The Smartest Book in the World

by Greg Proops

  In the name of freedom and the republic, the Liberators had murdered Caesar. But in the end, his death finished the Republic for good. Caesar’s dream of total power and empire was his last bequest to his rivals and his friends. At least we still have the eagle.

  SMARTEST BOOK BASEBALL TEAM IV

  Roman Emperor Top Nine

  Manager: JULIUS CAESAR (100 BC–44 BC)

  When your motto is “I came, I saw, I conquered,” you have loads of spirit. Apparently, there is mostly “I” in team. Caesar conquered France and beat all his rivals in a massive civil war. He escaped from pirates as a young man and came back to have them all crucified. He also wrote his own books about how tremendous he was. He invented kicking butt and taking names. He can manage, he just can’t handle backstabbing.

  First Base: AUGUSTUS (63 BC–14 AD)

  Caesar’s adopted nephew Augustus is the once and future dictator of Rome. Though a little short for a first-sacker, he has staunch character and immense guile. He beat Mark Antony, he bested Cleopatra, he immortalized all his accomplishments in marble, and he ran the Empire for sixty years. “He drank little and ate less” was the book on Augustus. Abstemious and controlling, his wife, Livia, was pregnant when he pulled her out of her first marriage so that he could marry her himself. He had his own daughter banished for being a slattern. He always got his way. His reach for an errant throw might get you exiled or executed, so throw well, Roman.

  Second Base: TIBERIUS (42 BC–37 AD)

  A studious man and reluctant emperor, Tiberius boned out to Rhodes to study. When he was finally forced to accept the post, he split and went to Capri for ten years. He can pivot and turn two. A durable general and, legend has it, a giant pervert. He can go up the middle and stretch out on the turf. Hide the ball, boys and girls.

  Shortstop: HELIOGABALUS (203–222)

  A cross-dressing, pansexual freakazoid, Heliogabalus was high priest of a cult that worshiped a black stone he brought from Syria. Heliogabalus wore a wig, worked as a lady prostitute, and even took a slave as his wife. He will not be bothered by hot shots and liners coming at him. He covers a lot of ground.

  Third Base: MARCUS AURELIUS (121–180)

  The hot corner requires some philospohy. Do I come in on a sacrifice bunt? What is the meaning of playing the line? As emperor and a Stoic philospher, Marcus has that covered. Upon his deathbed, he chided the people who wept for him. He is a serious threat to rewrite how we play the game.

  Left Field: HADRIAN (76–138)

  Poetic and awesomely gay, Hadrian traveled the length and breadth of the Empire. He built a wall in England to keep the woolly northerners out and built a whole city in Egypt for his boyfriend, Antinous. He also built that amazing dome, the Pantheon. Hadrian covers mad ground in left and has the long arm to throw out guys at the plate.

  Center Field: CONSTANTINE THE GREAT (272–337)

  Constantine saw a cross burning in the sky on the battlfield before he kicked Maxentius the tyrant’s booty. He made the Empire Christian, made himself sole emperor, and moved the capital to Constantinople in Turkey. Constantine also likely had his wife and son done in. He will hold down center with faith and power. Or you will pay.

  Right Field: NERO (37–68)

  Nero was a famous weirdo who killed his mother, two wives, and a stepbrother. He terrorized the streets of Rome with his boy gang. Nero married two male slaves and was wife to one and husband to the other. He can play the far wall as well as anyone. If there is a fire, he will blame the Christians.

  Catcher: CALIGULA (12–41)

  This teenage madman can handle balls.

  Pitcher: TRAJAN (53–117)

  Trajan was a kick-ass general and bisexual stud muffin. He managed the Empire when it was at its most expansive. Give him the sphere and let him expand the strike zone to the maximum.

  POETRY VI

  François Villon

  (c. 1431–c. 1463)

  A scoundrel and thief, François Villon was born poor and adopted by a priest who gave him his last name and an education. He was a rough customer, poised for a career in law or the church, but he killed a priest in a drunken brawl. He split in a hurry, though the priest on his deathbed forgave him. Back in Paris, he wrote “Le Petit Testament.” He is said to have finished the poem on Christmas as an alibi for robbing five hundred gold crowns from the local strongbox. His crime gang was getting hanged, so he hid out, eventually getting a pardon with help from the Duke of Orleans, who was a fan of his work. He carried on robbing and being arrested and composed his greatest piece, the 2,000-plus lines of “Le Testament,” which includes “Ballade des Dames du temps jadis” (“The Ballad of Dead Ladies”). Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the nineteenth century, it works his most famous line “Where are the snows of yester-year?” Villon has been copied and checked by everyone from Bertolt Brecht, Ezra Pound, and Truman Capote to Catch-22 to Downton Abbey. He is an irresistible villain who defied the noose. In real life, he escaped the gallows and ended up heaven knows where. One thing is sure: he, like so many, was an unknown poet in his life and reached immortality in the next world. For a poet like him—part savant, part gangster—it’s apropos.

