas of the social sci-fi variety. Looked at another way, it manages to bore you to death despite its shining originality. It was obviously written in a hurry (withholding the author's name) and was partly hacked together from Butler's essays; this is painfully evident in the later section, when you long for the interesting-but-sterile social analysis to end and the plot to move on. If only Butler had taken the time to weave his wonderful concepts more expertly into the fabric of the story, this could have been one of the classics of social science fiction. But it's still better than The Difference Engine.

Fab, 08 Mar 2007
In response to the review from 'a reader' below- have you never heard of a satire?? I read this in the first year of an english degree and have to say that I found it really thought provoking as it has a very dry witty theme throughout and it is meant to be taken lightly after all!

a modest mistake?, 26 Jan 2007
The book A Modest Proposal, written in the first instance by Swift in pamphlet form, is a wonderful piece of social commentary. The reviewer "a reader" appears to have completely missed the point, however, in not recognising the desired effect of this pamplet on the citizens of London. Plagued by crime and poverty, London of Swift's time was a place run as an autocracy, with many politicians and other people with high and influential social standing of a mentality far removed from reality. Swift's intended readership was these people, of upper middle and higher status, and in offering them a "solution" to the problems involved with mass poverty and crime, was actually illuminating their own misconceptions and haughtiness concerning the issue. His "modest proposal" was designed to shock and cause a reconsideration of opinion, rather than to amuse in the same way a horror film does today. Indeed, it is in this fashion that Swift is one of the first employers of "shock tactics" in politics.

The book was an insight., 23 Mar 2001
This book opened my eyes to ideas that hadn't even occured to me before. Even the thought of some of the suggestions that were mentioned made me cringe with a gripping fear that someone could think of things like that. I thouroughly enjoyed the book as it takes a great deal of guts to wrote what he did and I only hope that his proposal is not prophetic! It amazes me that someone could create such ideas, but the way that he proposes them is clever and well thought out.

Tall stories from the Court of Nero, 07 Aug 2001
If like me, you have never quite recovered from the tedium of school Classics lessons a dose of Petronius will swiftly restore your jaded appetite for the great writers of Greece and Rome. To begin with, I prescribe Paul Dinnage's lively translation of "The Satyricon" (circa 60 AD) which provides a vibrant mosaic of the age of Nero.

Wherever a canon of literature is prized, a sort of literary reflex results in parodial imitations. In "The Satyricon", Petronius parodies "The Odyssey", weighing the journey of Homer's Odysseus against the picaresque adventures of Encolpius, the bisexual yet impotent narrator, while the wrath of Poseidon is set against that of Priapus. Petronius alternates verse and prose in an explicit exposé of literary form by interpolating short tales of sex, superstition, and lost legacies. Indeed, this internal story telling is developed to such a degree that the poet not only parodies "The Odyssey" but also satirizes the external narrative of Encolpius so that the parallel with Homer's Odysseus is doubly parodial.

One of the principle narratives, 'Dinner with Trimalchio', introduces the reader to the archetypal self-made man whose intellectual pretentiousness and general vulgarity is a model for many great comic characters of world literature and TV situation comedy. This section of "The Satyricon" establishes the poem as a text intriguing in its 'modernity'. Trimalchio, boasting of his improbable encounter with the Sibyl of Cumae, supplies T. S. Eliot with his epigraph to "The Waste Land" at the same time as enticing the reader into "The Odyssey" of Homer, Virgil's "Aeneid", and the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid. Petronius's character brags of meeting the Sibyl for only a few lines but this is enough to forge an intertextual association, indeed a metatextual commentary on the earlier Greek and Latin texts.

The Sibyl of Cumae, famed for her beauty and prophetic power, attracted the sexual advances of Phoebus, god of the sun. Aeneas, before beginning his descent into Hades, hears how the eloquent deity sought to lure her with grandiose promises of eternal youth. The seer continued to spurn Phoebus's lust until he vowed to grant her anything she asked without condition. Gesturing towards a mound of earth, the Sibyl demanded a year of life for every grain of sand it contained. However, overwhelmed by her desire for longevity, she failed to use her great gift of foresight. This, the most renowned of all classical sibyls, had forgotten the future and her need for youthfulness to accompany age. Aeneas and (supposedly) Trimalchio see the Sibyl caged in a perpetual present, powerless to disclose meaning, longing for death, mumbling in vain as beauty, memory and prophetic powers disintegrate like the old texts Petronius parodies throughout "The Satyricon".

Small wonder Nero dubbed Petronius 'Arbiter of Elegance'! Read this translation and you'll be hooked on Classics and licking your lips for more!

Very short but interesting none the less, 21 Jan 2000
Satyricon is a very short piece, 62 pages in total. Some of the translation is a bit odd and the translators have obviously used some poetic license to give it a contemporary feel. It is none the less quite an interesting piece on the excesses of a wealthy character called Trimalchio, who lived during the reign of Nero in Imperial Rome. It would certainly give you a good contrast to someone like Pliny the Younger.

Well, I very much enjoyed it myself, 19 May 2003
I have to disagree with Tony, I'm afraid. I thought Erewhon was very interesting and very amusing at times too. This was my first brush with Samuel Butler, so I did not really know what to expect, but despite the somewhat slow beginning (going into quite a bit of detail about how he reaches Erewhon), when he finally reached the lost civilisation, things really began to pick up.

The situation in which the narrator finds himself is at first curious, but quickly becomes outright bizarre. The values of the Erewhonians seem alien to us (sickness is punished by imprisonment, crime is merely frowned upon, beauty and manners are equated with morality) so that we are presented with a people who are both detestable and fascinating. At the same time, however, the Victorians who first read Butler's book would have come to realise the parallels between Erewhonian culture that of Victorian Britain, and it is the satire of the novel that is really interesting. The absurd institutions mentioned - the Musical Banks, the Colleges of Unreason, the Museum of the Machines - and the hypocritical nature of the Erewhonian religion, all would have reminded readers of their own world. For instance, at the Colleges of Unreason, the hypothetical language is taught, and the reader wonders why people would learn a language that has no use outside of the colleges. Then they realise that the same could be said for languages like Latin and ancient Greek. These are languages that are irrelevant to today, but are still studied in higher seats of learning.

In Erewhon, Butler created a satire of his own society that is both enlightening and entertaining. The characters are hardly very rounded and the story is not particularly filled out, but that hardly seems to matter. What Butler has to say is interesting, even now, and the way he says it is a delight to read. As E. M. Forster wrote concerning the author, "He wanted to write a serious book not too seriously". There were even times when his narrative had me giggling quitely to myself.

I would very much recommend this book.

GREAT IDEAS MADE TEDIOUS, 18 Mar 2000
This is a very stodgy and prolix 19th-century book, which none the less contains some excellent ideas of the social sci-fi variety. Looked at another way, it manages to bore you to death despite its shining originality. It was obviously written in a hurry (withholding the author's name) and was partly hacked together from Butler's essays; this is painfully evident in the later section, when you long for the interesting-but-sterile social analysis to end and the plot to move on. If only Butler had taken the time to weave his wonderful concepts more expertly into the fabric of the story, this could have been one of the classics of social science fiction. But it's still better than The Difference Engine.

