Theodor Storm - "Waldwinkel"

Roald Amundsen - "The South Pole, Volume 2"

Heinrich Heine - "Deutschland. Ein Wintermaerchen"

H.E. Butler - "Post Augustan Poetry"

A  /  B  /  C  /  D  /  E  /   F  /  G  /  H  /  I  /  J  /   K  /  L  /  M  /  N  /  O   P  /  R  /  S  /  T  /  U  /  V  /  W  /  X  /  Y  /  Z

Life of Cicero by Anthony Trollope

A >> Anthony Trollope >> Life of Cicero




During the remainder of this year, B.C. 59, Cicero was at Rome, and
seems gradually to have become aware that a personal attack was to be
made upon him. At the close of a long and remarkable letter written
to his brother Quintus in November, he explains the state of his own
mind, showing us, who have now before us the future which was hidden
from him, how greatly mistaken he was as to the results which were to
be expected. He had been telling his brother how nearly Cato had been
murdered for calling Pompey, in public, a Dictator. Then he goes on to
describe his own condition.[263] "You may see from this what is the
state of the Republic. As far as I am concerned, it seems that friends
will not be wanting to defend me. They offer themselves in a wonderful
way, and promise assistance. I feel great hope and still greater
spirit--hope, which tells me that we shall be victors in the struggle;
spirit, which bids me fear no casualty in the present state of public
affairs."[264]

But the matter stands in this way: "If he"--that is, Clodius--"should
indict me in court, all Italy would come to my defence, so that
I should be acquitted with honor. Should he attack me with open
violence, I should have, I think, not only my own party but the world
at large to stand by me. All men promise me their friends, their
clients, their freedmen, their slaves, and even their money. Our old
body of aristocrats"--Cato, Bibulus, and the makers of fish-ponds
generally--"are wonderfully warm in my cause. If any of these have
heretofore been remiss, now they join our party from sheer hatred of
these kings"--the Triumvirs. "Pompey promises everything, and so
does Caesar, whom I only trust so far as I can see them." Even the
Triumvirs promise him that he will be safe; but his belief in Pompey's
honesty is all but gone. "The coming Tribunes are my friends. The
Consuls of next year promise well." He was wofully mistaken. "We have
excellent Praetors, citizens alive to their duty. Domitius, Nigidius,
Memmius, and Lentulus are specially trustworthy. The others are good
men. You may therefore pluck up your courage and be confident." From
this we perceive that he had already formed the idea that he might
perhaps be required to fight for his position as a Roman citizen; and
it seems also that he understood the cause of the coming conflict. The
intention was that he should be driven out of Rome by personal enmity.
Nothing is said in any of these letters of the excuse to be used,
though he knew well what that excuse was to be. He was to be charged
by the Patrician Tribune with having put Roman citizens to death in
opposition to the law. But there arises at this time no question
whether he had or had not been justified in what he, as Consul, had
done to Lentulus and the others. Would Clodius be able to rouse a mob
against him? and, if so, would Caesar assist Clodius? or would Pompey
who still loomed to his eyes as the larger of the two men? He had ever
been the friend of Pompey, and Pompey had promised him all manner of
assistance; but he knew already that Pompey would turn upon him.
That Rome should turn upon him--Rome which he had preserved from the
torches of Catiline's conspirators--that he could not bring himself to
believe!

We must not pass over this long letter to Quintus without observing
that through it all the evil condition of the younger brother's
mind becomes apparent. The severity of his administration had given
offence. His punishments had been cruel. His letters had been rash,
and his language violent. In short, we gather from the brother's
testimony that Quintus Cicero was very ill-fitted to be the civil
governor of a province.

