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shelfspacewanted · 6 years ago

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The Far Arena: Final Thoughts

Richard Ben Sapir’s The Far Arena was first published in 1978, by Seaview Books, a division of Playboy Enterprises. I had low expectations going in.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Our main character is Eugeni, Lucius Aurelius Eugenianus, formerly the premier gladiator of Rome. Sentenced to obscurity and exile for offending the gods of Rome he is marched north to freeze to death at the shores of the German Sea. Where he would have stayed if an American oil company hadn’t dug him up, and a Russian scientist hadn’t thawed him out.

For the first half of the book, the narrative switches between Eugeni’s semi-delirious recollection of the events leading up to his banishment, and the scientists’ attempts to understand exactly what it is they have uncovered. The second half of the book properly begins when Eugeni wakes up. Although the second half of the book read faster (to me) than the first half, Eugeni in 1978 C.E. Norway wasn’t nearly as engaging as Eugeni in 79 C.E. Rome. The second half of the book properly belongs to the modern characters, petroleum geologist Lew, Cryonics specialist Semyon, and Latin scholar Sister Olav. More to Lew and Sister Olav. Semyon, bless him, is just kind of along for the ride.

Lew and Eugeni are rather neat foils for one another. Both from humble origins, both athletes, both nearing the ends of their respected careers, one anticipates retiring to modest success, the other to fame and great wealth. One married for love, the other for prestige. One holds the power to manipulate the people around him and loses it, one gains it. One big, one small. I like Lew. I like that Sapir is able to show us his kinship with Eugeni long before Lew recognizes it in himself. Most of all I liked that we were given two men who could oppose each other without sinking too far into irredeemable villainy.

I’ll admit that I worried about Sister Olav’s presence. She’s a beautiful nun in a book published by Playboy; it could have been so bad. Again, I was pleasantly surprised. My one complaint regarding Sister Olav is that the conflict that’s supposed to be central to her character, deciding whether to give up her study of Latin to pursue life as a contemplative, gets brought up early and then is dropped almost entirely. When it does reappear, it gets shunted into the last three chapters before being (sort of) resolved. Lew gets the whole book to develop his arc, Sister Olav gets three slightly rushed chapters. Eugeni pretty much had his shit together from the beginning, and poor Semyon doesn’t really get to do anything in terms of character development.

In general, Sapir seems to relax and gain confidence in his story as he goes along. There’s some heavy handed foreshadowing in the earliest chapters, and some awkward turns of phrase, but for the most part I bumped along pretty happily. The second half of the novel read much faster than the first, right up until the last three chapters. Have you heard the complaint that the movie version of The Return of the King has about five endings too many? That’s sort of how the last three chapters felt. Actually, the last chapter was wonderful, but the preceding two could easily have been condensed without losing track of the emotional climax.

The Far Arena has been out of print for about 40 years. If you find it by chance go ahead and pick it up. There are one or two inconsistencies that don’t detract from the story too much, and I doubt that the depictions of Roman daily life are up to the current standards of archaeological and historical accuracy, but that’s partially the point. This is definitely a book for adults, and if gore is something you’re especially sensitive to you might want to give it a pass. If you’ve already read or can’t find The Far Arena, you may want to check out Steven Saylor’s murder mystery Roman Blood, the first book in the Roma Sub Rosa series, which this book has given me powerful urge to re-read (even though I just read it again last year, dang it! I have a pile to get through!)

#The Far Arena #Richard Ben Sapir

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shelfspacewanted · 6 years ago

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The Far Arena

So a geologist, a nun, a Soviet cryonics expert, and a gladiator walk into a novel.

This week we’re reading Richard Ben Sapir’s 1978 novel The Far Arena, apparently a Playboy Book Club Main Selection. I’m not sure how this is going to go, to be honest. I’ve started this book and put it down before, but I’m hoping that the blog will give me the motivation (strength?) to finish it. Not that I remember it being awful. Just odd.

For those of you who aren’t like me (i.e., people who read half a book to figure out the important characters and immediately read the Wikipedia page) initial spoiler-y thoughts are going to appear under the Read More.

Looking back I had a lot of thoughts about this book. Mostly about the first half though.

1. Yay! A glossary! I love books with glossaries. The only things better than glossaries are pronunciation guides, and maps.

2. I know that a sesterce is a Roman coin. I knew that before I read the glossary. But I would like to know an exchange rate. How many grapes can you buy with one sesterce?

3. I feel like everyone’s CV should include “Offender of the gods of Rome” somewhere.

4. He’s Aang.

5. “The body was quiet as an unborn thought in a dark universe,” Dude, I think you could have left it at “unborn thought.”

