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Title: The Hero's Apprentice : Essays by Laurence Gonzales
University Press
Item Number: 9781557283603
Number: 1
Product Description: Full Name: The Hero's Apprentice : Essays by Laurence Gonzales; Short Name:The Hero's Apprentice
Universal Product Code (UPC): 9781557283603
WonderClub Stock Keeping Unit (WSKU): 9781557283603
Rating: 5/5 based on 2 Reviews
Image Location: https://wonderclub.com/images/covers/36/03/9781557283603.jpg
Weight: 0.200 kg (0.44 lbs)
Width: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Heigh : 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Depth: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Date Added: August 25, 2020, Added By: Ross
Date Last Edited: August 25, 2020, Edited By: Ross
Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
$99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub (9296 total ratings) |
Mary M Bryant
reviewed The Hero's Apprentice : Essays by Laurence Gonzales on August 28, 2014This was, after Stoner and Butcher's Crossing, my 3rd John Williams!
I have started reading Augustus on the 99th birth anniversary of John Williams (this was a perfect time to read the next Williams' masterpiece).
[John Edward Williams, August 29, 1922 - March 3, 1994.]
ðŸ’🌺ðŸµï¸ðŸŒ±â˜˜ï¸ ðŸ’
•|•
From the Introduction:
"John Williams's four novels are so different from one another in subject matter, setting and time that it has been said that they could pass for the work of four different writers."
"Williams held to the belief that to read anything without joy or pleasure was stupid, that a novel or poem was there to be experienced rather than to be understood or explicated."
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The Book:
Augustus is written in the epistolary form [*Epistolary: in the form of letters, journal entries, clippings or other documents]. Hence, this book is 'different' and was a wee bit difficult at the start. But, after the first few chapters, it became very interesting. It was like being among the waves of the ocean - ‘waves with feelings’ that were mostly harsh, rude, gentle, selfish, soothing, funny, intimate, upset and few of them were inspiring and hopeful. It also felt as if being in the front row of a theatre and watching a stage play with many characters who kept coming one at a time and pouring their heart out.
[Statue of Augustus, wikipedia.org.]
Augustus is, primarily, the life story of Augustus Caesar [born September 23, 63 BC - died August 19, 14 AD], the first Roman emperor, whose original name was Gaius Octavius. However, this book has the voices of many people who are directly and indirectly connected to Augustus Caesar. It can be said that Caesar is the central character of this book, he is the Sun with many of the other characters such as Caesar's family, friends, rivals and subjects revolving around him like the planets.
This book is about the need to choose courage, sacrifice, honour by realising your destiny and finding the desire for greatness. It is about being an individual who is ready to test himself over and over for a lifetime - it is about life.
-Are you ready to embrace greatness by changing yourself, preparing yourself, subjecting yourself?
-Do you believe in the destiny of greatness or a fate of mediocrity?
-Are you willing to pay the price and make the sacrifices?
John Williams masterfully delivers answers to these questions in Augustus.
In 44 BC, on a particular day in March, four friends were resting on a hill in a place called Apollonia. A horseman comes over with an important message for one of the friends, Octavius, a message from his mother that says about his adopted father and uncle, Julius Caesar, being murdered by the Senators of Rome. All the four friends were shocked, however, it is to be noted how Octavius displays calmness and also realises his destiny in this moment of grief. Thus, begins the momentous and extraordinary journey of a 19-year-old kid who will become an emperor!
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Of Augustus:
"I thought him a pleasant stripling, no more, with a face too delicate to receive the blows of fate, with a manner too diffident to achieve purpose, and with a voice too gentle to utter the ruthless words that a leader of men must utter. I thought that he might become a scholar of leisure, or a man of letters; I did not think that he had the energy to become even a senator, to which his name and wealth entitled him."
“Late into the night the only sound that could be heard was the lap and hiss of water against the burning hulls and the low moans of the wounded; a glow of burning hung over the harbor, and Caesar Augustus, his face stark and reddened in that glow, stood at the prow of his ship and looked upon the sea that held the bodies of those brave men, both comrade and foe, as if there were no difference between them.â€
“For Octavius Caesar is Rome; and that, perhaps, is the tragedy of his life. Oh, Strabo, if the truth were known, I feel that his life is over; in these past few years he has endured more than any man ought to endure.â€
“Almost like a philosopher, he is without faith in the old gods of his countrymen; yet almost like a peasant, he is extraordinarily superstitious.â€
•|•
Thus spake Augustus!::
"It was more nearly an instinct than knowledge, however, that made me understand that if it is one's destiny to change the world, it is his necessity first to change himself."
â€Though I probably could not have articulated it then, I knew that my destiny was simply this: to change the world.â€
â€And yet in the weakest of men, in moments when they are alone and themselves, I have found veins of strength like gold in decaying rock; in the crudest of men flashes of tenderness and compassion; and in the vainest of men moments of simplicity and grace.â€
“The soldier who has chosen war for his profession in the midst of battle longs for peace, and in the security of peace hungers for the clash of sword and the chaos of the bloody field; the slave who sets himself against his unchosen servitude and by his industry purchases his freedom, then binds himself to a patron more cruel and demanding than his master was; the lover who abandons his mistress lives thereafter in his dream of her imagined perfection.â€
“The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself.â€
“...and for a while, convinced of the brotherhood of man and beast, I refused to eat any flesh, and felt for my horse a kinship that I had not dreamed possible.â€
â€I have come to believe that in the life of every man, late or soon, there is a moment when he knows beyond whatever else he might understand, and whether he can articulate the knowledge or not, the terrifying fact that he is alone, and separate, and that he can be no other than the poor thing that is himself.â€
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From the notes:
"It is the world of Rome, where no man knows his enemy or his friend, where license is more admired than virtue, and where principle has become servant to self."
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It is odd to wait in a powerless world, where nothing matters. In the world from which I came, all was power; and everything mattered. One even loved for power; and the end of love became not its own joy, but the myriad joys of power.
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The conceit that the gods had separated land from land by the unimaginable depths of ocean so that the peoples in those lands might be distinct, and man in his foolhardiness launches his frail bark upon an element that ought not to be touched.
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The poet contemplates the chaos of experience, the confusion of accident, and the incomprehensible realms of possibility —which is to say the world in which we all so intimately live that few of us take the trouble to examine it.
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And finally::
The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel — John Williams::
[Source: ft.com]
Dear John Williams, thank you kindly, for Stoner, Butcher`s Crossing and Augustus. You have provided a memorable, outstanding and masterful literary experience and this shall be cherished and valued until the end of time. You are requested to accept the heartfelt and sincere apologies and pardon us for not appreciating your writings and literature whilst you were still here. It is a promise that you shall be dearly and profoundly missed.
-truly and sincerely, your loving reader.
I make the soldier's vow - you lead, and we shall go together, both ready to slog the road that ends all roads.
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