  To Death, of His Lady

  Death, of thee do I make my moan,

  Who hadst my lady away from me,

  Nor wilt assuage thine enmity

  Till with her life thou hast mine own;

  For since that hour my strength has flown.

  Lo! what wrong was her life to thee,

  Death?

  Two we were, and the heart was one;

  Which now being dead, dead I must be,

  Or seem alive as lifelessly

  As in the choir the painted stone,

  Death!

  The Ballad of Dead Ladies

  Tell me now in what hidden way is

  Lady Flora the lovely Roman?

  Where’s Hipparchia, and where is Thais,

  Neither of them the fairer woman.

  Where is Echo, beheld of no man,

  Only heard on river and mere,—

  She whose beauty was more than human? . . .

  But where are the snows of yester-year?

  Where’s Héloise, the learned nun,

  For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,

  Lost manhood and put priesthood on?

  (From Love he won such dule and teen!)

  And where, I pray you, is the Queen

  Who willed that Buridan should steer

  Sewed in a sack’s mouth down the Seine? . . .

  But where are the snows of yester-year?

  White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,

  With a voice like any mermaiden,—

  Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,

  And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,—

  And that good Joan whom Englishmen

  At Rouen doom’d and burn’d her there,—

  Mother of God, where are they then? . . .

  But where are the snows of yester-year?

  Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,

  Where they are gone, nor yet this year,

  Except with this for an overword,—

  But where are the snows of yester-year?

  MOVIES III

  Foreign Films

  LA DOLCE VITA

  Federico Fellini, director, 1960

  This film invented foreign films. Marcello Mastroianni is a jaded reporter in this wildly prescient ride through Rome in 1960. Religious mania, aggressive TV crews, the shallowness and bitterness of free sex and glamorous living, the sterility of success, and impending suicide are all examined by the keen eye of Fellini. This movie introduced paparazzi. The film is a series of episodes strung together in the life of our hero. He sails and swings and dallies and gets punched—literally and metaphorically. The costumes and settings are not to be forgotten. Sunglasses indoors at night, bambino. The voluptuous Anita Ekberg does a dance in the Trevi Fountain that is so invigorating it cannot be forgotten. (Evidentl
y, she was cool with being in the freezing cold while they shot; Marcello was freezing and had to drink a bottle of vodka and wear a wetsuit underneath.) La Dolce Vita still stings and rings true. Fellini shows you the tragedy of our world of vapidity while making everything look hip and beautiful. Required.

  THE LIVES OF OTHERS

  Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, director, 2006

  A film most pertinent in this time of mass eavesdropping and surveillance, The Lives of Others is a moving and horrifying look at the police state and the inevitable corruption of those doing the spying. East Germany was a nightmare of oppression. You could be sure you were being watched and listened to all the time. A casual remark might find you disappeared. The rotting corruption and climate of fear led to many suicides and botched escape attempts over the wall as people were desperate to leave the bad food, starving prostitutes, and joyless cafés. Stasi captain Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is an undercover agent for the secret police. Looking for evidence of disloyalty to the regime, he bugs the apartment of a playwright and his girlfriend. When he discovers that his boss is having a forced affair with the girlfriend, his motives for spying become personal. Our captain starts to feel sympathetic to the playwright. He begins to protect and intervene in the case. This is not part of the spy plan. Soul-searching, scathing, one sits transfixed as the drama of lying and deceit plays out. To make it all more incredible, Ulrich Mühe was an actor in East Germany, and he was spied on—even by his wife. When asked how he prepared for the role as the spy, he said, “I remembered.” You will never forget this movie or move freely through your life without paranoia again. Look behind you. Oh, it’s nothing. Keep reading.

  THE CELEBRATION

  Thomas Vinterberg, director, 1998

  This was the first Dogme film out of Denmark. In a way, it sparked Denmark’s groovy cultural renaissance. Denmark used to be boring but dependable, now they have top chefs, fashion, influential TV shows like The Killing, and a new sense of self-confidence. Dogme is a group of filmmakers, including Lars von Trier and the director/nondirector Thomas Vinterberg. The Dogme manifesto states no credit for the director. They wanted to be authentic; no special effects and less Hollywood commercial. This film fits the bill. A well-off family is having a sixtieth birthday party for their dad at the family-owned hotel. During the party the son announces the unspeakable: the father molested him and his sister, who has recently killed herself over the trauma. Everyone goes into denial, and the film takes off from there. This is the opposite of so many Hollywood pictures as it doesn’t cute up the subject or back off with jokes. Brutally honest, racist, funny, and real, this film takes on a subject deep and inhuman in a powerful way. Character and plot star. Tough going made better by the skill with which the characters develop.