Chattering Courtesans, 19 Feb 2008
Initially I thought this book was going to be incredibly difficult to read and so put off reading it for as long as possible.
However, chattering courtesans was interesting, insightful and at times even funny. Lucian makes fun pre-concieved ideals about women and men in that time. He even makes fun of religion and customs, for example mourning those who have died.




'True Histories', 10 Jun 2005
For the non-classicist Lucian is famous for his 'True Histories', recounting a fantastic voyage that incorporates a trip to the moon, an inter-stellar war, a sojourn in a whale so big it contains a land-mass and various inhabitants, and perilous encounters in numerous islands filled with strange and wonderful sights. Although it parodies Homer and other classical writers, you are inevitably reminded of subsequent works by Swift, Cyrano, Milton, Calvino, even Terry Gilliam... Lovers of imaginative literature will want this volume just for 'True Histories', but there are lots of other reasons for buying it. This is the sort of book you are just so grateful that Penguin are still happy to publish - a real labour of love with maps, glossary, 100 pages of notes, and a really nice cover. I'm not competent to judge the translation but it reads well and conveys Lucian's wit (at one point there is even a small but justifiable reference to Cork, where the translator teaches). I liked 'The Ship', a very natural dialogue which features enjoyable speculation on what its protagonists would do if they could have anything in the world. 'Toxaris' includes 10 condensed tales of friendship and reads a bit like a slice of the 'Decameron'. The 'Chattering Courtesans' dialogues have an almost 'floating world' feel to them - brief, sparkling reflections on the love lives of these Greek geishas. Art historians will be interested in the story about Apelles in 'Slander' and discussion of the work of other artists in 'Images'. Lucian constantly reminds you of the glories of Greek philosophy and literature (Rome is barely mentioned) and the whole book provides a fascinating sense of the continuity of Greek civilisation, down to Lucian's time in the second century AD. Highly recommended.

Fab, 08 Mar 2007
In response to the review from 'a reader' below- have you never heard of a satire?? I read this in the first year of an english degree and have to say that I found it really thought provoking as it has a very dry witty theme throughout and it is meant to be taken lightly after all!

a modest mistake?, 26 Jan 2007
The book A Modest Proposal, written in the first instance by Swift in pamphlet form, is a wonderful piece of social commentary. The reviewer "a reader" appears to have completely missed the point, however, in not recognising the desired effect of this pamplet on the citizens of London. Plagued by crime and poverty, London of Swift's time was a place run as an autocracy, with many politicians and other people with high and influential social standing of a mentality far removed from reality. Swift's intended readership was these people, of upper middle and higher status, and in offering them a "solution" to the problems involved with mass poverty and crime, was actually illuminating their own misconceptions and haughtiness concerning the issue. His "modest proposal" was designed to shock and cause a reconsideration of opinion, rather than to amuse in the same way a horror film does today. Indeed, it is in this fashion that Swift is one of the first employers of "shock tactics" in politics.

The book was an insight., 23 Mar 2001
This book opened my eyes to ideas that hadn't even occured to me before. Even the thought of some of the suggestions that were mentioned made me cringe with a gripping fear that someone could think of things like that. I thouroughly enjoyed the book as it takes a great deal of guts to wrote what he did and I only hope that his proposal is not prophetic! It amazes me that someone could create such ideas, but the way that he proposes them is clever and well thought out.

Tall stories from the Court of Nero, 07 Aug 2001
If like me, you have never quite recovered from the tedium of school Classics lessons a dose of Petronius will swiftly restore your jaded appetite for the great writers of Greece and Rome. To begin with, I prescribe Paul Dinnage's lively translation of "The Satyricon" (circa 60 AD) which provides a vibrant mosaic of the age of Nero.

Wherever a canon of literature is prized, a sort of literary reflex results in parodial imitations. In "The Satyricon", Petronius parodies "The Odyssey", weighing the journey of Homer's Odysseus against the picaresque adventures of Encolpius, the bisexual yet impotent narrator, while the wrath of Poseidon is set against that of Priapus. Petronius alternates verse and prose in an explicit exposé of literary form by interpolating short tales of sex, superstition, and lost legacies. Indeed, this internal story telling is developed to such a degree that the poet not only parodies "The Odyssey" but also satirizes the external narrative of Encolpius so that the parallel with Homer's Odysseus is doubly parodial.

One of the principle narratives, 'Dinner with Trimalchio', introduces the reader to the archetypal self-made man whose intellectual pretentiousness and general vulgarity is a model for many great comic characters of world literature and TV situation comedy. This section of "The Satyricon" establishes the poem as a text intriguing in its 'modernity'. Trimalchio, boasting of his improbable encounter with the Sibyl of Cumae, supplies T. S. Eliot with his epigraph to "The Waste Land" at the same time as enticing the reader into "The Odyssey" of Homer, Virgil's "Aeneid", and the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid. Petronius's character brags of meeting the Sibyl for only a few lines but this is enough to forge an intertextual association, indeed a metatextual commentary on the earlier Greek and Latin texts.

The Sibyl of Cumae, famed for her beauty and prophetic power, attracted the sexual advances of Phoebus, god of the sun. Aeneas, before beginning his descent into Hades, hears how the eloquent deity sought to lure her with grandiose promises of eternal youth. The seer continued to spurn Phoebus's lust until he vowed to grant her anything she asked without condition. Gesturing towards a mound of earth, the Sibyl demanded a year of life for every grain of sand it contained. However, overwhelmed by her desire for longevity, she failed to use her great gift of foresight. This, the most renowned of all classical sibyls, had forgotten the future and her need for youthfulness to accompany age. Aeneas and (supposedly) Trimalchio see the Sibyl caged in a perpetual present, powerless to disclose meaning, longing for death, mumbling in vain as beauty, memory and prophetic powers disintegrate like the old texts Petronius parodies throughout "The Satyricon".

Small wonder Nero dubbed Petronius 'Arbiter of Elegance'! Read this translation and you'll be hooked on Classics and licking your lips for more!

Very short but interesting none the less, 21 Jan 2000
Satyricon is a very short piece, 62 pages in total. Some of the translation is a bit odd and the translators have obviously used some poetic license to give it a contemporary feel. It is none the less quite an interesting piece on the excesses of a wealthy character called Trimalchio, who lived during the reign of Nero in Imperial Rome. It would certainly give you a good contrast to someone like Pliny the Younger.

Well, I very much enjoyed it myself, 19 May 2003
I have to disagree with Tony, I'm afraid. I thought Erewhon was very interesting and very amusing at times too. This was my first brush with Samuel Butler, so I did not really know what to expect, but despite the somewhat slow beginning (going into quite a bit of detail about how he reaches Erewhon), when he finally reached the lost civilisation, things really began to pick up.