The only work which we have from Cicero belonging to this year, except
his letters, is the speech, or part of the speech, he made for Lucius
Valerius Flaccus. Flaccus had been Praetor when Cicero was Consul, and
had done good service, in the eyes of his superior officers, in
the matter of the Catiline conspiracy. He had then gone to Asia as
governor, and, after the Roman manner, had fleeced the province. That
this was so there is no doubt. After his return he was accused, was
defended by Cicero, and was acquitted. Macrobius tells us that Cicero,
by the happiness of a bon-mot, brought the accused off safely, though
he was manifestly guilty. He adds also that Cicero took care not to
allow the joke to appear in the published edition of his speech.[265]
There are parts of the speech which have been preserved, and are
sufficiently amusing even to us. He is very hard upon the Greeks of
Asia, the class from which the witnesses against Flaccus were taken.
We know here in England that a spaniel, a wife, and a walnut-tree may
be beaten with advantage. Cicero says that in Asia there is a proverb
that a Phrygian may be improved in the same way. "Fiat experimentum
in corpore vili." It is declared through Asia that you should take
a Carian for your experiment. The "last of the Mysians" is the
well-known Asiatic term for the lowest type of humanity. Look through
all the comedies, you will find the leading slave is a Lydian. Then
he turns to these poor Asiatics, and asks them whether any one can be
expected to think well of them, when such is their own testimony of
themselves! He attacks the Jew, and speaks of the Jewish religion as a
superstition worthy in itself of no consideration. Pompey had spared
the gold in the Temple of Jerusalem, because he thought it wise
to respect the religious prejudices of the people; but the gods
themselves had shown, by subjecting the Jews to the Romans, how little
the gods had regarded these idolatrous worshippers! Such were the
arguments used; and they prevailed with the judges--or jury, we should
rather call them--to whom they were addressed.


Notes:

[231] We have not Pollio's poem on the conspiracy, but we have Horace's
record of Pollio's poem:

Motum ex Metello consule civicum,
Bellique causas et vitia, et modos,
Ludumque Fortunae, gravesque
Principum amicitias, et arma
Nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus,
Periculosae plenum opus aleae,
Tractas, et incedis per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso--Odes, lib. ii., 1.

[232] The German index appeared--very much after the original work--as
late as 1875.

[233] Mommsen, lib. v., chap. vi. I cannot admit that Mommsen is
strictly accurate, as Caesar had no real idea of democracy. He desired
to be the Head of the Oligarchs, and, as such, to ingratiate himself
with the people.

[234] For the character of Caesar generally I would refer readers
to Suetonius, whose life of the great man is, to my thinking, more
graphic than any that has been written since. For his anecdotes there
is little or no evidence. His facts are not all historical. His
knowledge was very much less accurate than that of modern writers who
have had the benefit of research and comparison. But there was enough
of history, of biography, and of tradition to enable him to form a
true idea of the man. He himself as a narrator was neither specially
friendly nor specially hostile. He has told what was believed at the
time, and he has drawn a character that agrees perfectly with all that
we have learned since.

[235] By no one has the character and object of the Triumvirate been
so well described as by Lucan, who, bombastic as he is, still manages
to bring home to the reader the ideas as to persons and events which
he wishes to convey. I have ventured to give in an Appendix, E, the
passages referred to, with such a translation in prose as I have been
able to produce. It will be found at the end of this volume.

[236] Plutarch--Crassus: [Greek: kai synestaesen ek ton tron ischyn
amachon.]

[237] Velleius Paterculus, lib ii., 44 "Hoc igitur consule, inter
eum et Cn Pompeium et M. Crassum inita potentiae societas, quae urbi
orbique terrarum, nec minus diverso quoque tempore ipsis exitiabilis
fuit." Suetonius, Julius Caesar, xix., "Societatem cum utroque iniit."
Officers called Triumviri were quite common, as were Quinqueviri and
Decemviri. Livy speaks of a "Triumviratus"--or rather two such offices
exercised by one man--ix., 46. We remember, too, that wretch whom
Horace gibbeted, Epod. iv.: "Sectus flagellis hic triumviralibus." But
the word, though in common use, was not applied to this conspiracy.

[238] Ad Att, lib.ii., 3: "Is affirmabat, illum omnibus in rebus meo
et Pompeii consilio usurum, daturumque operam, ut cum Pompeio Crassum
conjungeret. Hic sunt haec. Conjunctio mihi summa cum Pompeio; si
placet etiam cum Caesare; reditus in gratiam cum inimicis, pax cum
multitudine; senectulis otium. Sed me [Greek: katakleis] mea illa
commovet, quae est in libro iii.

"Interea cursus, quos prima a parte juventae
Quosque adeo consul virtute, animoque petisti,
Hos retine, atque, auge famam laudesque bonorum."

Homer, Iliad, lib.xii., 243: [Greek: Eis oionos aristos amunesthai
peri patraes.]

[239] Middleton's Life of Cicero, vol.i., p. 291.

[240] Pro Domo Sua, xvi. This was an oration, as the reader will soon
learn more at length, in which the orator pleaded for the restoration
of his town mansion after his return from exile. It has, however, been
doubted whether the speech as we have it was ever made by Cicero.