6. “The retinas of the eyes were solid. The ligaments were solid. The blood that had stopped suddenly in the veins and arteries could have been chipped by a knife.” So... it was solid?

7. “Life stopped.” Death. The word you’re looking for is death.

8. Watch out, man! You’re starting to drift towards H.P. Lovecraft levels of “impressed by your own prose.”

9. Ah, here comes our geologist, Lew. Let’s see what RBS has to say about him. “His round face was red, and the tufts of remaining hair mingled strawberry blond with white, and it would have been a very cute face if he were not six foot three inches tall and closer to three hundred pounds than two hundred.” A cuddly face.

10. I get the sense that Lew would rather be in a noir novel than in this one.

11. Oh no. Lew is only one expedition away from retirement. RIP, Lew.

12. We are now told that Lew is “nice,” but since his introduction a page ago the author has established that he’s cynical and grumpy.

13. Scientists discover frozen Roman in Arctic Ice! Amazingly this book was published 12 years before Jurassic Park and 13 years before Ötzi was discovered. Who’s the real time traveler, Richard Ben Sapir?!

14. Lew, I am also a rock-person, not a biology-person. But even I know that the blood inside your body isn’t yellow and doesn’t turn red when it encounters oxygen. Plasma is yellow, and red blood cells get redder when they’re oxygenated, but that happens inside your body.

15. Ah, a ferrety, incompetent, arrogant, suck-up superintendent appears; guaranteed to appeal to the common, working man!

16. “The silence came like doom-trumpets in a nightmare.” New band name, called it!

17. Oil drilling crew: We’re freaked out that we maybe drilled through a body and we’d like to dig it up to bury it respectfully.

Superintendent: Never!

Looks like someone skipped day two of the management seminar.

18. I’m not going to quote it here, but there’s been some nice, heavy-handed foreshadowing going on about how Romans described the color of blood and the battles that men fight.

19. Yes, yes! That’s right, exposit about how weak and powerless Lew is! Get your target audience (which if I’m reading this right are disaffected lower management types feeling like they could have been something if only the world was on their side) all riled up! Then introduce the virile, defiant gladiator guy who pissed off authority so much that he got himself labeled “Offender of the Gods of Rome.”

20. Okay, so our virile, defiant, gladiator is about five-foot nothing and in his birthday suit. My point still stands. They’ve nicknamed him Charlie.

21. “Well, Dead men’s beards grow. Charlie’s didn’t.” “They grow because the hair follicles are alive after the body is dead. But this body was eight point two meters down in ice.” Lew! Lew; Lew. You’re killing me here. You say that with such confidence, and you're just so, so wrong. Hair and fingernails appear to grow after death because the surrounding tissues desiccate and shrink back along the hair/nails. Now look. There’s bullshit science that I’ll accept without (much) comment because it’s necessary to move the plot forward (or, really, just because it sounds cool). But these little details are just so blatantly wrong.

22. Well gosh, guys. If the little frozen naked man was going to freak you out that bad, maybe next time don’t dig it up!

23. I admire Lew’s genre savvy determination to hold onto his paperwork.

24. Ah. Enter the Russian Cryonics specialist.

25. Turns out our friend here is only mostly dead.

26. Nurse: Don’t bother Dr. Petrovich while he’s working, I’ll explain everything.

Lew: Okay, what’s happening now?

Nurse: Sshh!

27. He is not dead yet, he can bleed and he can think! He is not dead yet, someone get poor Lew a drink!

28. For a dude who’s currently delirious after almost 2,000 years of being sorta-dead our little Roman friend almost instantly recognizes modern Norwegian as being a germanic language. Meanwhile the MD, the PhD, and several trained nurses need to bring in a latin scholar to confirm which romance language he’s mumbling in.

29. Eugeni is the very best, richest, most paranoid gladiator in Rome, apparently. And he just wants the angry mob to leave so he can go home. No, Publius, we aren’t going to your kegger, I’m going to MY house to see MY wife and that’s that.

30. So the latin scholar is a nun. But not just any nun. A hot nun who loves Vergil. Naturally.

31. “Like other Scandinavian countries, Norway was overwhelmingly Protestant, and the religious wars having ended centuries before, the residual contempt had been composted into an overripe courtesy, nourishing massive blossoms of delicate human concern.”

32. Sister Olav: Now children, we can learn about the Aeneid, which is surely the height of Rome’s artistic achievement, or we can talk about the trashy spectacle of gladiator fights. What’s it to be, glory or garbage?

Children: Garbage!

