Book Reviews
Jason Childress: Mediocrates
Publisher:
Title: MediocratesAuthor: Jason Childress
ISBM: 1-234-5678-9
Publisher: Saint Dufus Press
Pages: 287
This is a fabulous book. Did I say fabulous? Let me say that again! But I warn you, you're going to need a degree in Classics, Ancient History or Philosophy to get the most out of it. Get ready for three hundred pages of Ancient Greek scholarly study mixed with shameless bullshit, fifty percent of which is written in Classical Greek script!
This is a spoof of spoofs, like Monty Python's Life of Brian, like the BBC's Up Pompeii. It's a satire. It's a comedy and it's a parody. It spits in the eye of erudition, mixes reading, rhetoric and rubbish with such sleight of hand and frantic pace that you never know where you are. I don't care how silly Mediocrates, the stupidest philosopher on earth was, I still find it hard to believe that anyone could have managed to lose six hundred and forty six philosophical debates in a row! Surely the law of blind luck would have interceded at some point, even if only once! But no, Mediocrates, the idiot, managed to lose every debate he ever got involved in. OK, all you historians and classicists out there, get ready to remember Alcibiades, Pericles, Xenophon, Socrates, Aristotle, and many, many famous names from the ancient world. To those illustrous characters Childress appends Wheatabix(TM), Elephantitus of Lanutz, (he with the swollen groin,) Stupidocles and Mediocrates! Remember Socrates' famous dialogues, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, Republic and others? Well, (yes or no,) Childress adds The Testocles and Pheces and the Argonads, (A Socratic dialogue about a swelling in the groin)! This is going to be a little confusing, so listen carefully: Mediocrates is a fool and everything he says is not to be trusted. His patron understands this and always does the opposite of what Mediocrates recommends. But, and it's a big but, Mediocrates begins to realise that his advice is being ignored, and not being aware of the consequences of what he's about to do, (because he's a fool,) he decides to give his patron the opposite advice to what he believes the correct course of action to be, so that his patron will do what he wants him to do. Needless to say the consequences are horrendous. And the history of the Ancient World was irrevocably shaped by the disaster which followed.
I shan't explore the proctologist and the substitution theory from the back doors of history. I assure you, this is no jest, well none on my part, anyway, they occur in Childress' book alright. And he probes them. It's a fascinating if slightly suggestive and vaguely silly theory about the final hours of one of the greatest men in history.
If you're extremely well-educated, and have a fully-functioning sense of humour, (that last bit is very important,) you must be a lover of historical slapstick, then you'll get one hell of a kick out of this book. I guarantee it.
Review by Patrick Mackeown, July 2008
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