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A review by toggle_fow
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace
5.0
Parts of this book are written in an objectively wearisome style but notwithstanding I LOVE it.
7/3/2017 Edit: I love this book. It took me like 5 days to work my way through it this time since I was in a serious slump. On re-reads I almost always skip the beginning part about the three wise men because I don't super care to read fictionalizations of Bible events for their own sake. I'm here for Ben-Hur.
Favorite scenes:
It is super interesting to me how the story has an overall Point A to Point B character growth arc, where Ben-Hur starts with Judaism and a physical Kingdom of God and ends with Christianity and a spiritual Kingdom of God. And yet the story never comes back around and says "and devoting your life to revenge against your enemies is probably not that great" or anything like that. The vengeful obsession that is the focus of MOST OF THE BOOK is left completely alone, as if it were completely sanctioned and right, seemingly subverting the overall growth arc. People talk about this book as preachy and sanctimonious, as well as being super dense, but I honestly think it doesn't even have much of a moral. It's mostly just a fun revenge story.
I'm kind of confused why Wallace writes all the dialogue with "thee" and "thou" but all the regular prose normally. Was this a convention back in the day? Little Women doesn't do that, and it was written in the same Civil War-ish time period. Is it just because the book is set like... in a "biblical" era? Because if so, I find that rather weird.
Frankly though, I feel that humanity itself deserves due credit for the fact that both the 1959 classic Ben-Hur movie AND the 2016 remake just... completely blot out the existence of Iras the unscrupulous Egyptian femme fatale. When does Hollywood ever REDUCE the amount of unnecessary romance subplots from page-to-film adaptations? We all need to thank our lucky stars.
7/3/2017 Edit: I love this book. It took me like 5 days to work my way through it this time since I was in a serious slump. On re-reads I almost always skip the beginning part about the three wise men because I don't super care to read fictionalizations of Bible events for their own sake. I'm here for Ben-Hur.
Favorite scenes:
• Messala and the boys have a gamble and gossip sesh during what may or may not be an orgy.
• Ben-Hur is set up to be murdered but the hired thug turns out to be his old Jiu Jitsu teacher.
• Balthasar tells Ben-Hur, Ilderim and Simonides about Jesus and they're all like "HE'S COME TO OVERTHROW ROME" and Balthasar's like "noooooooooo" but they're so stoned out of their minds on racial resentment they don't even listen.
• Every scene with Iras. She's literally so overtly horrible every time and Ben-Hur doesn't notice because he's a Stupid Boy™.
• THE WAGERING. When Sanballat saunters into the Young And Dumb Roman Saloon and challenges Messala to bet on himself and he agrees without even asking how much the wager is for until it's too late and loses his entire fortune. HAHAHA. ICONIC. This is probably my favorite scene.
• When Ben-Hur sails into Antioch where it's just literally 5 pages of intricate description of how handsome he is, how mysterious, how clearly rich, how racially ambiguous, how jacked his arms are, how much his fellow passengers wonder about him, how coolly disinterested he is, how unique, and did I mention he's handsome?
• The very beginning where Messala blatantly mocks everything about Ben-Hur and then is like, surprised that he doesn't want to be friends anymore
It is super interesting to me how the story has an overall Point A to Point B character growth arc, where Ben-Hur starts with Judaism and a physical Kingdom of God and ends with Christianity and a spiritual Kingdom of God. And yet the story never comes back around and says "and devoting your life to revenge against your enemies is probably not that great" or anything like that. The vengeful obsession that is the focus of MOST OF THE BOOK is left completely alone, as if it were completely sanctioned and right, seemingly subverting the overall growth arc. People talk about this book as preachy and sanctimonious, as well as being super dense, but I honestly think it doesn't even have much of a moral. It's mostly just a fun revenge story.
I'm kind of confused why Wallace writes all the dialogue with "thee" and "thou" but all the regular prose normally. Was this a convention back in the day? Little Women doesn't do that, and it was written in the same Civil War-ish time period. Is it just because the book is set like... in a "biblical" era? Because if so, I find that rather weird.
Frankly though, I feel that humanity itself deserves due credit for the fact that both the 1959 classic Ben-Hur movie AND the 2016 remake just... completely blot out the existence of Iras the unscrupulous Egyptian femme fatale. When does Hollywood ever REDUCE the amount of unnecessary romance subplots from page-to-film adaptations? We all need to thank our lucky stars.