Book Review: Et Cetera by Maia Lee-Chin
It is truly an act of serendipity that led me to reviewing this book: as far as upcoming releases on my radar go, Et Cetera: An Illustrated Guide to Latin Phrases was most anticipated by a wide margin. The author, Maia Lee-Chin, has a healthy following on twitter that makes it easy to go viral whenever she’s shared sample pages full of the book’s beautiful artwork. My only concern was whether I’d be over my budget for the preventative cost of a coffee table book with all those glossy pages. As I was counting my pennies, Fortuna dropped a copy of this right in my lap through the review service I have recently begun to work with, and I’m happy to report that it lives up to the hype.
The gap in the market for a book of this kind has been evident for many years. It’s fairly easy to find examples of the subgenre of quote collections across a wide range of media; there are blog posts, Wikipedia articles, and book collections. Even this newsletter once made an attempt to begin a recurring series on the topic. The trouble arises when the author/curator is asked to justify their decisions in what they have included. Quantity, unfortunately, is often chosen over quality. At best, readers get a sentence or two about where they may encounter the relevant phrase. Rarely do they receive as much information about its original use in context as they would reading these pages. The context certainly exists in a legible format, but only as uncollected footnotes and scholarship found across multiple tomes. To present information in this way presents the reader with an understanding of why they ought to value classical studies, and inevitably will encourage more young minds to learn Latin.
Another decision the author makes to benefit the reader is to weave the chosen quotes into a narrative, rather than sorting them chronologically or by author. The broader subgenre considers itself to be under the wider umbrella of reference books, which is strange. The most broad quote-books need to do this because of the era we live in and the ability to transmit and record sound, because most people have heard the words of Churchill or MLK before they have read them. With the ancient world, it’s different. The fact that these quotes all exist not just in written form first, but further in editions that have been in the public domain since before the concept of such a thing existed means that if someone wanted to find these quotes, they’d consult the original written material. Reference books act as repositories of information, whereas Mrs. Lee-Chin has cultivated a garden. As with any proper garden, it is only natural, then, to construct a pathway through it. Functionally this provides access to readers that are otherwise unfamiliar with the stories at hand. Introducing Ovid through the phrase “Carmen et Error” allows the author to give a quick biographical overview of the poet and his reputation before exploring the intricacies of his work. Similarly, Propertius’ praise of the Aeneid preempts any quotes from that poem. It’s a feature hardly noticeable unless a reader is looking for it, but definitely intentional, as she mentions in the introduction.
In addition to the deftly curated phrases, this book contains a treasure of gorgeous artwork by Marta Bertello. The use of mixed media adds a layer of depth to each picture: the focus of the piece (people, columns, helmets, tigers, etc.) seems to be drawn and colored in grayscale with a pen or pencil, and more lofty or metaphorical objects (or even just backgrounds) are created digitally in large shapes of pure black, white, or cinnabar. For example, the drawing for Aeneid 2.48-49 depicts a sketch of the infamous Trojan horse at a high, peculiar angle, while it casts a deep, black shadow of a Corinthian helmet containing red footsteps that disappear into the white background. More impressive than the limited color palette is Bertello’s use of negative space in the art. The drawing for Thebaid 1.3 depicts a sketch of Statius at his writing desk being touched by a divine hand from above on a black background. The described “fire” bursts from his temple in streaks of negative space, while his scroll flies off the table at a perpendicular angle in a bolt of cinnabar. I would guess that a whole lot of thought was put into that particular shade of red as well: it’s light enough on a contrasting black background to look like fire, while also being dark enough on a contrasting white background to look like blood. On vases it’s orange enough to remind the reader of Greek red-figure pottery, while also being close enough to crimson to look like the oppressive rays of a hot sun. There’s also one particular sketch where the shade is absent, save for two dot-like pupils of a terrifying wolf that I especially liked.
This was an all-around enjoyable experience to read. It’s presumptuous to expect a sequel this early into the book’s lifespan, but the addition of Greek maxims and phrases is sort of a natural following point. The sole piece of criticism I could possibly come up with is that the map of the Roman world in the front pages uses the Latin names for all the general regions except for “Thrace,” which should be “Thracia.” Other than that, the nature of the work meant that the author came to a stopping point that left me feeling fulfilled and content, but still desiring for more. Whatever the author plans to put out in the future, I plan to buy. Three stars.
