The Plato Papers

I think that one takes place in a future which has lost most of its history. They only have a few fragments of books left, so that, for example, Charles Darwin get credited for writing A Tale of Two Cities. There are all kinds of mistakes like that. I think the idea is to suggest that our ideas about the ancient world might well be VERY wrong because we have misinterpreted the few fragments we have. It wasn't my favorite by Ackroyd, but is was mildly amusing in places. ...unless of course I have a faulty memory and have confused it with something else entirely, in which case...never mind...

No no, you've got the right one. I liked all the confusion over misreading of ancient documents - such as a critical reading of The Origin of the Species as a satire on 19th century society. Very clever. What confused me is that the sage Plato actually visits the 'past' society he has been studying by apparently going underground and finding everyone living as they always had done under a blue sky. This is in contrast to 'above ground' where the sky is black. The place names were reminiscent of tube stations in London and everyone lived in parishes, which I thought might be like stations. This would mean that when Plato went 'underground' he actually came up from a subterranean community living in a disused london underground. There is, I think, a quote something along the lines of: "I started to think like [the ancients] in restrictive terms of up and down." It is, of course, possible that I'm entirely mistaken. It's the only Ackroyd book I've read - isn't he primarily a biographer?

He is primarily a novelist (I would say), and this Plato thing is probably his weakest. I've read almost all of his novels, and most of them are wonderful. Chatterton Dan Leno & the Limehouse Golem The House of Doctor Dee Hawksmoor The Great Fire of London The Last Testiment of Oscar Wilde Milton in America Those are my favorites. He also wrote the history of London and some bios, but I've not read them.

Cheers, I'll put them on the list.

This sounds very interesting. I would like to read the Plato Papers, and had never heard of them till now. I will look it out.

Emma, Get it from the library. It's not worth buying, frankly; but it is quite short and rather amusing, so it's worth a read. You can finish it off quite quickly. His other novels, though, are much better, I think.

AHA! Well, I'd always had a vague recollection of having met Peter Ackroyd, and now I'm sure I did. I looked up his biographical info on the web. He was a Mellon Fellow at Yale when I was an undergraduate, so in fact our paths did cross. I remembered the name because it is such a great name (reminds me of the Agatha Christie novel Who Murdered Roger Ackroyd?) As I recall we were just introduced once because we knew someone in common. Very brief encounter, but we were both just students at the time. He graduated from Cambridge. Another brush with greatness that passed me by. :)))

Thanks Justyn. I will look it out, though I am afraid my library seems to have just Barbra Carthorses in abundance and not much else!!!!