Word: tigellinus
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That Hersey novel is really pretty bad. It's about an unsuccessful conspiracy to murder Nero, but for some unfathomable reason he has chosen to write it entirely as a series of documents, mostly memos between two police officials known only as Tigellinus and Paenus. Even at times of high crisis they stop to send each other long memoranda in a kind of pseudo Latin, using terms like "the fourth night hour." And they consistently refer to Nero as Himself. Do we really need a review...
...passing along intercepted copies of letters between Seneca and Lucan, and the two writers keep hacking away at the question "What is a writer's responsibility?" Seneca says, "A writer cannot change the world; his duty is to describe it." Then there's the chief police official, Tigellinus, who says, "A writer has no responsibilities, for responsibilities are the burden of power. He is, at best, an entertainer, like that trained bear we saw nodding its head and catching apples in its mouth the other evening." Lucan is the angry militant, arguing that a writer "must answer...
...Vanitas? Maybe Hersey is being ironic in his use of memos between police officials, though Yalemen are not noted for a sense of irony. The deadline is still next Tuesday. As Tigellinus often says, "This is a command...
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