The situation in which the narrator finds himself is at first curious, but quickly becomes outright bizarre. The values of the Erewhonians seem alien to us (sickness is punished by imprisonment, crime is merely frowned upon, beauty and manners are equated with morality) so that we are presented with a people who are both detestable and fascinating. At the same time, however, the Victorians who first read Butler's book would have come to realise the parallels between Erewhonian culture that of Victorian Britain, and it is the satire of the novel that is really interesting. The absurd institutions mentioned - the Musical Banks, the Colleges of Unreason, the Museum of the Machines - and the hypocritical nature of the Erewhonian religion, all would have reminded readers of their own world. For instance, at the Colleges of Unreason, the hypothetical language is taught, and the reader wonders why people would learn a language that has no use outside of the colleges. Then they realise that the same could be said for languages like Latin and ancient Greek. These are languages that are irrelevant to today, but are still studied in higher seats of learning.

In Erewhon, Butler created a satire of his own society that is both enlightening and entertaining. The characters are hardly very rounded and the story is not particularly filled out, but that hardly seems to matter. What Butler has to say is interesting, even now, and the way he says it is a delight to read. As E. M. Forster wrote concerning the author, "He wanted to write a serious book not too seriously". There were even times when his narrative had me giggling quitely to myself.

I would very much recommend this book.

GREAT IDEAS MADE TEDIOUS, 18 Mar 2000
This is a very stodgy and prolix 19th-century book, which none the less contains some excellent ideas of the social sci-fi variety. Looked at another way, it manages to bore you to death despite its shining originality. It was obviously written in a hurry (withholding the author's name) and was partly hacked together from Butler's essays; this is painfully evident in the later section, when you long for the interesting-but-sterile social analysis to end and the plot to move on. If only Butler had taken the time to weave his wonderful concepts more expertly into the fabric of the story, this could have been one of the classics of social science fiction. But it's still better than The Difference Engine.

Chattering Courtesans, 19 Feb 2008
Initially I thought this book was going to be incredibly difficult to read and so put off reading it for as long as possible.
However, chattering courtesans was interesting, insightful and at times even funny. Lucian makes fun pre-concieved ideals about women and men in that time. He even makes fun of religion and customs, for example mourning those who have died.




'True Histories', 10 Jun 2005
For the non-classicist Lucian is famous for his 'True Histories', recounting a fantastic voyage that incorporates a trip to the moon, an inter-stellar war, a sojourn in a whale so big it contains a land-mass and various inhabitants, and perilous encounters in numerous islands filled with strange and wonderful sights. Although it parodies Homer and other classical writers, you are inevitably reminded of subsequent works by Swift, Cyrano, Milton, Calvino, even Terry Gilliam... Lovers of imaginative literature will want this volume just for 'True Histories', but there are lots of other reasons for buying it. This is the sort of book you are just so grateful that Penguin are still happy to publish - a real labour of love with maps, glossary, 100 pages of notes, and a really nice cover. I'm not competent to judge the translation but it reads well and conveys Lucian's wit (at one point there is even a small but justifiable reference to Cork, where the translator teaches). I liked 'The Ship', a very natural dialogue which features enjoyable speculation on what its protagonists would do if they could have anything in the world. 'Toxaris' includes 10 condensed tales of friendship and reads a bit like a slice of the 'Decameron'. The 'Chattering Courtesans' dialogues have an almost 'floating world' feel to them - brief, sparkling reflections on the love lives of these Greek geishas. Art historians will be interested in the story about Apelles in 'Slander' and discussion of the work of other artists in 'Images'. Lucian constantly reminds you of the glories of Greek philosophy and literature (Rome is barely mentioned) and the whole book provides a fascinating sense of the continuity of Greek civilisation, down to Lucian's time in the second century AD. Highly recommended.

h'mm, 26 Feb 2008
The translator plays Juvenal for laughs, and there is more to him than that. So much doesn't get through from the original in this version, and what does seems to me to misrepresent the style fairly severely.

The introduction is rather dated.

Really, there are other options.

Green's revision hits the mark, 25 Sep 2003
I studied this book for Classical Civilisation last year and found it an extremely refreshing rendering of an author whose medium (the satire) has been mauled and abused by even the best of English translators. I picked up a second much inferior translation of this book to reinforce my learning and instantly appreciated the quality of Peter Green's method: he avoids sucking the life out of Juvenal's poetry through prose translation but doesn't go so far as to force the advanced and passionate sentiments into dry showy Dryden-esque iambics or rhyming couplets. The result is an unrhyming semi-poetic rendering; beautifully and entirely naturally rhythmic. He also meets an audience mid-way between scholar and 'layman' by removing references to unknown people referred to in the text, thus avoiding clumsy English (which may also be seen as a trifle patronising on the translator's part), and providing an thorough endnotes and a bibliography for each satire. The introduction and preface are also hugely informative. However I find his (to me) unique method of applying endnotes a little irritating: he often places the endnotes twenty lines apart and then explains all of the different points in the preceeding twenty lines, rather than the more orthodox way of applying one note per reference. However this is, I assume, an attempt at making the experience of reading the work a more fluid one and only jarred on me as I was studying it in conjunction with other texts which use the more traditional method.
In any case this is a wonderful book, finally hitting that hard to reach mark between poetry and prose.

Fab, 08 Mar 2007
In response to the review from 'a reader' below- have you never heard of a satire?? I read this in the first year of an english degree and have to say that I found it really thought provoking as it has a very dry witty theme throughout and it is meant to be taken lightly after all!

a modest mistake?, 26 Jan 2007
The book A Modest Proposal, written in the first instance by Swift in pamphlet form, is a wonderful piece of social commentary. The reviewer "a reader" appears to have completely missed the point, however, in not recognising the desired effect of this pamplet on the citizens of London. Plagued by crime and poverty, London of Swift's time was a place run as an autocracy, with many politicians and other people with high and influential social standing of a mentality far removed from reality. Swift's intended readership was these people, of upper middle and higher status, and in offering them a "solution" to the problems involved with mass poverty and crime, was actually illuminating their own misconceptions and haughtiness concerning the issue. His "modest proposal" was designed to shock and cause a reconsideration of opinion, rather than to amuse in the same way a horror film does today. Indeed, it is in this fashion that Swift is one of the first employers of "shock tactics" in politics.

The book was an insight., 23 Mar 2001
This book opened my eyes to ideas that hadn't even occured to me before. Even the thought of some of the suggestions that were mentioned made me cringe with a gripping fear that someone could think of things like that. I thouroughly enjoyed the book as it takes a great deal of guts to wrote what he did and I only hope that his proposal is not prophetic! It amazes me that someone could create such ideas, but the way that he proposes them is clever and well thought out.

Tall stories from the Court of Nero, 07 Aug 2001
If like me, you have never quite recovered from the tedium of school Classics lessons a dose of Petronius will swiftly restore your jaded appetite for the great writers of Greece and Rome. To begin with, I prescribe Paul Dinnage's lively translation of "The Satyricon" (circa 60 AD) which provides a vibrant mosaic of the age of Nero.

