Stunning and elegant combination of literary criticism and memoir

Mendelsohn juxtaposes his lecture on The Odyssey with his family dynamics

AN ODESSY: A FATHER, A SON AND AN EPIC Daniel Mendelsohn Loot.co.za (R372) William Collins

REVIEWER: SUE TOWNSEND

IT IS a sad fact that few people have the chance to study Latin, let alone Greek, at school. The classics, it seems, are no longer popular. Nevertheless, many people know, if vaguely, the story of The Odyssey, the epic poem famously (if allegedly) told by Homer some 400 years after the sack of Troy. It tells the story of Odysseus’s wanderings as he makes his way back to Ithaca to his faithful wife, Penelope.

The first books of the poem, however, are devoted to Telemachus, his son, who sets out to try to find out what has happened to his father – the so-called Telemachy which in fact tells of Telemachus’s encounters with Nestor and Menelaus who teach him about masculinity and the norms of married life.

This wonderful book, however, is about much more than the retelling of The Odyssey.

Mendelsohn is an acclaimed writer, classicist, literary critic and memoirist who is fascinated by words. Words not only tell the story but themselves, through their meanings, tell subordinate stories and this is one of Mendelsohn’s pegs on which he hangs his themes. Starting with the three words that together are encapsulated in the word “odyssey” – travel (a form of torment from Latin, trepalium); “journey” (the days taken in travelling, from Latin dies through to old French journée) and “voyage” (the road travelled from Latin via). All these meanings combine in the Greek word “odyssey” and this embraces all that happens to our hero, Odysseus.

There is, however, even more to this memoir. Mendelsohn juxtaposes his discussions on The Odyssey, given at a semester of seminars that he runs at Bard College, with segues into hisfamily dynamics which include his biological family as well as various mentors and the non-romantically involved mother of his sons. This is possibly because one of the “students” attending his seminar is his father Jay, 81, who has decided that he needs to reread The Odyssey.

Despite having promised to sit at the back of the room and keep his mouth shut, Jay is soon commenting and engaging with the other students as well as with his son, the professor.

The result is a stunning combination of literary criticism and personal memoir – elegantly woven together.

In addition we are treated to riffs in which Mendelsohn uses philology and semiotics to expand on words and symbols that are so central to the story, both of The Odyssey and his interpretation of the ancient Greek.

The later part of the book weaves in the adventure that father and son had a few months after the seminars.

At the urging of one of his professor-mentors, they take a Mediterranean cruise that traces Odysseus’s voyage.

Here Mendelsohn finally comes to see the father who he has found cranky and embarrassing throughout his life, in a more mellow light.

This is followed through in the last pages which are devoted to Jay’s illness and eventual death.

A truly worthwhile read.