The strange case of John Williams's Augustus

John Williams's novel Stoner is one of the great, though little-known, American novels from the past 50 years; this book has been "re-discovered" at least twice, and in its latest incarnation led to several articles about Williams, a troubled writer who had a few academic posts but who never became a best-selling author nor did he ever get recognized as among the great living writers - except that one of his novels, Augustus, did win a National Book Award. Many assume this was yet another example of right author, wrong book - finally getting his dues - and a # of the recent articles about Williams note that after Stoner there was a great falling off in his style. This observation and received idea have kept me from reading Augustus - plus I don't especially like historical fiction (this novel as an account of the life and death of Caesar Augustus) nor do I think much of epistolary novels, in that they often fail to fully establish back story and distinction among each of the letter-writers's voice and style. But friend PP, with whom I often agree, recommended that I read Augustus (PP says that from this and Stoner we can agree that Williams was the greatest writer of death scenes; well, Tolstoy was pretty good, too). I started reading A yesterday and after the 1st 20 pp or so I thought I might give up, lost among the unfamiliar names and topical references - but then suddenly A receives the message that Caesar, his uncle, has been assassinated and the novel picks up right there - and we're suddenly in a novel of political intrigue and the education of a young man (A is a teenager, with a few hangers-on, in a mode that recalls Hal in Henry IV) and the novel improves right at that point ans A has to decide on his future, whether to seek his uncle's stature, and if so how to get it in this bloody, violent world. Williams makes it feel real and both strangely contemporary (struggle for political leadership, what to do when the top official abuses his power) and weirdly remote and ancient (a cabal of Senators comes together to stab Caesar to death right in the Forum - almost unimaginable today in any kind of republic or democracy). I don't know if JW can maintain this pace and level of interest, but at this point I'm in for the ride.