MY THOUGHTS ON GORE VIDAL'S CALIGULA BY WILLIAM HOWARD

 

*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.

Caligula got this line from Tiberius, but yeah.

EVERYONE'S GOT ONE #17: FUCK THE LAW!

All right, not all of the laws. There are a few pretty good ones in there. I like that I exist in a country where kid-fucking, for example, is frowned upon. Can’t say that for every nation, you know. But we’ve seriously got a case of overload on our law books, and I’m not talking about those stupid laws people drag out for a laugh every once in a while. (For example, in New York, there is a law stating that it’s illegal to break laws. In Forest City, NC, it is illegal to shoot paper clips with rubber bands. In Joliet, IL, it is illegal—to the tune of $500—to mispronounce “Joliet.” In Wisconsin, it is considered a felony to wage war against the state of Wisconsin.) No, I’m talking about things that people get ticketed for every day.



It’s like people have forgotten why certain laws exist. First of all, I think things like helmet and safety belt laws are stupid. I’m a huge fan of survival of not just the strongest, but also the smartest. I wear my seat belt all the time not because I fear legal consequences, but because I don’t feel like taking a trip through my windshield if—L. Ron Hubbard forbid—I get in a car accident. (Also, my car gives me crap if the passenger doesn’t buckle his or her seat belt. That voice on a long drive alone would drive me to insanity.) If some moron doesn’t want to protect himself, then he should be able to do that.


But I see why that law exists. All right, fine. That’s reasonable, I guess. But there are other adjacent laws that MAKE NO FUCKING SENSE. If you are at a red light, and you take off your seat belt to remove your coat because it’s getting kinda’ hot, you have just broken the law. If you start your car before putting on your seat belt, you have just broken the law. If you pop off your seat belt as you’re settling into a parking space in order to save time because you’re running a little late, you have just broken the law.


WHY?! What is the point of this bullshit? Is the government so hard up for money they’ve got to nitpick their constituents? Seat belt laws exist to save the lives of morons. Whose life are you saving by ticketing the people who have done anything in that previous paragraph? The argument could be made that someone could still crash into you while you’re parked. That argument, however, would be stupid. If that was the case, perhaps we should make walking or standing around illegal, because you never know when some asshole is going to jump the curb.


Here’s another example: if you talk on your cell phone while your car is on, even if you’re parked or at a stop light, you are breaking the law. I’m not talking about the jerk offs who text while driving. Put the leeches on those fuckers because they’re not just a danger to themselves, they’re a danger to others around them. However, people who are merely on the phone are still watching the fucking road. They are aware of their surroundings. If the car in front of them comes to a sudden stop, they’ll know that they need to stop, too. They’re just having a conversation, or maybe we should ban conversations with passengers in the car, too. Don’t believe me? Then why is it legal to have radios in your car? Think about all the times you’ve looked away from the road to change the station. Or how about GPS systems? On mine, you can’t really fiddle around with it if you’re in motion, but that’s not true of everyone’s. How much attention are you paying to the road if you’re trying to put in the address to a bar you want to go to?


Fellow drunkards? (You knew this was coming.) I’m not going to get into the argument as to whether or not driving drunk should be legal. You know my stance on that. However, if you’re a good responsible citizen after a night of having maybe one too many drinks, you can’t just walk to your car and pass out inside of it. It is illegal to be intoxicated inside your car, even if it’s not turned on, even if you’re laying down in the back seat. And some bars don’t even have parking lots; in a lot of places, your car is parked by the sidewalk, which means if you don’t get it home, you’ll be, you guessed it, ticketed for parking it over night. Even worse, depending on the law, you might even get towed and have to get your car back from the impound the next day (and you’ll probably be hung over for that). Yet it’s illegal for you to drive it home while intoxicated. This is so unfair it borders on discrimination against those who like to imbibe. While it may be dangerous to drive drunk, it is not dangerous to do anything else I have mentioned here. Why is this even an issue? And the same goes for open container laws. Louisiana doesn’t have these, so they’re good in my book. Everywhere else, however, will ticket you for this, even if no one in the car is actually drinking from it. Picture this: you’ve brought some alcohol with you to a friend’s place. You guys didn’t really drink much of it (meaning, you’d probably blow a .04 if put to the breathalyzer), but you want to bring it home with you for future enjoyment. Can’t do it. That’s illegal.


These are just a few examples of the legal system running amok. Hell, feel free to post your own examples in the comments below. People are always concerned about laws covering just about every aspect of our lives. We don’t need that much. Generally speaking, we all know right from wrong. We all know which laws are actually important to obey. (For the aberrant cases who don't know this, that's why we have the law.) Why don’t we just trim the fucking fat? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a thin law book instead of the entire library you see in most lawyers’ offices?


Well, that will never happen. Taxes aren’t enough to run a government, apparently; they need money from fines on stupid laws because, and this should come as no surprise, even ordinary people with their brains in the right place break these laws. That’s because there’s nothing wrong with doing so. If the government collapses (and believe me, that will happen before ANY government cocksucker votes to cut his own pay), the politicians will be out of their sweet jobs, perks and all. And here’s another thought: when was the last time you’ve ever heard of the government legalizing something? They’re always bending their every effort to ban everything they can.  Why?  Money, chum.  That's the be-all-end-all.


Hell, it’s not all doom and gloom, despite all of my ranting. Here’s the cool thing about being a free person—and for all of this legal insanity, make no mistake, each and every human being on his planet, with the exception of prisoners, is free—is that you can make your own rules. Maybe that sounds a bit childish, saying that I can do whatever I want, but it’s true. Today (I wrote this a few days ago), on the way home from work, I talked to a friend on my phone. Last week, I had a few drinks at a friend’s place and then drove home. I haven’t smoked weed in many years, but, well, I have done that. I speed all the time (unless I’m drunk; I don’t want to bring attention to myself, after all). I have fucked women in public. I say horribly inappropriate things in any social setting. I don’t censor myself around children. (I used to, but I’m too old to play bullshit games. And they are games; there is no reason why you can’t say bad words in front of a kid because there are no bad words.) Guess what: after I did all of that stuff, no one got hurt. The world didn’t end. Hell, no one even noticed.


To quote Robert A. Heinlein, “Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.” Words to live by.


What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.