I’m a book blogger myself, fitting into a niche somewhere between academic and intelligent general reader of literature. It does take courage and intellectual confidence. The poem can be read as an exhortation for us to behave ourselves, which is a horse of relevance that ought to be ridden.”Īs quoted by Charles McGrath in “Robert Fagles, Translator of the Classics, Dies at 74” in the New York Times, March 29, 2008. The price of empire is very steep, but Virgil shows how it is to be earned, if it’s to be earned at all. “It says that if you depart from the civilized, then you become a murderer. Here’s how the classics scholar Robert Fagles summed up The Aeneid: You can express the theme or message of even a complex, multilayered work in a few sentences if you know it well enough. This failing has less to do with dwindling review space and than with declining courage and intellectual confidence. Reviews often tell you almost everything about a novel except what it is really “about” beyond the plot details. The problem with book reviewing in America isn’t usually that it’s unfair or inaccurate – it’s that it’s dull.
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