31. Mother Superior: The university sent you these tapes of a strange and unknown language!

Sister Olav: I count five grammatical errors. Clearly this is a hoax perpetrated by my shithead students.

32. Holy shit. I thought that nothing and no one could surpass Alcibiades in the “You should have stopped talking like three hours ago” department. Good folk, gentles all, I give you Publius. First he drunkenly storms the senate to tell them how they ought to run Rome. They throw him out. Then he stands outside the forum and lectures the slaves on the corruption of the senate. They ignore him. Then he runs into Emperor Domitian at the races and lists all of his faults, and passes out in a pool of his own vomit. Then he wakes up, drinks more wine, insists that he means everything he said, and insists that the Emperor allow him to prove his sincerity... in a match against his friend, the greatest gladiator of them all, Eugeni.

33. Eugeni has this all planned out with the emperor’s emissary. He’ll fight naked. He’ll kill his friend. Then, the Emperor will offer him the wooden sword that signifies his retirement. Eugeni refuses, once, twice! The mob roars its acclamation! Domitian descends to the sand and presses the sword into Eugeni’s hand. Bewildered, he begins to fall upon his own sword, but Domitian shields him with his own body, and with the Emperor’s supporting arm about his shoulder, Eugeni stumbles across the arena where he is declared senator! Admission three sesterces.

34. By the way, Publius happens to be besties with Eugeni’s wife. She doesn’t know about any of this yet.

35. It’s so handy that Eugeni is coherently narrating this for Lew and Sister Olav and Dr. Petrovich, even though he’s supposedly delirious.

36. Eugeni: My friend, you are free!

Eugeni’s friend: Neat, I’m busy.

Eugeni: Isn’t there anything that I can give you?

Eugeni’s friend: You have a pretty slave with blue-green eyes.

Eugeni: that’s my wife.

Eugeni’s Friend: .... this is awkward.

Eugeni: .... you have excellent taste.

37. Lew is coming up in the world.

38. Too bad his marriage sucks. His daughters sound cool though.

39. Miriamne: ... And that’s Christianity 101.

Eugeni: That’s ridiculous, but anyway I have some bad news for you.

Miriamne: Oh no, mister. You said you don’t bring bad news home with you. Now let me explain how the Trinity works.

Eugeni: My love, this is a matter of life and death!

Miramne: so is this. *boops nose*

40. Petronius: Dad, tomorrow I will be ready to become a man.

Eugeni: “Good. Very good. Very, very good. That is good. It is good. Very.”

Petronius: .... Dad, are you ... okay?

Eugeni: Fine!

41. Eugeni: Son, now that you are 14 and a man I will share with you a Great Truth which I have learned in the arena. All men, be they Germans, Gauls, or Greeks, are alike.

Petronius: Except for Romans, which are The Best™.

Eugeni: ... What have I wrought?

42. Lew, stop lying to nuns.

43. We have now unlocked Eugeni’s tragic backstory. Well, back-backstory. Technically this is all backstory. Will we ever get to front story?

44. LEW! What did I just say about lying to nuns?! I hope you aren’t becoming a baddie.

45. Brave Eugeni ran away. Bravely ran away, away! When filial piety reared it’s ugly head by contrasting the unfeeling nature of Roman motherhood with his own beloved and half-remembered mother who he’s still pretty sensitive about, gallantly he chickened out.

46. Eugeni: Son, I love you more than anything else in the world except your mother. If anything happens to your mother I will find you and I will end you.

Petronius: What the fuck, dad?

Miriamne: Do you realize that we’ve been married for 14 years and this is the first time you’ve said you love me?

Eugeni: Can we all please focus on the rabid mob about to descend on us?

47. Well, no one is going to be singing “Always look on the bright side of life.”

48. Eugeni has taken charge of rallying the legion sent to drive him into exile because someone has to steer this sinking ship and no one else is taking the initiative.

49. Ah! Tall hairy people! Every Roman’s worst nightmare.

50. And not a drop of garum to be found. Poor Eugeni.

51. Eugeni: If people come to this hospital to get well, how is it that I can’t have wine?

52. Eugeni: If you are such a great physician, did you study in Egypt?

Dr. Petrovich: No, I studied in a worker’s paradise where all men own everything and there is justice and hope and security for all.

Eugeni: So what are you doing here?

53. Someone get this man a cup of cocoa and an electric blanket.

54. Lew, you’re behaving more and more like a sinister executive, and it makes me nervous.

55. Wow, the second half of this book is moving much faster than the first half. Possibly because we’re no longer jumping back and forth through time? I’m not sure.

56.It’s so nice that Eugeni was able to get a celebrity to officiate his wedding.

#The Far Arena #Richard Ben Sapir

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