Wherever a canon of literature is prized, a sort of literary reflex results in parodial imitations. In "The Satyricon", Petronius parodies "The Odyssey", weighing the journey of Homer's Odysseus against the picaresque adventures of Encolpius, the bisexual yet impotent narrator, while the wrath of Poseidon is set against that of Priapus. Petronius alternates verse and prose in an explicit exposé of literary form by interpolating short tales of sex, superstition, and lost legacies. Indeed, this internal story telling is developed to such a degree that the poet not only parodies "The Odyssey" but also satirizes the external narrative of Encolpius so that the parallel with Homer's Odysseus is doubly parodial.

One of the principle narratives, 'Dinner with Trimalchio', introduces the reader to the archetypal self-made man whose intellectual pretentiousness and general vulgarity is a model for many great comic characters of world literature and TV situation comedy. This section of "The Satyricon" establishes the poem as a text intriguing in its 'modernity'. Trimalchio, boasting of his improbable encounter with the Sibyl of Cumae, supplies T. S. Eliot with his epigraph to "The Waste Land" at the same time as enticing the reader into "The Odyssey" of Homer, Virgil's "Aeneid", and the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid. Petronius's character brags of meeting the Sibyl for only a few lines but this is enough to forge an intertextual association, indeed a metatextual commentary on the earlier Greek and Latin texts.

The Sibyl of Cumae, famed for her beauty and prophetic power, attracted the sexual advances of Phoebus, god of the sun. Aeneas, before beginning his descent into Hades, hears how the eloquent deity sought to lure her with grandiose promises of eternal youth. The seer continued to spurn Phoebus's lust until he vowed to grant her anything she asked without condition. Gesturing towards a mound of earth, the Sibyl demanded a year of life for every grain of sand it contained. However, overwhelmed by her desire for longevity, she failed to use her great gift of foresight. This, the most renowned of all classical sibyls, had forgotten the future and her need for youthfulness to accompany age. Aeneas and (supposedly) Trimalchio see the Sibyl caged in a perpetual present, powerless to disclose meaning, longing for death, mumbling in vain as beauty, memory and prophetic powers disintegrate like the old texts Petronius parodies throughout "The Satyricon".

Small wonder Nero dubbed Petronius 'Arbiter of Elegance'! Read this translation and you'll be hooked on Classics and licking your lips for more!

Very short but interesting none the less, 21 Jan 2000
Satyricon is a very short piece, 62 pages in total. Some of the translation is a bit odd and the translators have obviously used some poetic license to give it a contemporary feel. It is none the less quite an interesting piece on the excesses of a wealthy character called Trimalchio, who lived during the reign of Nero in Imperial Rome. It would certainly give you a good contrast to someone like Pliny the Younger.

Well, I very much enjoyed it myself, 19 May 2003
I have to disagree with Tony, I'm afraid. I thought Erewhon was very interesting and very amusing at times too. This was my first brush with Samuel Butler, so I did not really know what to expect, but despite the somewhat slow beginning (going into quite a bit of detail about how he reaches Erewhon), when he finally reached the lost civilisation, things really began to pick up.

The situation in which the narrator finds himself is at first curious, but quickly becomes outright bizarre. The values of the Erewhonians seem alien to us (sickness is punished by imprisonment, crime is merely frowned upon, beauty and manners are equated with morality) so that we are presented with a people who are both detestable and fascinating. At the same time, however, the Victorians who first read Butler's book would have come to realise the parallels between Erewhonian culture that of Victorian Britain, and it is the satire of the novel that is really interesting. The absurd institutions mentioned - the Musical Banks, the Colleges of Unreason, the Museum of the Machines - and the hypocritical nature of the Erewhonian religion, all would have reminded readers of their own world. For instance, at the Colleges of Unreason, the hypothetical language is taught, and the reader wonders why people would learn a language that has no use outside of the colleges. Then they realise that the same could be said for languages like Latin and ancient Greek. These are languages that are irrelevant to today, but are still studied in higher seats of learning.

In Erewhon, Butler created a satire of his own society that is both enlightening and entertaining. The characters are hardly very rounded and the story is not particularly filled out, but that hardly seems to matter. What Butler has to say is interesting, even now, and the way he says it is a delight to read. As E. M. Forster wrote concerning the author, "He wanted to write a serious book not too seriously". There were even times when his narrative had me giggling quitely to myself.

I would very much recommend this book.

GREAT IDEAS MADE TEDIOUS, 18 Mar 2000
This is a very stodgy and prolix 19th-century book, which none the less contains some excellent ideas of the social sci-fi variety. Looked at another way, it manages to bore you to death despite its shining originality. It was obviously written in a hurry (withholding the author's name) and was partly hacked together from Butler's essays; this is painfully evident in the later section, when you long for the interesting-but-sterile social analysis to end and the plot to move on. If only Butler had taken the time to weave his wonderful concepts more expertly into the fabric of the story, this could have been one of the classics of social science fiction. But it's still better than The Difference Engine.

Chattering Courtesans, 19 Feb 2008
Initially I thought this book was going to be incredibly difficult to read and so put off reading it for as long as possible.
However, chattering courtesans was interesting, insightful and at times even funny. Lucian makes fun pre-concieved ideals about women and men in that time. He even makes fun of religion and customs, for example mourning those who have died.




'True Histories', 10 Jun 2005
For the non-classicist Lucian is famous for his 'True Histories', recounting a fantastic voyage that incorporates a trip to the moon, an inter-stellar war, a sojourn in a whale so big it contains a land-mass and various inhabitants, and perilous encounters in numerous islands filled with strange and wonderful sights. Although it parodies Homer and other classical writers, you are inevitably reminded of subsequent works by Swift, Cyrano, Milton, Calvino, even Terry Gilliam... Lovers of imaginative literature will want this volume just for 'True Histories', but there are lots of other reasons for buying it. This is the sort of book you are just so grateful that Penguin are still happy to publish - a real labour of love with maps, glossary, 100 pages of notes, and a really nice cover. I'm not competent to judge the translation but it reads well and conveys Lucian's wit (at one point there is even a small but justifiable reference to Cork, where the translator teaches). I liked 'The Ship', a very natural dialogue which features enjoyable speculation on what its protagonists would do if they could have anything in the world. 'Toxaris' includes 10 condensed tales of friendship and reads a bit like a slice of the 'Decameron'. The 'Chattering Courtesans' dialogues have an almost 'floating world' feel to them - brief, sparkling reflections on the love lives of these Greek geishas. Art historians will be interested in the story about Apelles in 'Slander' and discussion of the work of other artists in 'Images'. Lucian constantly reminds you of the glories of Greek philosophy and literature (Rome is barely mentioned) and the whole book provides a fascinating sense of the continuity of Greek civilisation, down to Lucian's time in the second century AD. Highly recommended.

h'mm, 26 Feb 2008
The translator plays Juvenal for laughs, and there is more to him than that. So much doesn't get through from the original in this version, and what does seems to me to misrepresent the style fairly severely.

The introduction is rather dated.

Really, there are other options.

