Pater wrote Marius the Epicurean in 1984 . 
Who can , for instance , blame a youth with but a mildly evil disposition from guffawing when he reads in Pater 's Marius The Epicurean ( Chapter V ) a reference to Apuleius ' The Golden Ass noting that all through the book , there is an unmistakably real feeling for asses ...
This example is contradiction.