David's Reviews > Spartacus

"Spartacus" by Howard Fast changed my life. I had recently seen the movie with Kirk Douglas (and a scene highlighting Willy Strode) fighting to the death in an arena crowded with spectators, much like the only live entertainment in town in those days. Not that different from a Friday night football game in a Texas town, at least the one I lived in, where most of the players were sons of mostly chemical plant and paper mill workers who looked forward during a long week of hard labor to a bit of entertainment of their boys trying to win a victory over a similar town, where the highschool football coach was as prestigious as the pastor of the First Baptist church (at least during the football season).

Somehow this rebellious slave dynamic imprinted itself on a very green but earnest youth, who catapulted himself to a level of endeavor for which he wasn't really qualified, but the world available to him thought he was. This streak of resistance placed him in the armed services, where he instead of breaking rules let the inevitable system wash up against his barnacled resoluteness, causing those in charge and budding martinets to reject his unorthodox stance in the face of established authority. In this way he aligned himself with forces that determine fate, serendipitously keeping him out of harm's way.

The novel "Spartacus", hence the movie, can have a life-changing effect on a callow youth. Because of the quality of storytelling by Fast, I think I should read his other novels.