Green's revision hits the mark, 25 Sep 2003
I studied this book for Classical Civilisation last year and found it an extremely refreshing rendering of an author whose medium (the satire) has been mauled and abused by even the best of English translators. I picked up a second much inferior translation of this book to reinforce my learning and instantly appreciated the quality of Peter Green's method: he avoids sucking the life out of Juvenal's poetry through prose translation but doesn't go so far as to force the advanced and passionate sentiments into dry showy Dryden-esque iambics or rhyming couplets. The result is an unrhyming semi-poetic rendering; beautifully and entirely naturally rhythmic. He also meets an audience mid-way between scholar and 'layman' by removing references to unknown people referred to in the text, thus avoiding clumsy English (which may also be seen as a trifle patronising on the translator's part), and providing an thorough endnotes and a bibliography for each satire. The introduction and preface are also hugely informative. However I find his (to me) unique method of applying endnotes a little irritating: he often places the endnotes twenty lines apart and then explains all of the different points in the preceeding twenty lines, rather than the more orthodox way of applying one note per reference. However this is, I assume, an attempt at making the experience of reading the work a more fluid one and only jarred on me as I was studying it in conjunction with other texts which use the more traditional method.
In any case this is a wonderful book, finally hitting that hard to reach mark between poetry and prose.

Perfect Gift for Those Whose Social Life Is Visiting Doctors, 23 May 2004
I sometimes think that retirement is when you stop going to work full time so that you can go to doctors full time. Dr. Seuss seems to agree with that observation in this witty, beautifully illustrated book.

The book starts off like most Dr. Seuss books, beckoning you towards a far distant, wonderful land. In this case, the land is Fotta-fa-Zee where there's "no smelly bad traffic," you feel fine at 103, and your teeth and hair are kept strong by chewing nuts from the Tutt-a-Tutt Tree.

Then reality sets in. You've just been reading National Geographic about Fotta-fa-Zee while sitting in the Golden Years Clinic waiting for the physical that no one should ever have. The high point of this whole experience is talking with the fish in the aquarium as you wait, and wait, and wait for the next part of the exam. Naturally, no one will tell you anything about what they have learned from the tests. You have to see more doctors first, and take more tests.

One of my favorite parts is the eye exam near the beginning, where you get both a "eyesight and solvency test." You have to be able to see and pay for the exam to pass.

Pretty soon all of your clothes have been replaced with a gown, and you cannot easily escape even though that seems like the right thing to do. Each test seems worse than the last. The stress test adds stress as well as measuring it. You smell foods, and any that smell good are taken off your diet.

At some point, you make such an impression with your test results that they wheel you around in a wheelchair.

Pretty soon you've got so many prescriptions it takes two pages of poetry to cover all of the directions.

Before you can escape you have to fill out more forms so that the bills will be paid by your estate if you don't survive.

Dr. Seuss concludes with "you're in pretty good shape for the shape you are in." That's the most we can hope for from America's answer to afternoon tea for the Medicare set.

Having been through such check-ups myself and having a father whose retirement consists of keeping doctors in business at 84 (he calls it 21 for the 4th time), I can definitely appreciate the humor here. Hopefully, you will too.

I just wish we had stayed in Fotta-fa-Zee rather than the Doctor's office.

The satirical concept is great, but the poetry, whimsy, and illustrations make it all even better. It should cheer up anyone who spends a lot of time visiting doctors.

Banish your misconception stalls about aging and medical care with humor!

A Seuss for Me!! (the mature adult), 30 Mar 1999
This is one of the funniest Seuss books because most of the stuff in it is true, well, slightly exaggerated, ok, it's zany but based on how things are. My favorite page is the one with taking the pills!

So entertaining for our "older" friends, 12 Jan 1999
I read this book while waiting for my husband at a Cardiologist's office. I work for a senior center, and my husband & I AREN'T getting younger. I love the way it recognizes some of the worries of elders & entertains. My copy will go to our senior center's library.

Fun and zany and all adult, 02 Nov 1998
A delightful and delightfully written book. But take care - this is not a book to read to your children; it is completely an ADULT book.

Brilliant work from one of the world's best satirists, 11 Jun 1997
Call me crazy, but I love the Seuss-meister. His work is so often overlooked in the world of satire, and too often plunked into the children's book catagories. This book was not written for kids! How quaint; how rare! He's written for gram and even gramp-air! "Only Old Once" addresses adult fears of doctors in the unique Seuss way, without being distinctly childish. He mocks the testing methods and treatments that many of us don't even want to think about. Another Seuss gem in a similar vein, is "Daisey-Head Mayzie", who also endures the poking and prodding of modern medicine, all because she was different. If you haven't read Seuss since your youngest child entered middle school, shame on you; consider yourself properly rebuked, and go get a few Cat in the Hat logoed volumes. Then curl up with a plate of green eggs and ham and let yourself go!

Fab, 08 Mar 2007
In response to the review from 'a reader' below- have you never heard of a satire?? I read this in the first year of an english degree and have to say that I found it really thought provoking as it has a very dry witty theme throughout and it is meant to be taken lightly after all!

a modest mistake?, 26 Jan 2007
The book A Modest Proposal, written in the first instance by Swift in pamphlet form, is a wonderful piece of social commentary. The reviewer "a reader" appears to have completely missed the point, however, in not recognising the desired effect of this pamplet on the citizens of London. Plagued by crime and poverty, London of Swift's time was a place run as an autocracy, with many politicians and other people with high and influential social standing of a mentality far removed from reality. Swift's intended readership was these people, of upper middle and higher status, and in offering them a "solution" to the problems involved with mass poverty and crime, was actually illuminating their own misconceptions and haughtiness concerning the issue. His "modest proposal" was designed to shock and cause a reconsideration of opinion, rather than to amuse in the same way a horror film does today. Indeed, it is in this fashion that Swift is one of the first employers of "shock tactics" in politics.

The book was an insight., 23 Mar 2001
This book opened my eyes to ideas that hadn't even occured to me before. Even the thought of some of the suggestions that were mentioned made me cringe with a gripping fear that someone could think of things like that. I thouroughly enjoyed the book as it takes a great deal of guts to wrote what he did and I only hope that his proposal is not prophetic! It amazes me that someone could create such ideas, but the way that he proposes them is clever and well thought out.

Tall stories from the Court of Nero, 07 Aug 2001
If like me, you have never quite recovered from the tedium of school Classics lessons a dose of Petronius will swiftly restore your jaded appetite for the great writers of Greece and Rome. To begin with, I prescribe Paul Dinnage's lively translation of "The Satyricon" (circa 60 AD) which provides a vibrant mosaic of the age of Nero.

Wherever a canon of literature is prized, a sort of literary reflex results in parodial imitations. In "The Satyricon", Petronius parodies "The Odyssey", weighing the journey of Homer's Odysseus against the picaresque adventures of Encolpius, the bisexual yet impotent narrator, while the wrath of Poseidon is set against that of Priapus. Petronius alternates verse and prose in an explicit exposé of literary form by interpolating short tales of sex, superstition, and lost legacies. Indeed, this internal story telling is developed to such a degree that the poet not only parodies "The Odyssey" but also satirizes the external narrative of Encolpius so that the parallel with Homer's Odysseus is doubly parodial.