  THE 400 BLOWS

  François Truffaut, director, 1959

  Quintessential French New Wave picture. Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is a troubled kid in Paris. His teachers hate him, and his parents are not digging his behavior. The system is stacked against him, as he ends up at reform school where the trouble continues. Shot in the classic French New Wave style (naturalistic, handheld, fly-on-the-wall), this wonderfully honest movie smacks of emotional realism and an improvisational air. Léaud is tremendous as our boy with an old soul buffeted by indifference and judgment from all the adults. Léaud had his mother take him to audition where Truffaut was blown away by his poise and quiet maturity. He acted like a forty-year-old trapped in a child’s body. Truffaut took him to Cannes with the film, and the poet and artist Jean Cocteau proclaimed that Jean-Pierre was going to be a star. And he was right. The film spawned a whole series of semibiographical projects directed by François Truffaut that all star Jean-Pierre as Antoine. A liberating movie of adolescence and an accurate, disquieting, lovely film.

  EYES WITHOUT A FACE

  Georges Franju, director, 1960

  The most elegant and riveting horror movie you will ever see. Georges Franju made documentaries about slaughterhouses and military hospitals, and he uses that feel and spooky elements to make this stately black-and-white story painfully claustrophobic. Sometimes you feel as if you can’t breathe with the tight, alien atmosphere. The set is oppressive, the soundtrack is oppressive, the dogs barking are oppressive, and the dad is wickedly oppressive.

  A mad doctor whose daughter is hideously disfigured in a car wreck sends his minion into Paris to pick up girls so he can remove their faces. Are you with me so far? He is desperate to find one to transplant onto his beloved daughter. He also experiments with dogs that he keeps locked up in a kennel. The incessant barking gives this picture a terrible urgency. The single most excruciating scene is an airless operating room where the doctor surgically and methodically removes a Woman’s face—a scene not to be erased or forgotten. Spoiler alert: the doctor does not triumph, but the ending is full of Gallic ambivalence. This is really a movie about Women and power, and Women win. Evil dad doctors lose. This picture will answer the eternal conundrum: Who let the dogs out? Sorry.

  THE SEVENTH SEAL

  Ingmar Bergman, director, 1957

  So many riffs have been done on this film for a reason. It is simple and profound and terrible. The austere and iconic Max von Sydow is a knight returned from the Crusades to a pestilent and starving Sweden. His face is what movies are about: frosty, lean, and angular with blue eyes searching his soul and our morality. He sees nothing but death and dishonesty until he meets some traveling players. They and their happy family imbue him with the only sliver of humanity he can find after the horrors he’s seen. It’s a play of conscience and darkness told with awe and humor. The movie is beautifully written and hangs off Max von Sydow’s cheekbones and his penetrating Viking gaze. Ingmar Bergman takes no budget and makes a fairy tale about heaven and hell and the plague. Death is a constant purring presence that is playing the big match with our hero. Who can beat death? This film is strangely optimistic and everything it is cracked up to be.

  LE SAMOURAÏ

  Jean-Pierre Melville, director, 1967

  French directors give good homage. They do for the American gangster picture what the British groups of the ’60s did for rhythm & blues. Le Samouraï is terse and existential. Alain Delon is like a jungle cat, if a cat smoked and wore a trench coat. He stalks through the clubs and alleys of Paris eluding the death both he and we know is coming his way. He barely registers his girlfriend, and he never eats or sleeps; he is just cool. His room is a cell, and his world is full of rats—metaphorical gangster rats. No one sleepwalks through violence like Delon, and no one takes as much care with every inch of the frame as Jean-Pierre Melville. Gaze in wonder at the sets. Light a Gitane and keep your gat ready.

  SMARTEST BOOK BASEBALL TEAM V

  All-Time British Monarchy Baseball Team

  Manager: ELIZABETH I (reign: 1558–1603)

  The Virgin Queen spoke six languages, rode on horseback all over England, had her sister executed, attended the premiere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, never married so as not to share power, beat the Spanish Armada, and sent Drake around the world. She can manage this team. If you miss a sign, she will have your head lopped off. She has a huge female member.

  Bench Coach: JAMES (reign in England: 1603–1625)

  James had the Bible rewritten. He knows the rules.

  First Base: HENRY VIII (reign: 1509–1547)

  Huge and athletic, Henry VIII was a great tennis player as well. He stared down the pope and was a frequent killer of his own wives. He holds down first for all England.

  Second Base: ETHELRED II THE UNREADY (reign: 979–1013, 1014–1016)

  Ethelred’s full name says it all. He tried killing the Vikings, then bribing the Vikings. Bad planning or versatile? Certainly flexible. He can go in the hole and turn two.

  Third Base: MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (reign: 1542–1567)

  She was six feet tall. The hot corner is all hers. She was the one who wore a red wig and was waxed by her cousin Elizabeth. She also
gave birth to James I, who succeeded Elizabeth, so who had the last laugh? Line drives do not scare her. Nothing scares her.

  Shortstop: EDWARD III THE CONFESSOR (reign: 1042–1066)

  Frugal and deeply religious, Edward can use faith and divine justice to run down ground balls and argue with the umpires.

  Left Field: CHARLES I (reign: 1625–1649)