Congratulations Alexias Son Of Myron You Just Invented Christianity

“Goodnight and great love to you. We see the same stars.”

— George Mallory, from a letter to his wife Ruth during the 1921 Everest Reconnaissance Expedition (via archaeologicals)

“Give me to be beautiful within,” Socrates had prayed, “and for me let outward and inward things be reconciled together.” (99)

A little tribute piece to what is probably, definitely my favorite comfort novel, The Charioteer by Mary Renault.

was the inquisitor corresponding with Tatiana lightwood? is that why he would want to burn a random letter and any other evidence he had that he had a vendetta against the lightwoods and herondales? 😭😭😭

Hello there, I would love to hear all your thoughts on 'The Last of the Wine'!

Hey, thanks for the ask! I really loved Last of the Wine! Alexias was a lovely character, and it was really interesting to watch his development and the development of his relationship with Lysis! He was so sweet in the beginning and then he became harder as the book went on; his father said that he once thought Alexias was 'too soft' to be a soldier, and I think he was right to feel that way at a certain point! His entire character progression was a trip to get through!

I absolutely loved the writing, which was beautiful as always, and there are some parts of the story I don't think I'm going to forget about anytime soon; the story of Phaedo (I cried), the moment Alexias exposes his brother and asks him 'bear no ill-will to me' (I cried), quotes like 'at Gurgos's once I lay awake considering how to kill him. But already it was too late,' 'I saw death reach out for you; and I had no philosophy,' 'if there be any god who concerns himself with the lives of men, the god himself must suffer with me,' etc. etc. It was just so good but very disturbing in some points...sometimes, you never stop to wonder why people do the things they do and only see that what has been done is evil. In a way, this is good; evil things ought to be derided as such no matter the circumstances, but in another way it is unfair and unhelpful. This is how I feel about a lot of the last third of the book: I understand why and how certain things happened, I just wish that they hadn't happened.

Something that made me laugh though and which I will think about forever are the few scenes where it's apparent Mary Renault is writing with a modern audience in mind, like the absolutely hilarious scene where Alexias is afraid of asking Xenophon if he only likes girls because he doesn't want to offend him 😭 or the scene where Alexias, assuring his dying father of vengeance, says: "Am I so base of soul as to forgive my enemies?" They're really cool scenes because they kind of play with the expectations of a modern audience and subvert common sentiments and understandings in modern culture and society; the opposite situation in the Xenophon scene would seem likelier to a modern person (especially at the time Mary Renault was writing) with Xenophon worrying about offending Alexias by asking him if he likes boys. And it's really a head-trip to read that question asked by Alexias because it's a direct contradiction to the common and widely known sentiment of forgiveness and loving your enemies within Christianity...this becomes 10x funnier 10 pages later when Alexias accidentally stumbles onto the whole point of Christianity 'God with us' 😭😭😭 I love the whole sequence of these scenes because they seem written specifically to challenge the reader; to get it through your mind that this was a foreign place and time, and these people are foreign to us; they have an understanding different from our own...but maybe not completely different at the same time.

Anyway, I don't know if this makes sense, my thoughts are kind of all over the place with this one but the tldr version of it is: I loved it! The writing was beautiful! It made me sad!

i agree the dave thing is so funny, especially when laurie gets distracted from Andrew’s story about his awful depressing childhood to be jealous about dave’s entire existence, and then has to spend a few mins convincing andrew he’s still interested in his story and it’s not boring 😭 that bit kills me, i don’t know why some people say Mary isn’t a funny writer! but my personal interpretation, mostly based on the end conversation with dave, is that he must give off ~vibes~, just based on when dave says “i think you’ve misunderstood things between andrew and I” and then couple that with him being in love with bertie. and we do know that laurie can pick up on vibes, because he’s actually pretty good at picking up on andrew.

I think Laurie is generally hilarious, at times intentionally, at others not! There are lots of scenes I remember laughing at as I want along 😭

I do think you're right about vibes and about them being important, and of course Laurie is good at picking them up, kind of because he has to be. Honestly, I think most characters in this book have to be vibe-masters 😭 that's what I feel like many of the conversations with meeting new characters is like: simply vibe-checks 😭 That being said, I did really like the explanation regarding some weird-misplaced idea of influence that Laurie puts on Andrew, because in the scene that makes me laugh and another before it, Andrew actually does establish that Dave influences him, the only problem is that Laurie assumes there must be something romantic behind it. Those are the vibes he was getting, and you're right, he could've just picked up on Dave and connected dots, but I think there's more to it than that. The next few scenes after this one (the hilarious Reg-seduction scene and also tea with Adrian) kind of offer some more interesting insight; in both scenes, the idea of influence is referred to and explored, with Andrew being the center of it in the former. It seems even Reg has an idea that Andrew ought to be 'positively influenced'

I don't know 😭 I have this theory developing in my head, but I don't know if it's wrong because I haven't finished the rest of the book. And this book specifically is so cool because every time you think you understand a part of it, something else happens and you have to go back and recontextualize everything 😭 regardless, thank you for sharing your interpretation with me! It really makes me think about everything I've already read, and try to see what I could've missed and need to think more about.

