We here at Better Read than Dead do not care for fascists. So when we had the chance to kick off our 2020 season with an historical novel that dunks on fascists and their fascist f*ckery, well, let’s just say you didn’t need to ask us twice. Robert Graves’s I, Claudius (1934) is about a lot of things. The early Roman Empire, gender, political intrigue (including powerful grandmas who poison people -- we didn’t know that was one of our favorite character types, but we do now, and not just because we don’t want to be poisoned, please). Famously, it’s about disability, specifically with regards to its protagonist, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, who became the Emperor Claudius in 41 C.E. But it’s also a scathing critique of Europe’s rising fascist governments of the 1920s and 1930s. Read your history, folks.
Somewhat unexpectedly, Graves’s explorations of the absurdities of despotism had us thinking yet again about Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil in Eichmann in Jerusalem. And while you’re reading Arendt, everyone (no hyperbole) should read her Origins of Totalitarianism, too.
*Note to our listeners. Megan is on maternity leave. She’ll be back to the show in a few weeks.
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