You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I checked this out based on the title alone. Who wouldn’t want to read a book titled “The Golden Ass”?
Summary
The main character Lucius is obsessed with magic. Through a series of events he ends up accidentally being transformed into an ass. Evidently, this is the only entire novel that has survived from ancient Rome. The style is that of a main story with many short stories injected by various devices such as someone retelling a rumor, campfire stories etc.
Thoughts
Written in ~200AD I have to say I was surprised by this novel…this book is racy! You have most of the stereotypical pornographic genres present: strangers, stepmoms, bestiality, wives cheating while the husband is nearby etc. etc. As an example, in one story a man comes back from a dinner party that was abruptly canceled because the host found out that his wife was cheating on him, only to find out that the wife he was telling this story to was only minutes before having her own tryst with a young-ish boy. Upon this discovery the man “spends the night” with the boy and then beats him the next morning throwing him out of the house. There are more than just humorous sex stories, as while Lucius is a donkey he gets bought and sold many times and as a result gets to live many different lives through the daily routines of his owners. Slap stick, or more accurately skewer stick humor is a near constant ingredient of the stories, with characters being burnt, stabbed, tortured, and eviscerated to great comic effect. I’ve read that there is a lot of word play with meter and rhymes that doesn’t survive translation, which is a shame, but this won’t be the book that makes me learn Latin. The tone and morbid playfulness remind me of Cervantes or even Dickens at times. There is an unexplainable optimism in the writing which no longer exists in modern authors. The subject matter is dark and brutal, but you won’t find the cynicism of post WW1 authors or feel the burden of the great existential writers. There is a distinct lack of interiority of the characters, no turning inward, but all oriented outward. The psychology is childlike, and straight-forward. The end of the book felt somewhat abrupt to me. The main character makes an interesting general prayer to the goddess that is known by many names, the one who picks up the phone is Isis. She tells him he will be transformed back into a human and also tells him to join a mystery cult in her honor. This ending feels like an advertisement or tract of sorts. Lucius tells you as much as he can about his experiences, which due to the renowned secrecy of the mystery cults isn’t much. As a trailer of sorts, it definitely leaves you wanting to know more. It seemed like a strange addendum to such a surface level story but did serve as a nice peaceful ending to what amounted to a series of unfortunate events. Overall, entertaining, recommend, but not real high on the list.