A few days into reading Meditations, for no reason other than to provide interesting content to my fiercely loyal minions, I started to post Marcus Aurelius’s quotes on my book’s Facebook page, A Life of Misery and Triumph.
Last night, I was at the gym reading Meditations in between sets (I cannot get Pandora to work at my new gym--which is one calamity befalling me that I will never get over--so I’m forced to read on my phone’s Kindle app). As I posted another enlightening quote, I realized that the main character’s name in ALOMT is MARCUS and that he founds a pseudo-religion/philosophy grounded in Stoic ethics (and in drinking).
Incredibly, this was the first time I made the connection between the protagonist Marcus and the Roman Emperor Marcus. Also incredible is the fact that I had never heard of Marcus Aurelius until AFTER I had written and published ALOMT, at least not that I remember. Perhaps I had encountered the name at some point and it seeped into my subconscious like when Elaine inadvertently plagiarized a Ziggy cartoon in the New Yorker, eliciting Mr. Peterman’s indignation.
So in fact, I had been casually and unwittingly posting Marcus Aurelius’s quotes on a page promoting a book whose protagonist Marcus is the philosophical heir to Stoicism. Sort of. He’s primarily a degenerate drunk. But that’s neither here nor there.
And the kicker? Serendipity is a major motif in ALOMT. My stumbling on Marcus Aurelius and randomly posting his quotes on the ALOMT page without discerning the obvious connection is quite serendipitous indeed.
