An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic is a terrific book written by classics scholar, philologist, and professor David Mendelsohn. Written in 2017, the novel is part memoir, part scholarly insight into the Odyssey, and has its share of philosophy as well. I would compare this sort of writing to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, except this is much more scholarly and that is much more hippie. However, the classic idea of a novel being a memoir, the idea of how you can travel without really going anywhere by going in circles, and the bonds made in the process is what makes them similar. As the Dead would sing, "What a long strange trip it's been."

Mendelsohn compares the Odyssey to his relationship with his father. And it works. His father is a mathematician who regrets that he never got his Ph.D. or ever read Ovid in Latin like he wanted to. David, the son, and writer is a gay man who always wanted to be close to his father but his father is the typical grumpy dad type that doesn't like to be touched even by the wife sometimes. He's the conventional stiff math guy. Mendelsohn goes into great detail what type of man his father was but its a sore oversight that he doesn't say much about any of his mentors in life or his relationship to a female partner whom he has kids with. Yes, you heard that right, a gay man who has a female partner so he can have kids. Until I read this book I didn't even know that was a thing that gay people did, but apparently, it's not out of the ordinary. So yes, although it is great that Mendelsohn can describe his father, mother, and uncle with great detail and we get a sense of who they were, he doesn't really describe himself or any of his mentors much. Which makes the book lesser.

However, despite that, what makes this book truly remarkable is the scholarly aspects and the form, the way it is written; before, after, and future can happen all at once like in the Odyssey. It goes without saying that if you read this book you will know more about the Odyssey, the Iliad, and the Aeneid than everyone you come across. Heck, Mendelsohn even goes into the elements of the Greek language, which is downright informative and good to know even if I could never use or apply it.

Mendelsohn teaches a university course to freshman about the Odyssey, and his father ends up taking the course. Using the class, his father, and his students as a way to explain the many ways you can, should, and should not interpret the Odyssey, Mendelsohn does a fantastic job not only of describing the experience in his book but making it fun, digestible, and easy to understand. The scholarly elements of this book are like gold, the insight I got from Mendelsohn's explanations on every part of the Odyssey not only strengthens my love for classics and the Western Canon, but also makes me smarter, so that when I reread the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, I will read them with a much more sophisticated outlook, one that takes into account how to interpret its many lines, chapters, and books. One of the things Mendelsohn stresses to his students is that you can't just make up interpretations, rather, he has been taught how to look at the Greek classics in a specific way, the way his teachers taught him. In a way, this is limiting to the students, meaning they have to listen and accept everything he says, but on the other hand, I can see things through the more traditional route as well. His father is always there in class to stand up to him and disagree at times.

For an example of some scholarly things I learned, one of them is the idea of the proem, or the beginning of the epic poem. This establishes the entire epic poem in the first couple lines and is so important to the interpretation that you can't understand it without understanding and analyzing the proem first. The last lines are equally important to the interpretation as well. Then there's the famous Homeric Question: Was he a real person? Most scholars believe that there might have been a real Homer but that if he did exist, he did not know how to read or write, thus the idea of traveling poets and bards comes up. Poets and bards who memorize some 15k lines of epic poetry and know it so well that they can improvise new lines and variations upon it while telling the same story. It's history.

Lastly, one of the best elements of the book is that it's an odyssey itself. By talking about and interpreting the odyssey, Mendelsohn takes us on one. And like the Odyssey, the end has to do with a strong bond between father and son. Mendelsohn relates how at the end of the Odyssey, it is the reveal from Odysseus to his father that he's still alive and well, that is truly heartwarming and brings about the final end, the slaughter of Penelope's suitors, who have tried to force Penelope to marry them, taken over the palace, seduced the maids, and eaten all the food.

This is one hellova book. I recommend it to anyone who's read the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. It will give you more than enough new information to last a lifetime. Not only is it valuable for its scholarly and philosophical insight, but its also a decent memoir, and shows that you can write a book that has many styles in one; memoir, scholarly insight, and philosophy, using time in any which way you choose. Recommended to anyone who likes memoirs, the classics, or wants to learn more about the classics. 

The painting above is called The Patience of Penelope, who waited 20 years for Odysseus to come home.