[241] Suetonius, Julius Caesar, xx.

[242] Ad. Att., lib.ii., 1: "Quid quaeris?" says Cicero. "Conturbavi
Graecam nationem"--"I have put all Greece into a flutter."

[243] De Divinatione, lib. i.

[244] Ad Quin. Fratrem, lib.i., 1: "Non itineribus tuis perterreri
homines? non sumptu exhauriri? non adventu commoveri? Esse, quocumque
veneris, et publice et privatim maximam laetitiam; quum urbs custodem
non tyrannum; domus hospitem non expilatorem, recipisse videatur? His
autem in rebus jam te usus ipse profecto crudivit nequaquam satis
esse,ipsum hasce habere virtutis, sed esse circumspiciendum
diligentur, ut in hac custodia provinciae non te unum, sed omnes
ministros imperii tui, sociis, et civibus, et reipublicae praestare
vidcare."

[245] Ad Quin. Fratrem, lib. i., 1: "Ae mihi quidem videntur huc omnia
esse referenda iis qui praesunt aliis; ut ii, qui erunt eorum in
imperio sint quam beatissimi, quod tibi et esse antiquissimum et ab
initio fuisse, ut primum Asiam attigisti, constante fama atque omnium
sermone celebratum est. Est autem non modo ejus, qui sociis et
civibus, sed etiam ejus qui servis, qui mutis pecudibus praesit, eorum
quibus praesit commodis utilitatique servire."

[246] "Haec est una in toto imperio tuo difficultas."

[247] Mommsen, book v., ca.6.

[248] Mommsen, vol.v., ca.vi.

[249] Ad Att., lib.ii., 7: "Atque haec, sin velim existimes, non me
abs te [Greek: _kata to praktikon_] quaerere, quod gestiat animus
aliquid agere in republica. Jam pridem gubernare me taedebat, etiam
quum licebat."

[250] Ad Att., lib.ii., 8: "Seito Curionem adolescentem venisse ad me
salutatum. Valde ejus sermo de Publio cum tuis litteris congruebat,
ipse vero mirandum in modum Reges odisse superbos. Peraeque narrabat
incensam esse juventutem, neque ferre haec posse." The "reges
superbos" were Caesar and Pompey.

[251] Ad Att., lib.ii., 5: [Greek: Aideomai Troas kai Troadase
lkesipeplous].--Il., vi., 442. "I fear what Mrs. Grundy would say of
me," is Mr. Tyrrell's homely version. Cicero's mind soared, I think,
higher when he brought the words of Hector to his service than does
the ordinary reference to our old familiar critic.

[252] Quint., xii., 1.

[253] Enc. Britannica on Cicero.

[254] Ad Att., lib.ii., 9.

[255] Ibid.: "Festive, mihi crede, et minore sonitu, quam putaram,
orbis hic in republica est conversus." "Orbis hic," this round body of
three is the Triumvirate.

[256] We cannot but think of the threat Horace made, Sat., lib.ii., 1:

"At ille
Qui me commorit, melius non tangere! clamo,
Flebit, et insignis tota cantabitur urbe."

[257] Ad Att., lib.ii., 11: "Da ponderosam aliquam epistolam."

[258] Josephus, lib.xviii., ca. 5.

[259] Ad Att., lib.ii., 16.

[260] Ad Att., lib.ii., 18: "A Caesare valde liberaliter invitor in
legationem illam, sibi ut sim legatua; atque etiam libera legatio voti
causa datur."

[261] De Legibus, lib.iii., ca.viii.: "Jam illud apertum prefecto
est nihil esse turpius, quam quenquam legari nisi republica causa."

[262] It may be seen from this how anxious Caesar was to secure his
silence, and yet how determined not to screen him unless he could
secure his silence.

[263] Ad Quintum, lib.i., 2.

[264] Of this last sentence I have taken a translation given by Mr.
Tyrrell, who has introduced a special reading of the original which
the sense seems to justify.

[265] Macrobius, Saturnalia, lib.ii., ca.i.: We are told that Cicero
had been called the consular buffoon. "And I," says Macrobius, "if it
would not be too long, could relate how by his jokes he has brought
off the most guilty criminals." Then he tells the story of Lucius
Flaccus.




CHAPTER XII.


HIS EXILE.

