Daniel Mendelsohn says, “There is no point of singularity to stories. Its the author who selects the point from which to jump-start his story; and from that point of view he can sidle either ways in time, covering the past and the future as befits his purpose. A story on its own accord does not have an opening scene. The author bestows this.”
Reading Mendelsohn is an education. Hazy memories of Homer’s Odyssey float back into my memory making me anxious to read this author’s tome. He carries the credit of being the foremost literary critic in the English language. His style has a levitating, yet engrossing effect on the reader. Mendelsohn is deeply informative, belonging to a rare clique of writers whose writing should be compulsory reading
AN ODYSSEY starts with an eight-page summary of the book that in a nutshell covers, like a syllabus of sorts, his subject. In here he informs us about the spring semester in which he taught a seminar on the Odyssey; about his father sitting-in on those classes; about the Mediterranean cruise they undertook to retrace the mythical route of Odysseus; about his father’s fall in a parking lot; his declining health, and brief period of recovery during which he seemed to be back to his “old self”.
Its strange to encapsulate the events that you expect to unfolds gradually, but he ticks off the major events like the classical epics that begin with a poem that announces what the epic is about.
What Mendelsohn delivers is less memoir and more a profile of his father as and himself as they follow threads in the silk of Homer’s epic journey. Besides being a moving father-son relationship, its a book full of rich discussions on the text, all resulting in a delectable read. The most intriguing episodes of the Odyssey act as a launchpad to share his understanding of his father who is critical, acerbic and reticent.
His bluntness, but earnest quibbles with his son lightens the mood, even though he is a pesky presence at the lectures. This braiding of the twin strands of narrative follows the rhythms and techniques of the Odyssey itself and gives the book an awe-inspiring congruity with the epic, like taking two sets of jumbled jigsaw pieces and making one cogent jigsaw out of them.
The book’s truly satisfying moments are those in which our own reading of the Odyssey’s many intriguing scenes converge with perspectives of the students at his seminar which invariably differ from those of Mendelsohn’s.
It raises the question: Do we always hear what we want to hear, blocking everything that tends to contradict our judgement?
Reading this book you will gain fresh competency in the epic tale. If you’ are basically grounded in Homer, you’re bound to come off more deeply informed. Its all there; marriage, identity, family, recognition, disguise, education, loyalty, sacrifice….
There is mastery in the way Mendelsohn makes the connections, seamlessly and expertly, picking apart and linking back, the events both from life and the Odyssey, to highlight their significance. He embeds stories within stories to go back and forth in time, switching from fiction to real life.
An exceptional read.
