Fiddling in Old Rome

THE CONSPIRACY byJOHNHERSEY 274 pages. Knopf. $6.95.

To Tim Foote, Books Editor, from Otto Friedrich, book reviewer:

That Hersey novel is really pretty bad. It's about an unsuccessful conspiracy to murder Nero, but for some unfathomable reason he has chosen to write it entirely as a series of documents, mostly memos between two police officials known only as Tigellinus and Paenus. Even at times of high crisis they stop to send each other long memoranda in a kind of pseudo Latin, using terms like "the fourth night hour." And they consistently refer to Nero as Himself. Do we really need a review?

To Friedrich from Foote:

Keep to essentials. Hersey's book is about power. He's been a housemaster or whatever at Yale, and they're very keen on power up there. He has also won a Pulitzer Prize, and it seems rather unprofessional to ignore his new book. I thought you were interested in history. Doesn't a novel about Nero inspire any interesting ideas?

To Foote from Friedrich:

I wonder why American journalists keep trying to write about Rome as though it provided some very significant analogy to America. Remember John Gunther producing that book about Julius Caesar? Teddy White wrote a play, too, about crossing the Rubicon. Even Hemingway, in the midst of covering the Spanish Civil War, wrote a grotesque playlet about the three Roman soldiers who had just crucified Christ. One of them keeps repeating, "I tell you, he was pretty good in there today."

Maybe I could get this review started by recalling that at 17 I tried an adaptation--in blank verse--of Racine's Britannicus.

To Friedrich from Foote:

Forget Britannicus. TIME rarely uses the first person singular, even in bylined reviews. Better stick to Hersey, Nero and power. The deadline is next Tuesday.

To Foote from Friedrich:

The trouble with writing about Hersey, Nero and power is that Hersey doesn't really seem to know much about power. Remember that White House party back in 1965 when Lyndon Johnson invited in a bunch of intellectuals and a lot of them tried to figure out how to protest the Viet Nam War? Hersey's solution was to read aloud some excerpts from his book on Hiroshima.

Two of the main conspirators in this book are Seneca and his nephew Lucan the poet. The two police officials keep passing along intercepted copies of letters between Seneca and Lucan, and the two writers keep hacking away at the question "What is a writer's responsibility?" Seneca says, "A writer cannot change the world; his duty is to describe it." Then there's the chief police official, Tigellinus, who says, "A writer has no responsibilities, for responsibilities are the burden of power. He is, at best, an entertainer, like that trained bear we saw nodding its head and catching apples in its mouth the other evening." Lucan is the angry militant, arguing that a writer "must answer to the future." But Lucan is the one who finally betrays the conspiracy, largely out of vanity, which seems to be historically untrue--so what is Hersey trying to tell us about the writer's responsibility?

To Friedrich from Foote:

What is their motto in New Haven?

Lux et Vanitas? Maybe Hersey is being ironic in his use of memos between police officials, though Yalemen are not noted for a sense of irony. The deadline is still next Tuesday. As Tigellinus often says, "This is a command."

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