One of the principle narratives, 'Dinner with Trimalchio', introduces the reader to the archetypal self-made man whose intellectual pretentiousness and general vulgarity is a model for many great comic characters of world literature and TV situation comedy. This section of "The Satyricon" establishes the poem as a text intriguing in its 'modernity'. Trimalchio, boasting of his improbable encounter with the Sibyl of Cumae, supplies T. S. Eliot with his epigraph to "The Waste Land" at the same time as enticing the reader into "The Odyssey" of Homer, Virgil's "Aeneid", and the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid. Petronius's character brags of meeting the Sibyl for only a few lines but this is enough to forge an intertextual association, indeed a metatextual commentary on the earlier Greek and Latin texts.

The Sibyl of Cumae, famed for her beauty and prophetic power, attracted the sexual advances of Phoebus, god of the sun. Aeneas, before beginning his descent into Hades, hears how the eloquent deity sought to lure her with grandiose promises of eternal youth. The seer continued to spurn Phoebus's lust until he vowed to grant her anything she asked without condition. Gesturing towards a mound of earth, the Sibyl demanded a year of life for every grain of sand it contained. However, overwhelmed by her desire for longevity, she failed to use her great gift of foresight. This, the most renowned of all classical sibyls, had forgotten the future and her need for youthfulness to accompany age. Aeneas and (supposedly) Trimalchio see the Sibyl caged in a perpetual present, powerless to disclose meaning, longing for death, mumbling in vain as beauty, memory and prophetic powers disintegrate like the old texts Petronius parodies throughout "The Satyricon".

Small wonder Nero dubbed Petronius 'Arbiter of Elegance'! Read this translation and you'll be hooked on Classics and licking your lips for more!

Very short but interesting none the less, 21 Jan 2000
Satyricon is a very short piece, 62 pages in total. Some of the translation is a bit odd and the translators have obviously used some poetic license to give it a contemporary feel. It is none the less quite an interesting piece on the excesses of a wealthy character called Trimalchio, who lived during the reign of Nero in Imperial Rome. It would certainly give you a good contrast to someone like Pliny the Younger.

Well, I very much enjoyed it myself, 19 May 2003
I have to disagree with Tony, I'm afraid. I thought Erewhon was very interesting and very amusing at times too. This was my first brush with Samuel Butler, so I did not really know what to expect, but despite the somewhat slow beginning (going into quite a bit of detail about how he reaches Erewhon), when he finally reached the lost civilisation, things really began to pick up.

The situation in which the narrator finds himself is at first curious, but quickly becomes outright bizarre. The values of the Erewhonians seem alien to us (sickness is punished by imprisonment, crime is merely frowned upon, beauty and manners are equated with morality) so that we are presented with a people who are both detestable and fascinating. At the same time, however, the Victorians who first read Butler's book would have come to realise the parallels between Erewhonian culture that of Victorian Britain, and it is the satire of the novel that is really interesting. The absurd institutions mentioned - the Musical Banks, the Colleges of Unreason, the Museum of the Machines - and the hypocritical nature of the Erewhonian religion, all would have reminded readers of their own world. For instance, at the Colleges of Unreason, the hypothetical language is taught, and the reader wonders why people would learn a language that has no use outside of the colleges. Then they realise that the same could be said for languages like Latin and ancient Greek. These are languages that are irrelevant to today, but are still studied in higher seats of learning.

In Erewhon, Butler created a satire of his own society that is both enlightening and entertaining. The characters are hardly very rounded and the story is not particularly filled out, but that hardly seems to matter. What Butler has to say is interesting, even now, and the way he says it is a delight to read. As E. M. Forster wrote concerning the author, "He wanted to write a serious book not too seriously". There were even times when his narrative had me giggling quitely to myself.

I would very much recommend this book.

GREAT IDEAS MADE TEDIOUS, 18 Mar 2000
This is a very stodgy and prolix 19th-century book, which none the less contains some excellent ideas of the social sci-fi variety. Looked at another way, it manages to bore you to death despite its shining originality. It was obviously written in a hurry (withholding the author's name) and was partly hacked together from Butler's essays; this is painfully evident in the later section, when you long for the interesting-but-sterile social analysis to end and the plot to move on. If only Butler had taken the time to weave his wonderful concepts more expertly into the fabric of the story, this could have been one of the classics of social science fiction. But it's still better than The Difference Engine.

Chattering Courtesans, 19 Feb 2008
Initially I thought this book was going to be incredibly difficult to read and so put off reading it for as long as possible.
However, chattering courtesans was interesting, insightful and at times even funny. Lucian makes fun pre-concieved ideals about women and men in that time. He even makes fun of religion and customs, for example mourning those who have died.




'True Histories', 10 Jun 2005
For the non-classicist Lucian is famous for his 'True Histories', recounting a fantastic voyage that incorporates a trip to the moon, an inter-stellar war, a sojourn in a whale so big it contains a land-mass and various inhabitants, and perilous encounters in numerous islands filled with strange and wonderful sights. Although it parodies Homer and other classical writers, you are inevitably reminded of subsequent works by Swift, Cyrano, Milton, Calvino, even Terry Gilliam... Lovers of imaginative literature will want this volume just for 'True Histories', but there are lots of other reasons for buying it. This is the sort of book you are just so grateful that Penguin are still happy to publish - a real labour of love with maps, glossary, 100 pages of notes, and a really nice cover. I'm not competent to judge the translation but it reads well and conveys Lucian's wit (at one point there is even a small but justifiable reference to Cork, where the translator teaches). I liked 'The Ship', a very natural dialogue which features enjoyable speculation on what its protagonists would do if they could have anything in the world. 'Toxaris' includes 10 condensed tales of friendship and reads a bit like a slice of the 'Decameron'. The 'Chattering Courtesans' dialogues have an almost 'floating world' feel to them - brief, sparkling reflections on the love lives of these Greek geishas. Art historians will be interested in the story about Apelles in 'Slander' and discussion of the work of other artists in 'Images'. Lucian constantly reminds you of the glories of Greek philosophy and literature (Rome is barely mentioned) and the whole book provides a fascinating sense of the continuity of Greek civilisation, down to Lucian's time in the second century AD. Highly recommended.

h'mm, 26 Feb 2008
The translator plays Juvenal for laughs, and there is more to him than that. So much doesn't get through from the original in this version, and what does seems to me to misrepresent the style fairly severely.

The introduction is rather dated.

Really, there are other options.

Green's revision hits the mark, 25 Sep 2003
I studied this book for Classical Civilisation last year and found it an extremely refreshing rendering of an author whose medium (the satire) has been mauled and abused by even the best of English translators. I picked up a second much inferior translation of this book to reinforce my learning and instantly appreciated the quality of Peter Green's method: he avoids sucking the life out of Juvenal's poetry through prose translation but doesn't go so far as to force the advanced and passionate sentiments into dry showy Dryden-esque iambics or rhyming couplets. The result is an unrhyming semi-poetic rendering; beautifully and entirely naturally rhythmic. He also meets an audience mid-way between scholar and 'layman' by removing references to unknown people referred to in the text, thus avoiding clumsy English (which may also be seen as a trifle patronising on the translator's part), and providing an thorough endnotes and a bibliography for each satire. The introduction and preface are also hugely informative. However I find his (to me) unique method of applying endnotes a little irritating: he often places the endnotes twenty lines apart and then explains all of the different points in the preceeding twenty lines, rather than the more orthodox way of applying one note per reference. However this is, I assume, an attempt at making the experience of reading the work a more fluid one and only jarred on me as I was studying it in conjunction with other texts which use the more traditional method.
In any case this is a wonderful book, finally hitting that hard to reach mark between poetry and prose.