We now come to that period of Cicero's life in which, by common
consent of all who have hitherto written of him, he is supposed to
have shown himself as least worthy of his high name. Middleton, who
certainly loved his hero's memory and was always anxious to do him
justice, condemns him. "It cannot be denied that in this calamity of
his exile he did not behave himself with that firmness which might
reasonably be expected from one who had borne so glorious a part in
the Republic." Morabin, the French biographer, speaks of the wailings
of his grief, of its injustice and its follies. "Ciceron etait trop
plein de son malheur pour donner entree a de nouvelles esperances," he
says. "Il avait supporte ce malheur avec peu de courage," says another
Frenchman, M. Du Rozoir, in introducing us to the speeches which
Cicero made on his return. Dean Merivale declares that "he marred the
grace of the concession in the eyes of posterity"--alluding to the
concession made to popular feeling by his voluntary departure from
Rome, as will hereafter be described--"by the unmanly lamentations
with which he accompanied it." Mommsen, with a want of insight into
character wonderful in an author who has so closely studied the
history of the period, speaks of his exile as a punishment inflicted
on a "man notoriously timid, and belonging to the class of political
weather-cocks." "We now come," says Mr. Forsyth, "to the most
melancholy period of Cicero's life, melancholy not so much from its
nature and the extent of the misfortunes which overtook him, as from
the abject prostration of mind into which he was thrown." Mr. Froude,
as might be expected, uses language stronger than that of others, and
tells us that "he retired to Macedonia to pour out his sorrows and his
resentments in lamentations unworthy of a woman." We have to admit
that modern historians and biographers have been united in accusing
Cicero of want of manliness during his exile. I propose--not, indeed,
to wash the blackamoor white--but to show, if I can, that he was
as white as others might be expected to have been in similar
circumstances.

We are, I think, somewhat proud of the courage shown by public men
of our country who have suffered either justly or unjustly under the
laws. Our annals are bloody, and many such have had to meet their
death. They have done so generally with becoming manliness. Even
though they may have been rebels against the powers of the day, their
memories have been made green because they have fallen like brave men.
Sir Thomas More, who was no rebel, died well, and crowned a good life
by his manner of leaving it. Thomas Cromwell submitted to the axe
without a complaint. Lady Jane Grey, when on the scaffold, yielded
nothing in manliness to the others. Cranmer and the martyr bishops
perished nobly. The Earl of Essex, and Raleigh, and Strafford, and
Strafford's master showed no fear when the fatal moment came. In
reading the fate of each, we sympathize with the victim because of
a certain dignity at the moment of death. But there is, I think, no
crisis of life in which it is so easy for a man to carry himself
honorably as that in which he has to leave it. "Venit summa dies et
ineluctabile tempus." No doubting now can be of avail. No moment is
left for the display of conduct beyond this, which requires only
decorum and a free use of the pulses to become in some degree
glorious. The wretch from the lowest dregs of the people can achieve
it with a halter round his neck. Cicero had that moment also to face;
and when it came he was as brave as the best Englishman of them all.

But of those I have named no one had an Atticus to whom it had been
the privilege of his life to open his very soul, in language so
charming as to make it worth posterity's while to read it, to study
it, to sift it, and to criticise it. Wolsey made many plaints in his
misery, but they have reached us in such forms of grace that they do
not disparage him; but then he too had no Atticus. Shaftesbury and
Bolingbroke were dismissed ministers and doomed to live in exile, the
latter for many years, and felt, no doubt, strongly their removal from
the glare of public life to obscurity. We hear no complaint from them
which can justify some future critic in saying that their wails were
unworthy of a woman; but neither of them was capable of telling an
Atticus the thoughts of his mind as they rose. What other public man
ever had an Atticus to whom, in the sorrows which the ingratitude of
friends had brought upon him, he could disclose every throb of his
heart?

