*sigh* I really wanted to say nothing about this book. I didn't post a review on Amazon, and I certainly won't put one on Goodreads. This book is not to be encouraged. To give you an idea, William Howard is a penname. The actual author is William Johnston. Not to be confused with William Johnstone, mind you. This Johnston was mostly known for writing novelizations of TV shows, especially Get Smart. It ranged from Dr. Kildare to Happy Days, so yeah, I wouldn't want my actual name on this book, either. And it's not for the reason you might think.
Before we go any further, it is worth noting that we really know nothing reliably about the real life Caligula. The only contemporary extant account of him was written by an enemy, so it's altogether possible that Caligula got a raw deal, that this guy just had a vendetta against him. Still unlikely but certainly possible.
That in mind, let's talk about being offensive. Many of you know how much I delight in being offensive, but I hope, aside from the childish tee-hee moments, that you don't think I go for the lowest common denominator. I put a lot of effort into being offensive. The delight of being offensive is getting creative with it.
Plain old offense is really fucking easy. White guys who use the n-word offend me. Child rapists offend me. The former president of this country deeply offended me. See how easy that is? I never want to go that route. I want giant space cocks destroying humanity. I want . . . well, you know. If you're reading this, chances are you've at least read one of my books. You get it.
I've loved the movie, CALIGULA, for many years. Much to my delight I got to watch the Forced Viewing crew sit through the X-rated version to do a podcast, and that version is really the only version you need. Forget the R-rated version. It doesn't go far enough. While the depravities of the movie are creative and glorious and shocking, even decades after it was unleashed, it doesn't go as far as the book, and that's a good thing.
The book goes too far. It crosses the line. In theory this book is based on Gore Vidal's screenplay, not the movie, but I have my doubts. Ever read a Vidal sex scene? It's as vanilla and brief as possible. Vidal might as well have been making scientific observations about the act. I find it hard to believe that he wrote these insane fuck scenes. And I have no objection to fuck scenes. God knows I've written many, and I've been paid by porn magazines for my fiction, both hetero and gay. I have no problem with any of that.
In the movie, yes, Caligula is in love with his sister, and they enjoy sex a lot. That's borderline for me. But it's nothing I haven't experienced before. As much as Robert A. Heinlein is remembered for great SF, he is not quite so remembered as a huge fan of incest and nudism. In one of his books he has his main character go back in time to fuck his own mom. For example. I give this brother-sister thing a pass because they're adults. It's gross, yes, but it's not William Howard-gross.
Because in the book he depicts their first mating as children. With great detail. And it describes how Caligula seduced another sister when he was 16 and she was 12, I think? Only to be surprised by his other younger sister, maybe 9, joining the act. That's pretty fucking disgusting.
Remember Tiberius's harem in the movie? His "little fishies"? They were very young, but not as young as they were in the book. These kids are barely into double-digits, age-wise. And then there's a horrible story about something Tiberius did with a newborn infant. Let's just say the word "pacifier" and leave it at that.
When I read these scenes I thought I should just stop reading even though the paperback cost me thirty bucks. But when I was very young and the Big Bang was only a few years old, I promised myself that I would finish any book I started no matter how bad it got. I got through it.
Some of the other sex scenes are great, like when Caligula meets Caesonia (played wonderfully by the ever-sexy Helen Mirren). Their sex scenes are delightful, even when they get the Greek actor involved. A lot of the movie glosses over Caligula being bisexual, and I found his sex scenes with men, in particular his Gaul servant, interesting. The ones involving slaves from Africa were very weird, but it seems that Caligula doesn't mind being a bottom to them even after they've fucked and whipped his sisters in an imitation of the Rape of the Sabine Women. (Howard calls it "a marvelous game for the children.")
But I found it disappointing that it left out a lot of the movie. The scene I'm thinking of mostly is the wedding of Proculus. In the movie and book Caligula exercises his right of prima nocta with the bride. In the book he does the same to Proculus. In the movie Caligula shoves his fist into a vat of lard and proceeds to fistfuck Proculus, which I think it much more depraved.
When the book gets to my kind of depravity, it hits on all cylinders. For example, Caligula declares war on Britain and the Germans. They get to the British Channel only to realize that he forgot to order boats. Instead they gathered a bunch of seashells as proof of their conquest. They then bribe a bunch of Gauls, change their hair color and teach them some German so they can pretend to be prisoners of war, thus proving Caligula to be the conquering hero of Rome! And he has them executed even though they're just acting! When he gets home, there is a delightful passage that's almost a throwaway moment. I picked it up, though. Here it is: "The common people of Rome turned out to the last man, woman and child. They wouldn't miss a parade for anything, particularly these days, when Caligula allowed so few of them. Several babies were born near the roadside, and a number of children wandered off and were eaten by wild dogs." Our modern minds couldn't conceive of something like that!
I didn't pick up a few things from the movie that were in the book, or if I did I didn't remember or was too drunk. One thing is ridiculously funny to me. What was the last straw for the senators to decide to assassinate their emperor? Was it that Caligula loved to charge them with treason just so he could seize their estates? Nope. Was it when he made his horse a senator? Nope. Was it even when he forced the senators' wives and daughters, and sometimes even the senators themselves, to prostitute themselves in the imperial brothel? Not even that.
It was when Caligula declared that the next day Rome would convert to Isis worship. Holy fuck, I know religion is stupid, but even this shocks my atheist's heart.
The other thing that got by me was how much the common people of Rome loved Caligula. I figured they were just terrified of him, but as it turns out it was the senators who feared him. Caligula gave the people what they wanted: bread and circuses. They got to watch bears attack lions at the Circus Maximus. Or maybe even tigers versus gladiators. And certainly gladiator against gladiator in death matches. Upon the birth of his daughter, Caligula gave every Roman citizen a gold piece. How could they not love him?
I know this is an awful thing to think, but maybe our senators don't fear the people they, in theory, serve enough. Would they be so quick to shoot down a $15 minimum wage if they feared for their lives? Would Ted Cruz have gleefully left a frozen and dying Texas for Cancun if he thought for a second that the people could rise up against him? It makes one think about the beatings that used to take place in the early days of Congress. Of the duels. Now that all of that is gone, do they have a reason to even respect their people?
Probably not.
Just a Caligula-ish thought.
Ultimately, even though this book disgusted me nearly from page one, I'm glad I stuck with it. I had a few new things to think about that I hadn't noticed before. It's just weird thinking that the guy who wrote this book also wrote novelizations for shows like The Munsters, The Brady Bunch and even F-Troop.
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| Caligula got this line from Tiberius, but yeah. |
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