Perfect Gift for Those Whose Social Life Is Visiting Doctors, 23 May 2004
I sometimes think that retirement is when you stop going to work full time so that you can go to doctors full time. Dr. Seuss seems to agree with that observation in this witty, beautifully illustrated book.

The book starts off like most Dr. Seuss books, beckoning you towards a far distant, wonderful land. In this case, the land is Fotta-fa-Zee where there's "no smelly bad traffic," you feel fine at 103, and your teeth and hair are kept strong by chewing nuts from the Tutt-a-Tutt Tree.

Then reality sets in. You've just been reading National Geographic about Fotta-fa-Zee while sitting in the Golden Years Clinic waiting for the physical that no one should ever have. The high point of this whole experience is talking with the fish in the aquarium as you wait, and wait, and wait for the next part of the exam. Naturally, no one will tell you anything about what they have learned from the tests. You have to see more doctors first, and take more tests.

One of my favorite parts is the eye exam near the beginning, where you get both a "eyesight and solvency test." You have to be able to see and pay for the exam to pass.

Pretty soon all of your clothes have been replaced with a gown, and you cannot easily escape even though that seems like the right thing to do. Each test seems worse than the last. The stress test adds stress as well as measuring it. You smell foods, and any that smell good are taken off your diet.

At some point, you make such an impression with your test results that they wheel you around in a wheelchair.

Pretty soon you've got so many prescriptions it takes two pages of poetry to cover all of the directions.

Before you can escape you have to fill out more forms so that the bills will be paid by your estate if you don't survive.

Dr. Seuss concludes with "you're in pretty good shape for the shape you are in." That's the most we can hope for from America's answer to afternoon tea for the Medicare set.

Having been through such check-ups myself and having a father whose retirement consists of keeping doctors in business at 84 (he calls it 21 for the 4th time), I can definitely appreciate the humor here. Hopefully, you will too.

I just wish we had stayed in Fotta-fa-Zee rather than the Doctor's office.

The satirical concept is great, but the poetry, whimsy, and illustrations make it all even better. It should cheer up anyone who spends a lot of time visiting doctors.

Banish your misconception stalls about aging and medical care with humor!

A Seuss for Me!! (the mature adult), 30 Mar 1999
This is one of the funniest Seuss books because most of the stuff in it is true, well, slightly exaggerated, ok, it's zany but based on how things are. My favorite page is the one with taking the pills!

So entertaining for our "older" friends, 12 Jan 1999
I read this book while waiting for my husband at a Cardiologist's office. I work for a senior center, and my husband & I AREN'T getting younger. I love the way it recognizes some of the worries of elders & entertains. My copy will go to our senior center's library.

Fun and zany and all adult, 02 Nov 1998
A delightful and delightfully written book. But take care - this is not a book to read to your children; it is completely an ADULT book.

Brilliant work from one of the world's best satirists, 11 Jun 1997
Call me crazy, but I love the Seuss-meister. His work is so often overlooked in the world of satire, and too often plunked into the children's book catagories. This book was not written for kids! How quaint; how rare! He's written for gram and even gramp-air! "Only Old Once" addresses adult fears of doctors in the unique Seuss way, without being distinctly childish. He mocks the testing methods and treatments that many of us don't even want to think about. Another Seuss gem in a similar vein, is "Daisey-Head Mayzie", who also endures the poking and prodding of modern medicine, all because she was different. If you haven't read Seuss since your youngest child entered middle school, shame on you; consider yourself properly rebuked, and go get a few Cat in the Hat logoed volumes. Then curl up with a plate of green eggs and ham and let yourself go!

A Dodo is not just for Christmas, 15 Nov 2007
This is a clever conceit a concept that will run and run. The title invites the browser to pause and pick up. Initially she/he may be disappointed because the obituaries relate to people, organisations, concepts, myths and pretensions that in most cases are still, sadly with us. The writing is excellent and although on occasion innocent parties, places and people are caught by the follow through of the broadsword for the most part the accuracy of the rapier thrusts and cutlass slashes deftly dispose of the unfit for existence. It gives those of us who have neither the time nor skill the satisfaction of knowing that someone is doing a good job for us and makes us laugh at the same time. Occasionally the lame duck being harried excites a lip curl of distaste rather than the effect looked for by the writers but there are not many instances of this. This title could well be the `Giles Annual' of the future but should not be confined to Christmas purchase.


Dead Funny, 14 Nov 2007
A satirical look at the world around us that made me howl with laughter with obituaries for the things that I hadn't realised had died or had long wished would soon shuffle off this mortal coil. The obits cover everything from domestic and international politics, to science and entertainment. I was particularly taken with the death of (fictional) George Bush, and the death of gravity after the opening of the Grand Canyon Skywalk surprised me but amused me too (Buzz Aldrin: "In your face, Neil Armstrong!") to name but just a few. A very enlightening and entertaining read and also a perfect Christmas present too.

Satire isn't dead, 14 Nov 2007
A real gem of a book that's breathed new life into the art of satire by larking about with obituaries. One of the few books I've read recently that has made me laugh tea out of my nose - the Da Vinci Code court case obituary is a particular favourite, although the Death of the Fictional Dubya Bush is also up there. A perfect Christmas gift for friends and family.

Twinkle, twinkle little satire, 24 Sep 2007
This book came as a bit of a surprise. I'd started to believe that no-one was producing proper satire these days but this is the real deal: not only did it make me laugh it also made me think. Sure there are a few easy targets (Tim Henman, Britney Spears) but they still manage to be funny, and this book isn't afraid to have a go at tougher stuff (religious schools, the death of freedom, Lord Reith's legacy)too

laugh out loud, 17 Sep 2007
I know it's a cliche but this book has literally made me laugh out loud. It's an irreverant, inventive and refreshing review of our times: politics; celebrity; trends; the lot. The entry about Britney Spears' Hair is a classic but my favourite is the faux-obituary of Jeremy Clarkson. It's quite a good stocking filler Christmas present I would have thought. I will be buying it for those 'difficult to buy for' men in my family.

