Good Writing from Moore and Ovid

I very much enjoyed reading Christopher Moore’s 2003 novel
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
(# ISBN-10: 0380813815 and # ISBN-13: 978-0380813810). So, I next read
Moore’s 2004 novel Bloodsucking Fiends (# ISBN-10: 0060735414 and
# ISBN-13: 978-0060735418). An example of Moore’s intelligent and
funny writing from Bloodsucking Fiends describes the difficulties
of a new young vampire dressing for a date in San Francisco:

She had fifteen minutes before she was supposed to meet Tommy at Enrico’s.
Allowing for another bus ride and a short walk, she had about seven
minutes to find an outfit. She walked into the Gap on the corner of Van Ness
and Vallejo with a stack of hundred-dollar bills in her hand and announced,
“I need help. Now!”.

Ten sales people, all young, all dressed in generic cotton casual, looked up
from their conversations, spotted the money in her hand, and simultaneously
stopped breathing — their brains shutting down bodily functions and rerouting
the needed energy to calculate the projected commissions contained in Jody’s
cash. One by one they resumed breathing and marched toward her, a perky
youthful version of The Night of the Living Dead.

“I wear a size four and I’ve got a date in fifteen minutes,” Jody
said. “Dress me.”

The descended on her like an evil khaki wave.

After reading two Christopher Moore novels, I was ready for something more
classical. I am now reading my way through Ovid: Metamorphoses
translated by Rolfe Humphries (1955 and 1983, # ISBN-10: 0253337550 and
# ISBN-13: 978-0253337559).
Ovid (or Publius Ovidius Naso) had finished
this, his greatest work, by the year 8 when Augustus Ceasar banished him from Rome.
His stories of body changing ancient Greeks are charming and Humphries’ poetry is
sometimes inspired. Here is part of Book VI
and the story of Latona, the mother of the twin gods Apollo and Diana, faced
with country people refusing her a drink from a pond:

…neither children

Nor the mother’s gentle words had any power.


They told her, Go away! and threats and insults


Were not enough; they made the water muddy,


Jumping and splashing, exulting in their meanness,


Until the goddess forgot thirst for anger.


No daughter of Coeus could keep on being humble


To louts such as these, no goddess fail to speak


In her full voice. She cursed them: “Live forever


In that foul puddle!” And it came out in that way:


They live in water and they love it dearly,


Now diving under, now coming up to the surface


To stick their ugly heads out, and now swimming,


Now squatting on the bank, or leaping in


To the cool water again, and all the time


Keeping their everlasting quarrels going


As shameless as they ever were, and cursing,


Or trying to curse, even when under water….


The new frogs keep on leaping.