I think that we are often at a loss, in our efforts at appreciation
of character, and in the expressions of our opinion respecting it, to
realize the meaning of courage and manliness. That sententious Swedish
Queen, one of whose foolish maxims I have quoted, has said that
Cicero, though a coward, was capable of great actions, because she
did not know what a coward was. To doubt--to tremble with anxiety--to
vacillate hither and thither between this course and the other as to
which may be the better--to complain within one's own breast that this
or that thing has been an injustice--to hesitate within one's self,
not quite knowing which way honor may require us to go--to be
indignant even at fancied wrongs--to rise in wrath against another,
and then, before the hour has passed, to turn that wrath against one's
self--that is not to be a coward. To know what duty requires, and then
to be deterred by fear of results--that is to be a coward; but the man
of many scruples may be the greatest hero of them all. Let the law of
things be declared clearly so that the doubting mind shall no longer
doubt, so that scruples may be laid at rest, so that the sense of
justice may be satisfied--and he of whom I speak shall be ready to
meet the world in arms against him. There are men, very useful in
their way, who shall never doubt at all, but shall be ready, as the
bull is ready, to encounter any obstacles that there may be before
them. I will not say but that for the coarse purposes of the world
they may not be the most efficacious, but I will not admit that they
are therefore the bravest. The bull, who has no imagination to tell
him what the obstacle may do to him, is not brave. He is brave who,
fully understanding the potentiality of the obstacle, shall, for a
sufficient purpose, move against it.

This Cicero always did. He braved the murderous anger of Sulla when,
as a young man, he thought it well to stop the greed of Sulla's
minions. He trusted himself amid the dangers prepared for him, when it
was necessary that with extraordinary speed he should get together the
evidence needed for the prosecution of Verres. He was firm against all
that Catiline attempted for his destruction, and had courage enough for
the responsibility when he thought it expedient to doom the friends of
Catiline to death. In defending Milo, whether the cause were good
or bad, he did not blench.[266] He joined the Republican army in
Macedonia though he distrusted Pompey and his companions. When he
thought that there was a hope for the Republic, he sprung at Antony
with all the courage of a tigress protecting her young; and when all
had failed and was rotten around him, when the Republic had so fallen
that he knew it to be gone--then he was able to give his neck to
the swordsman with all the apparent indifference of life which was
displayed by those countrymen of our own whom I have named.

But why did he write so piteously when he was driven into exile? Why,
at any rate, did he turn upon his chosen friend and scold him, as
though that friend had not done enough for friendship? Why did he talk
of suicide as though by that he might find the easiest way of escape?
I hold it to be natural that a man should wail to himself under a
sense, not simply of misfortune, but of misfortune coming to him
from the injustice of others, and specially from the ingratitude of
friends. Afflictions which come to us from natural causes, such as
sickness and physical pain, or from some chance such as the loss of
our money by the breaking of a bank, an heroic man will bear without
even inward complainings. But a sense of wrong done to him by friends
will stir him, not by the misery inflicted, but because of the
injustice; and that which he says to himself he will say to his wife,
if his wife be to him a second self, or to his friend, if he have one
so dear to him. The testimony by which the writers I have named have
been led to treat Cicero so severely has been found in the letters
which he wrote during his exile; and of these letters all but one were
addressed either to Atticus or to his wife or to his brother.[267]
Twenty-seven of them were to Atticus. Before he accepted a voluntary
exile, as the best solution of the difficulty in which he was
placed--for it was voluntary at first, as will be seen--he applied to
the Consul Piso for aid, and for the same purpose visited Pompey.
So far he was a suppliant, but this he did in conformity with Roman
usage. In asking favor of a man in power there was held to be no
disgrace, even though the favor asked were one improper to be granted,
which was not the case with Cicero. And he went about the Forum in
mourning--"sordidatus"--as was the custom with men on their trial. We
cannot doubt that in each of these cases he acted with the advice of
his friends. His conduct and his words after his return from exile
betray exultation rather than despondency.

