We All Had To Pay,

Art Is No Longer Snobbish Or Cowardly. It Teaches Peasants To Use Tractors, Gives Lyrics To Young Soldiers, Designs Textiles For Factory Women's Dresses, Writes Burlesque For Factory Theatres, Does A Hundred Other Useful Tasks. Art Is As Usueful As Bread.

What Dazzles Us In Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra Are Not The Alluring Mythologies About The Evasive Queen, But The Astonishing If Rare Historical Facts That Schiff Has Meticulously And Lovingly Excavated. Schiff Offers Not Just Cleopatra's Story But The Story Of An Amazing Era, One That Has Vanished But Still Affects Us, Questioning The Way We Look At Myth, History, And Ourselves.

I No Longer Believe That We Can Keep Silent. We Never Really Do, Mind You. In One Way Or Another We Articulate What Has Happened To Us Through The Kind Of People We Become.

That, Of Course, Is What Great Works Of Imagination Do For Us: They Make Us A Little Restless, Destabilize Us, Question Our Preconceived Notions And Formulas.

A Novel Is Not Moral In The Usual Sense Of The Word. It Can Be Called Moral When It Shakes Us Out Of Our Stupor And Makes Us Confront The Absolutes We Believe In.