Book Reviews: ‘Julian,’ by Philip Freeman; ‘Touch the Future,’ by John Lee Clark; and ‘Son of the Old West,’ by Nathan Ward
When we think of ancient Rome, it’s impossible not to think of Christianity, one of its most notable exports, but what if it hadn’t been? This is the question posed by Pepperdine University classicist Philip Freeman in JULIAN: The Last Pagan Emperor of Rome (Yale University Press, 154 pp., $26)a compelling new entry in Yale’s Ancient Lives series, telling the story of the last imperial torchbearer of the ancient faith.
Julian came to power in 361, after his cousin, Emperor Constantius II, died suddenly en route to battle. Once in power, Julian gave everyone a big surprise: he, the descendant of a large and devout Christian royal family, was a secret pagan and intended to rule as one and restore Rome to the religion of Julian’s ancestors. he.
Julian saw Christianity, in Freeman’s words, as “the cult of a Jewish carpenter and his motley crew of Galilean fishermen” that was “fit only for slaves and fools.” His predecessors and relatives had been prone to execution; Julian considered himself more philosophical, a “true ascetic who slept on a straw mattress” and despised Roman leisure activities such as drinking and partying.
He preferred to carry out his project through politicking. In the early days of his rule, “he took the unusual step of proclaiming universal religious toleration,” Freeman writes, although “his ultimate goal was to press the Church under the yoke of Roman power until it broke.” Instead of feeding Christians to the lions, he allowed controversial Orthodox bishops to return from exile, triggering a bloody civil war between Christian sects—“a smart move,” Freeman observes.
In 363, as his opposition to Christianity increased in intensity and purpose, he marched into Persia with a huge army, but was soon struck in the stomach by a spear and died. Jovian, a Christian cavalry officer, was chosen to succeed him, and Julian’s project to hinder growing Christian influence in the empire died with him. In Freeman’s telling, the enormous influence that Julian never had is palpable. “If it weren’t for a lucky Persian (or was it Roman?) spear on a distant battlefield,” Freeman writes, “Julian could have ruled the empire for decades and accomplished everything he set out to do. But we would live in a very different world than the one we know today.”
“In my community, we are in the midst of a revolution,” writes John Lee Clark in “Against Access,” the first essay in his lively and engaging collection. TOUCH THE FUTURE: A Manifesto in Essays (Norton, 187 pp., $25). His revolution is centered on Protáctil, a language touch baseddeveloped for and by deafblind people (the community’s preferred term).
In their efforts to help people understand elements of the world that are not made for them, traditional audiovisual language interpreters try to act as neutral media. Clark encourages something different: a brutal form of subjectivity. Early in the coronavirus pandemic, a deafblind woman at a doctor’s appointment was working with a tactile interpreter whom Clark had helped train. “The TV over there: it’s on Covid,” the interpreter told him. “Do you want me to pass it on to you?” Having never heard of Covid, the deafblind woman ignored the interpreter. The interpreter insisted, creating emphasis by grabbing the woman’s shoulders. Once she understood gravity, did I want the TV news report to air. “An ASL interpreter would never have done that,” Clark writes, “unless he allowed his instincts to override his training.”
Clark has always been deaf, but was born with an ability to see that diminished as he aged, and is able to make clear distinctions between different types of life, speaking fluently to those of us who experience the full use of our eyes and ears. . without thinking about it. “The vision of deafblind people is often better than sight: we know where everything is,” he writes. “The bad news is that we also see, or imagine we see, everything behind the walls, under the refrigerator, inside the space between the floor and the bottom of the cabinet under the sink.”
Some of the most touching moments in the book are those that open a window into Clark’s family life. His wife, Adrean, is deaf but sees; her three children hear and see. At his house, Clark uses tactile signals in Protactile to go beyond mere communication. “Protactile,” he writes, “has given me a way to watch Adrean hard at work weaving strips of paper for his famous homemade greeting cards, or one of my children playing a video game, or eavesdropping on a conversation already in progress. progress. “
When it comes to entertaining characters, the cowboy is hard to beat.
The real life of real cowboys is another matter. Driving cattle is difficult. So is being a traveling outlaw; all weapons and shooting generate high mortality rates.
Charlie Siringo, born in Texas in 1855 and protagonist of Nathan Ward’s book. SON OF THE OLD WEST: The Odyssey of Charlie Siringo: Cowboy, Detective, Writer of the Wild Frontier (Atlantic Monthly Press, 347 pages, $28), He managed to leave his mark on both real and imaginary realms.
Ward tells the story of a strange and distinctly American life, one that became intertwined in all facets of the Old West and cowboy culture; Siringo is largely responsible for the birth of the mythical American cowboy, the careless and sometimes deranged hero of the Wild West.
His childhood was interrupted by the Civil War. After the South surrendered, and as demand for beef grew during the cattle boom, the skill of dealing with wild and feral animals became increasingly valuable. Siringo quickly joined legendary American ranchers and cattle kings like Abel “Shanghai” Pierce, so named because his long neck resembled that of a Shanghai rooster.
Ward’s book is full of research and description. Sometimes too dense. The colorful stories (about horse thefts, dangerous wagon journeys, betrayals, and shootouts) occasionally sink under the weight of benign details; When Siringo meets Billy the Kid, for example, Ward offers the interesting detail that Billy gave him a novel with an inscription, and then proceeds to explain that the exact name of the book is lost to history, because Siringo failed to keep it. until the end of his life, which we know because it was not in the collection of books that his daughter was selling in a store.
Still, Siringo led an eventful existence and seemed to know it. He became a successful memoirist, publishing cowboy adventure stories, and then an undercover detective at the Pinkerton Agency, hunting down wanted murderers and infiltrating train robber gangs.
“People reinvented themselves all over the West,” Ward writes. “In the case of Siringo dozens of times.” After multiple third acts (failed marriages, tortured relationships, and legal problems), Siringo left for Los Angeles, where Hollywood, in the 1920s, was popularizing westerns and where someone like Siringo could become a consultant for slice-of-life performances. border that I had just experienced. after he had almost disappeared. “No other cowboy talked so much about himself in print,” Ward quotes Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie, and “few had more to talk about.”