Fab, 08 Mar 2007
In response to the review from 'a reader' below- have you never heard of a satire?? I read this in the first year of an english degree and have to say that I found it really thought provoking as it has a very dry witty theme throughout and it is meant to be taken lightly after all!

a modest mistake?, 26 Jan 2007
The book A Modest Proposal, written in the first instance by Swift in pamphlet form, is a wonderful piece of social commentary. The reviewer "a reader" appears to have completely missed the point, however, in not recognising the desired effect of this pamplet on the citizens of London. Plagued by crime and poverty, London of Swift's time was a place run as an autocracy, with many politicians and other people with high and influential social standing of a mentality far removed from reality. Swift's intended readership was these people, of upper middle and higher status, and in offering them a "solution" to the problems involved with mass poverty and crime, was actually illuminating their own misconceptions and haughtiness concerning the issue. His "modest proposal" was designed to shock and cause a reconsideration of opinion, rather than to amuse in the same way a horror film does today. Indeed, it is in this fashion that Swift is one of the first employers of "shock tactics" in politics.

The book was an insight., 23 Mar 2001
This book opened my eyes to ideas that hadn't even occured to me before. Even the thought of some of the suggestions that were mentioned made me cringe with a gripping fear that someone could think of things like that. I thouroughly enjoyed the book as it takes a great deal of guts to wrote what he did and I only hope that his proposal is not prophetic! It amazes me that someone could create such ideas, but the way that he proposes them is clever and well thought out.

Tall stories from the Court of Nero, 07 Aug 2001
If like me, you have never quite recovered from the tedium of school Classics lessons a dose of Petronius will swiftly restore your jaded appetite for the great writers of Greece and Rome. To begin with, I prescribe Paul Dinnage's lively translation of "The Satyricon" (circa 60 AD) which provides a vibrant mosaic of the age of Nero.

Wherever a canon of literature is prized, a sort of literary reflex results in parodial imitations. In "The Satyricon", Petronius parodies "The Odyssey", weighing the journey of Homer's Odysseus against the picaresque adventures of Encolpius, the bisexual yet impotent narrator, while the wrath of Poseidon is set against that of Priapus. Petronius alternates verse and prose in an explicit exposé of literary form by interpolating short tales of sex, superstition, and lost legacies. Indeed, this internal story telling is developed to such a degree that the poet not only parodies "The Odyssey" but also satirizes the external narrative of Encolpius so that the parallel with Homer's Odysseus is doubly parodial.

One of the principle narratives, 'Dinner with Trimalchio', introduces the reader to the archetypal self-made man whose intellectual pretentiousness and general vulgarity is a model for many great comic characters of world literature and TV situation comedy. This section of "The Satyricon" establishes the poem as a text intriguing in its 'modernity'. Trimalchio, boasting of his improbable encounter with the Sibyl of Cumae, supplies T. S. Eliot with his epigraph to "The Waste Land" at the same time as enticing the reader into "The Odyssey" of Homer, Virgil's "Aeneid", and the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid. Petronius's character brags of meeting the Sibyl for only a few lines but this is enough to forge an intertextual association, indeed a metatextual commentary on the earlier Greek and Latin texts.

The Sibyl of Cumae, famed for her beauty and prophetic power, attracted the sexual advances of Phoebus, god of the sun. Aeneas, before beginning his descent into Hades, hears how the eloquent deity sought to lure her with grandiose promises of eternal youth. The seer continued to spurn Phoebus's lust until he vowed to grant her anything she asked without condition. Gesturing towards a mound of earth, the Sibyl demanded a year of life for every grain of sand it contained. However, overwhelmed by her desire for longevity, she failed to use her great gift of foresight. This, the most renowned of all classical sibyls, had forgotten the future and her need for youthfulness to accompany age. Aeneas and (supposedly) Trimalchio see the Sibyl caged in a perpetual present, powerless to disclose meaning, longing for death, mumbling in vain as beauty, memory and prophetic powers disintegrate like the old texts Petronius parodies throughout "The Satyricon".

Small wonder Nero dubbed Petronius 'Arbiter of Elegance'! Read this translation and you'll be hooked on Classics and licking your lips for more!

Very short but interesting none the less, 21 Jan 2000
Satyricon is a very short piece, 62 pages in total. Some of the translation is a bit odd and the translators have obviously used some poetic license to give it a contemporary feel. It is none the less quite an interesting piece on the excesses of a wealthy character called Trimalchio, who lived during the reign of Nero in Imperial Rome. It would certainly give you a good contrast to someone like Pliny the Younger.

Well, I very much enjoyed it myself, 19 May 2003
I have to disagree with Tony, I'm afraid. I thought Erewhon was very interesting and very amusing at times too. This was my first brush with Samuel Butler, so I did not really know what to expect, but despite the somewhat slow beginning (going into quite a bit of detail about how he reaches Erewhon), when he finally reached the lost civilisation, things really began to pick up.

The situation in which the narrator finds himself is at first curious, but quickly becomes outright bizarre. The values of the Erewhonians seem alien to us (sickness is punished by imprisonment, crime is merely frowned upon, beauty and manners are equated with morality) so that we are presented with a people who are both detestable and fascinating. At the same time, however, the Victorians who first read Butler's book would have come to realise the parallels between Erewhonian culture that of Victorian Britain, and it is the satire of the novel that is really interesting. The absurd institutions mentioned - the Musical Banks, the Colleges of Unreason, the Museum of the Machines - and the hypocritical nature of the Erewhonian religion, all would have reminded readers of their own world. For instance, at the Colleges of Unreason, the hypothetical language is taught, and the reader wonders why people would learn a language that has no use outside of the colleges. Then they realise that the same could be said for languages like Latin and ancient Greek. These are languages that are irrelevant to today, but are still studied in higher seats of learning.

In Erewhon, Butler created a satire of his own society that is both enlightening and entertaining. The characters are hardly very rounded and the story is not particularly filled out, but that hardly seems to matter. What Butler has to say is interesting, even now, and the way he says it is a delight to read. As E. M. Forster wrote concerning the author, "He wanted to write a serious book not too seriously". There were even times when his narrative had me giggling quitely to myself.

I would very much recommend this book.

GREAT IDEAS MADE TEDIOUS, 18 Mar 2000
This is a very stodgy and prolix 19th-century book, which none the less contains some excellent ideas of the social sci-fi variety. Looked at another way, it manages to bore you to death despite its shining originality. It was obviously written in a hurry (withholding the author's name) and was partly hacked together from Butler's essays; this is painfully evident in the later section, when you long for the interesting-but-sterile social analysis to end and the plot to move on. If only Butler had taken the time to weave his wonderful concepts more expertly into the fabric of the story, this could have been one of the classics of social science fiction. But it's still better than The Difference Engine.

Chattering Courtesans, 19 Feb 2008
Initially I thought this book was going to be incredibly difficult to read and so put off reading it for as long as possible.
However, chattering courtesans was interesting, insightful and at times even funny. Lucian makes fun pre-concieved ideals about women and men in that time. He even makes fun of religion and customs, for example mourning those who have died.




'True Histories', 10 Jun 2005
For the non-classicist Lucian is famous for his 'True Histories', recounting a fantastic voyage that incorporates a trip to the moon, an inter-stellar war, a sojourn in a whale so big it contains a land-mass and various inhabitants, and perilous encounters in numerous islands filled with strange and wonderful sights. Although it parodies Homer and other classical writers, you are inevitably reminded of subsequent works by Swift, Cyrano, Milton, Calvino, even Terry Gilliam.