On “The Bourne Identity” by Robert Ludlum ****

Back in my twenties, before I had read much genre fiction, I had a view of it as largely plot based, with little in the way of character development or good turns of phrase (something I would say I found not to so much to be true, as I've aged and read more widely). As I read through the first portions of this book, my feelings were that Ludlum's work would have fit that earlier definition to the tee. The book opens with some overwritten descriptions of the sea (unneeded adjectives, redundant lines). It felt very much like someone were describing in excess the opening shots of a movie. What's more, as I read further into the book and was introduced to the characters, they seemed equally overwrought and yet not really real; they were elements, simply, in and for a plot—a plot that was, for all of its turns and twists—highly ridiculous.

But if Ludlum's first book in the trilogy fits all the stereotypes that I carried of genre fiction, it also lives within its world exceptionally well. I found myself, even knowing that the plot was ludicrous and the characters mostly cardboard (the main character's girlfriend, after all, after being taking hostage by him, gives up everything in her life to pursue him, risking her life, because at some point he saves her life, a situation she wouldn't have been in in the first place if she hadn't been taken hostage)--even knowing all that, and knowing that Bourne will survive, because there are two more books, I found myself drawn into the plot. What's to happen next? What will Bourne do?

The novel involves a case of selective amnesia. A man finds himself with exceptional military and spy-op skills, but he doesn't know who he is and how he came to obtain such skills. Nor does he know why everyone seems to be after him. The journey is thus one of self-discovery and one of survival. The plot really gets going when the man goes to a bank in Zurich, which has an account, the numbers for which are embedded as a chip in his body. Find the account; find out who he is. Or so that's the theory. But by doing so, he alerts others of his presence and so begins the hunt for him. And even knowing his name only gives him that; who is this man with this name. Periodically, as he comes across familiar scenes or people, he gets glimpses into his past, but they remain veiled. This is spies after spies, espionage to the hilt. It doesn't feel like there's much in the way of political, cultural, or social commentary along the way, unlike say in the work of Greene or Le Carre, but unlike the latter's novel that I read, this one is much more approachable, much more entertaining, and much less dreary. I usually looked forward to reading it, and certainly didn't want to put it down as I got closer to its end--a fitting end to my short spy fiction list.

On "Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Cities" edited by John R. Bartlett ***

Generally, if there is more than one book on a subject and one is written by one person and the other is an edited collection, I will choose to read the former before I bother with the latter. The advantage with an edited collection is that one gets different perspectives on a topic. But there's also something nice about a single sustained argument. Occasionally, an edited collection will manage to be tightly enough woven together to do something almost akin to that.

Too often, however, edited collections feel like smorgasboards--whatever the editor was able to cobble together on a given subject. So, say, you're doing an edited collection on American presidents, and there's a chapter on Washington, and then the next chapter is on John Quincy Adams. There's no throughline. It's just random highlights.

This collection, alas, reminded me of exactly why I don't particularly care for such collections. I mean, I could be reading a set of journal articles, which is what such feels like. The individual contributions can be good, but they are still haphazard, and often half of them don't seem to cohere with material that is of interest. In this book, some chapters were focused on really esoteric topics and others were things that I really had wanted to know more about and would still like to know more about. What I was hoping for, I suppose, was a pretty sustained exploration of Jews in Roman cities--but something that seemed more than the sum of its parts.

The book has many highlights, though. I much enjoyed the essay by Lester Grabbe, who I'd long wanted to read, about how Greek culture affected Jerusalem itself. He writes in a very approachable way, even if much of the subject wasn't particularly new. Tessa Rajak's piece on synagogues did a good job of showing how such communities were likely more extensive than sometimes what little surviving architecture suggests. McGing focuses on population. My favorite chapter was Stern's about the Jewish calendar in diaspora cities; he makes some good points about how most Jews would have had a way to set the calendar locally well before the Rabbi's did so in the wake of the destruction of the temple.

As the book, went on, however, the book seemed more and more focused on arguments between scholars, as a scholarly book often is. But such made for fewer takeaways for me, wanting not so much to know why argument X is not right and more about the actual topic at hand.