
Robert Graves' Mythologies - gruseom
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-keys-to-robert-gravess-mythologies/
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officemonkey
"I, Claudius" was one of the most amusing and interesting books I've read.

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nihonde
One of the greatest audiobooks, too. Narrated by Derek Jacobi, so you know
it’s top-notch.

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officemonkey
Absolutely.

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MaupitiBlue
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzLuG3tM84I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzLuG3tM84I)
Interview from 1965.

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inopinatus
Graves’s translation of _The Twelve Caesars_ was a formative work in my
teenage years and (along with _Das Glasperlenspiel_ ) defined my view of
humanity for some considerable time and still rings true many decades hence.

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billfruit
His "Goodbye to All That" is a good memoir of the First World War. Though his
Mythologies are the most readable or engaging one. I prefer Thomas Bullfinch
for Mythology.

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billfruit
I meant aren't the most readable

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vo2maxer
This is quite a cantankerous view of Graves.

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Isamu
How so? Please expand.

They sum up as follows: "Aside from a few devotees of the White Goddess, no
one rates Graves as a prophet these days, but his books, some of them at
least, are too good to be left “lying about.” The best of them should be
picked up and read. We should be grateful that it’s easier than ever to
rediscover Graves and grant his work the attention it deserves."

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vo2maxer
Is hard to take this last paragraph seriously when most of what the reviewer
has said up to that point sounds grumpy and reluctant:

“...risking his reputation on cranky ideas, for revising masterpieces and
making them worse, for alienating friends and abandoning family.”

“...self-destructive impulses led Graves to think he could safely inhabit a
household comprising himself, his wife Nancy, his lover Laura Riding, his
wife’s lover Geoffrey Taylor, and several children. Their “quadrilateral”
ended poorly, with Graves hurling himself from a third-story window in pursuit
and imitation of Riding, who had just thrown herself from the fourth floor.”

“Perhaps he expected that someone, someday would do for him what he had once
done for the Roman emperor Claudius...”

“...a few on the esoteric and occult fringes still agree with him.”

“... Graves, never humble, characterized the “inspiration” that descended upon
him...”

“Can we read Graves without looking to the moon?”

“When writing fiction, he almost invariably constructs so sturdy a framework
of fact, theory, conjecture, and supposition that the conventional pleasures
of fiction are elided.”

“Perhaps Nausicaa is Graves’s self-portrait as ruthless artist.”

“Graves is a great accumulator of incidental detail and memorable anecdotes
but, as ever, he’s an indifferent analyst of character.”

“Dozens of Graves’s books have little hope of emerging from the lead casket of
obscurity.”