I feel like I’m just being my 10-year-old self. The whole project is to just honor my 10-year-old self. I just rejected feminine — feminine — I wrote this fucking song, “Feminomenon,” and I can’t ever say the actual word. Femininity. Oh, yes, femininity. I hated it. So now my whole persona is just me trying to honor that version of myself that I was never allowed to be. | chappell roan in conversation with trixie mattel, PAPER magazine

The TE Lawrence quote ‘Sacrifice uplifts the redeemer and casts down the bought’ – you mentioned that it might be a clue to how Alec/Ralph’s relationship ended.  I wondered what your thoughts are on this?  I can never work out if it is that Alec wants to ‘look after Ralph’ or doesn’t want Ralph to ‘look after him’.  I mean, a bit of both I’m sure, but I still wonder what it looks like? And also, how was it reading that cliffhanger ending for the first time?

So, my whole idea comes from the fact that Alec and Ralph seem somewhat similar in personality to me. I got the impression that both wanted to take some responsibility; Ralph in literally everything, and Alec in a relationship...about the T.E. Lawrence quote: full disclaimer, I haven’t read the book it's from. I'm probably way off base, but just on its own, the quote to me came across as: complex men understand that sacrifice uplifts the one who partakes in it, and casts down the one for whom it is done. The first redeems the second, but the second will always be beneath the first; he is ‘bought’ (i.e. indebted) and also ‘cast down.’ When it’s mentioned by Alec, I assumed he was referring both to himself and Ralph as being those ‘complex men’ who also 'sacrifice.’ There was also a direct mention of Sandy prior to it being brought up, so I linked the whole thing both to Alec’s relationship (and impression) of Ralph (who he says is ‘complex’ but remains innocent about it), along with his relationship to Sandy (who I assume is the one ‘bought’).

So, the way I read it was: Alec identifies himself as a ‘complex man' who understands the implication of being the one to sacrifice for another person; he identifies Ralph as such a complex man too, but seems annoyed that Ralph doesn't understand that the people for whom he sacrifices are inevitably 'cast down' and 'bought.' He maintains an innocence about things in general and this bothers Alec. Later on, Alec obviously says that Ralph never let him do anything in their relationship, so I made a leap and connected this comment to the quote and came away with a vague idea that in their relationship Ralph probably would’ve been the one who 'sacrificed’ and Alec would’ve been the one who was ‘cast down,’ i.e. Alec was expected to depend on Ralph, who took all responsibility while Alec was never allowed to fulfil any similar role; Ralph never let himself depend on Alec, or let him help in any way. This would’ve been an inherently unequal relationship and I don't think Alec would've liked it (because again, I see him as similar to Ralph in the sense he wants responsibility; he himself also says most of their arguments resulted from Ralph's inability to just let him help or do anything).

Re the cliffhanger: the first time I read it, it did a number on me…I didn’t much understand it, because I was rushing to get through and see what happened with Ralph. When I finally got to the end, and read ‘I should’ve had to come back,’ I was honestly...flabbergasted, I think is the correct word? I didn’t realise that Laurie was lying, so it seemed the sweetest thing in the world. I remember the whole day after I finished the book, I kept thinking about those words and wondering what happened! The last paragraph seemed to indicate a happy ending (I read it like three times over lol), but I hated how abrupt it all was. It wasn't until some time had passed that I actually started to liked the abruptness. Also, it really made me want to read the Phaedrus!

“reader, i married him” my sister in christ he locked his first wife in the attic

it’s wilfred owen’s 131st birthday today and idk about you but it’s really important to me in particular

The way it was talked about before the book came out made me think there was going to be more of Elias and his interactions/relationship with Alastair and Sona. I mean, there must've been a scene where they each first interacted with him alone. Idk, it felt really meh to just have a total of about 3 scenes wherein Elias was either being weird, drunk or just horrible and then he dies. Like, "here hate him for being bad before I kill him." I think the whole thing should've been explored more, idk.

We also get one line that suggests he doesn't want to have the new baby, which is another thing that was hinted at a bunch and which I thought would actually be talked about openly at some point and explored, not just tucked away in a rant before he dies and never really formally addressed. And I might be misremembering, but weren't Alastair and Cordelia going to have secret and important meetings about him or something? There was one scene where they talked after dinner but that's it? And Sona was so sure he'd changed and needed to be given another chance - - why?

I realize the writing must be based around whatever drives the plot, so such scenes would seem add-on but that only calls into question why Alastair isn't so much more important to the plot 😤 smh,,,, I just think there could've been a lot more Carstairs scenes in the book that would've helped in understanding each of the Carstairs characters.