It is from the letters which he wrote to Atticus that he has been
judged--from words boiling with indignation that such a one as he
should have been surrendered by the Rome that he had saved, by those
friends to whom he had been so true to be trampled on by such a one as
Clodius! When a man has written words intended for the public ear, it
is fair that he should bear the brunt of them, be it what it may. He
has intended them for public effect, and if they are used against him
he should not complain. But here the secret murmurings of the man's
soul were sent forth to his choicest friend, with no idea that from
them would he be judged by the "historians to come in 600 years,"[268]
of whose good word he thought so much. "Quid vero historiae de nobis
ad annos DC praedicarint!" he says, to Atticus. How is it that from
them, after 2000 years, the Merivales, Mommsens, and Froudes condemn
their great brother in letters whose lightest utterances have been
found worthy of so long a life! Is there not an injustice in falling
upon a man's private words, words when written intended only for
privacy, and making them the basis of an accusation in which an
illustrious man shall be arraigned forever as a coward? It is
said that he was unjust even to Atticus, accusing even Atticus of
lukewarmness. What if he did so--for an hour? Is that an affair of
ours? Did Atticus quarrel with him? Let any leader of these words who
has lived long enough to have an old friend, ask himself whether there
has never been a moment of anger in his heart--of anger of which he
has soon learned to recognize the injustice? He may not have written
his angel, but then, perhaps, he has not had the pen of a Cicero. Let
those who rebuke the unmanliness of Cicero's wailings remember what
were his sufferings. The story has yet to be told, but I may in rough
words describe their nature. Everything was to be taken from him: all
that he had--his houses, his books, his pleasant gardens, his busts
and pictures, his wide retinue of slaves, and possessions lordly as
are those of our dukes and earls. He was driven out from Italy and so
driven that no place of delight could be open to him. Sicily, where he
had friends, Athens, where he might have lived, were closed against
him. He had to look where to live, and did live for a while on money
borrowed from his friends. All the cherished occupations of his life
were over for him--the law courts, the Forum, the Senate, and
the crowded meetings of Roman citizens hanging on his words. The
circumstances of his exile separated him from his wife and children,
so that he was alone. All this was assured to him for life, as far as
Roman law could assure it. Let us think of the condition of some great
and serviceable Englishman in similar circumstances. Let us suppose
that Sir Robert Peel had been impeached, and forced by some iniquitous
sentence to live beyond the pale of civilization: that the houses at
Whitehall Gardens and at Drayton had been confiscated, dismantled, and
levelled to the ground, and his rents and revenues made over to his
enemies; that everything should have been done to destroy him by the
country he had served, except the act of taking away that life which
would thus have been made a burden to him. Would not his case have
been more piteous, a source of more righteous indignation, than that
even of the Mores or Raleighs? He suffered under invectives in the
House of Commons, and we sympathized with him; but if some Clodius of
the day could have done this to him, should we have thought the worse
of him had he opened his wounds to his wife, or to his brother, or to
his friend of friends?

The green room: Carol Ann Duffy, poet
Imogen Russell-Williams: Vampires in the Twilight books not only lack bite, it pains me to say they even wear beige and sparkle in sunlight, so let's find out who the real suckers are

Stephen King fan publishes Shining's Jack Torrance's novel
Three Women was first heard as a radio drama and then published as a poem. Robert Shaw explains his desire to stage the piece as it was intended

Video: Costa prize winners

A Stephen King fan has published an 80-page version of the book which novelist Jack Torrance obsessively writes during King's The Shining, where his descent into madness is revealed when his wife discovers that his work consists of just one phrase, endlessly repeated.

Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in terrifying form in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, is a frustrated writer who goes with his wife and son to spend the winter in the isolated Overlook Hotel in an attempt to get the novel he has always wanted to write started. But the hotel's grisly past and unquiet ghosts have their way with him, and his wife Wendy eventually finds that the manuscript he has been working on actually only contains the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", typed over and over again.

Now New York artist Phil Buehler, who describes himself as "a big fan of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King", has self-published a book credited to Torrance, repeating the phrase throughout but formatting each page differently, using the words to create different shapes from zigzags to spirals.

"The idea has probably been marinating for years, because I loved the movie and the Stephen King book," said Buehler. "I'd just finished my own obsessive art project [and] it was an idea I had over the Christmas holidays."

He said he decided to stick to type and formatting that could have been created on a typewriter, with the first ten pages duplicating shots of Torrance's work from the film. "I thought 'if he continues to get crazier, what would those pages look like?'" he said. "I hit writer's block about 60 pages in, and I had to get to 80 - that went on for about a week." His fiancée, who had neither read the book nor seen the film, became a little concerned about his actions. "I finally showed her the movie, and she realised I wasn't really losing it," said Buehler.

He's included a spoof review from the blog OverThinkingIt.com on the book's back jacket, which compares it to "the best of Beckett" in its "lack of forward momentum", and considers the struggles of the author, "heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence". "It's that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power," the review says. "Some will dismiss it as simplistic; that's like dismissing a Pollack canvas as mere splatters of paint."

So far, Buehler says that around 1,000 people have viewed the book, for sale on Blurb.com for $8.95 in paperback, or $22.95 in hardback, and he's sold "a few" copies, with sales now starting to pick up steam. "A few people have asked me to sign it - they're looking it as a piece of art rather than a funny thing to give to a Kubrick fan," he said. "If you're not a Kubrick or King fan, you might not even get it."

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds