It’s been quite an odyssey for the Odyssey
Yesterday I was browsing in a bookstore. I had gone to the mall for something else (pillowcases, to be exact) and had some extra time to spend wandering, and so I ambled into this particular mall’s only bookstore: B. Dalton, one of the smaller chains.
B. Dalton deals mostly with the sort of “literature” the mall traffic will bear. There was a rather large bunch of teen literature, for instance, and a pretty big cookbook/diet book/weight loss/work on your body/work on your mind section. The store’s fiction area featured mostly very recent works, and was especially heavy with Oprah-esque selections. My guess is that most of the books sold in the store will not be available even five years from now, except as used books
I had a notion to buy a collection of John Updike’s short stories. No dice; B. Dalton only had his latest novel, Terrorists, and nothing else by that author. But since “Updike” is near the end of the alphabet, I found myself standing next to the meager poetry section. I noticed that at least one volume of the collected works of Robert Frost was stocked, as well on several of those “best-loved poems” collections that actually have some decent picks.
And then, a shelf later, there were a few classics. Two shiny fat paperbacks, The Iliad and The Odyssey, stood next to each other.
I wondered how many people who enter B. Dalton actually buy and read these things today. No doubt there are some students who’ve had the works assigned to them. But wouldn’t they be more likely to use Amazon, unlike the strollers and impulse-purchase buyers of B. Dalton’s mall venues?
And yet here the two books sat, expectant and waiting. As they’ve sat for millenia, ever since their composition and/or compilation by an author or authors who may or may not have been a single individual named Homer, around the 9th or 8th century BC.
That’s a long time to be a best seller, although the royalties aren’t coming Homer’s way anymore (not that they ever did). These two books together are considered the very first works of Western literature.
Hero Odysseus’ wanderings only lasted ten years. But they are as nothing compared to the journey these books have taken from nearly three thousand years ago in an ancient Greece that could not quite have imagined our ubiquitous malls and the B. Daltons that fill them, or the myths and mores of the people we’ve become. And yet, somehow, these books still have a place on these shelves, incongruous though they may seem.
Muse, speak to me now of that resourceful man
who wandered far and wide after ravaging
the sacred citadel of Troy. He came to see
many people’s cities, where he learned their customs,
while on the sea his spirit suffered many torments,
as he fought to save his life and lead his comrades home.
But though he wanted to, he could not rescue them””
they all died from their own stupidity, the fools.
They feasted on the cattle of Hyperion,
god of the sun””that’s why he snatched away their chance
of getting home someday. So now, daughter of Zeus,
tell us his story, starting anywhere you wish.
Neo-neo, you saw Iowahawk’s take, right?
In the same way that LL Bean has learned that they don’t sell camping clothes unless they have a certain amount of actual (usually poor-selling) equipment in the store or catalog, B Dalton has learned that they don’t sell those other books unless they have a certain amount of real literature on the shelves.
Just for fun:
Rosemary Sutcliff’s “Black Ships Before Troy”. It is a young adult version. She did not cut the Iliad. She told the story.
I’ve read both and was relieved to escape endless iterations of “rosy-fingered dawn” and “his armor rang round him as he fell”.
I see she also wrote “The Wanderings of Odysseus”, which is probably a similar treatment of the Odyssey.
Highly recommend her stuff for bright kids from jr. hi. and up, as long as you can give them the kind of historical perspective they used to get in school.
Along a similar vein to Richard Aubry’s posting, is the Penelopiad by MArgaret Atwood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Penelopiad
Sutcliff’s treatment is nice but I was more impressed by the wonderful accompanying illustrations by Alan Lee. Every bit as evocative as his work on Lord of the Rings.
Light.
Yes. There’s an ominous quality–which is quite in keeping–with a bunch of ships showing up with armed men determined to kill you. Pix help.
One pop historian–I believe the book was “Lost Worlds and Sunken Civilizations”–referred to ” a boatload of Rhodian pirates”.
Achilles was an oversized, spoiled adolescent with superior hand-eye coordination and a divine break. I would be suspicious of anybody who admires him. Hector is the man.
Dan Collins:
Wrong link. Here it is:
The Idiossey
Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” personalized and hyperlinked by Neptunus Lex.
These guys are useful. They will email you plaintext sections of books at the frequency you set. Most are free; the Odyssey is, anyway:
Daily Lit: Odyssey
Neo,
As you know, it’s hard to appreciate these works in translation.
Having read the Iliad (and much of the Odyssey) in the Greek original, I feel confident making this claim.
But having said that, I have to admit I was moved to learn Greek by Richmond Lattimore’s translations, which I read more than forty years ago. It’s good to know that B. Dalton still bothers to carry a translation.
Jamie Irons
– 3 cheers for bookstores, love ’em all…….
My daughter, who is a student at UGA,
is reading The Odyssey for one of her classes.
So, they will sell a copy or two.
You mentioned the ancient controversy over the identity of Homer. Reminded me of the old joke about the classical scholar who spent 30 years working to prove that the Illiad had not be written by Homer but by another Greek of the same name!
I love all bookstores. New, used, or on-line bring ’em on. Anything to feed my reading habit.
Aubrey,
You are right — Hector is clearly, to the modern sensibility, the admirable figure. But to classical listeners, Achilles was the hero and Hector the putz. It stands as a measure of just how great is the cultural gulf separating us from the classical world. Today Heracles would be a serial/spree killer. Then he was the most admired of the heroes.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
D.B. Light-
It’s worth noting that as horrid as the other gods were, Vulcan/Hephaestus was considered as bad or worse… because he didn’t have good legs.
He did amazing things, he was about the only god you’d want as a neighbor, but he was as bad as a murderous idiot who set his girlfriend on fire because he limped.
(I always found that a good cure to gilding of the Romans….)