Exploring Family Dynamics: A Father, A Son, and an Epic Journey in An Odyssey

Lian Duan: This is a great book and I give 4 stars. However, I have two considerations. Firstly (not too bad), the author purposefully wrote VERRRRRRRY LOOOOOOOONG sentences from page to page to show off his writing skill. On the one hand, those long sentences (10-15 lines or even longer) match the long journey of Odyssey, and on the other, match the father-son relationship, as well as the long class (a whole semester for one book). Secondly (bad), the author irrigated too much water into his writing. If squeeze the flooded water out of the text, this book could be shortened to half, from 300 pages to 150 pages. If so, then, this book could be a true masterpiece of contemporary prose.

Canada on Dec 10, 2022

Theodore B. Ely: I've read the Odyssey when I was a student but he er really related it to real life. Its great to explore all of its
meanings.

United States on Sep 05, 2022

Jay322: Book club recommendation it was well written and an interesting way to tell about his father and his life.

Canada on Nov 09, 2020

Linda: I love this book for all the right reasons. I wish Dan had been my professor when I studied the Odyssey in university. I loved Dan’s ever evolving relationship with his father. I love Dan’s writing style. The book will be discussed at my book club on Thursday, a lively discussion l’m sure.
Linda

Canada on Mar 02, 2020

Amazon Customer: I have no training in ancient greek, but still I am enjoying reading this book. I would think it would be even better for a person with knowledge of Greek.

Canada on Mar 02, 2020

Shawn Klein: Part literary criticism, part biography, and part memoir, this book weaves together a touching and wonderful story. On the surface, it is a story of a father attending his son’s seminar on the Odyssey. Making use of the very ring structure that Mendelsohn is lecturing his students about, he presents his interpretation of the Odyssey and how to study it, explores his relationship with his father, and tells the story of his father’s life. This mirroring of the structure of Odyssey is tightly done: it is not forced. Mendelsohn doesn’t call attention to what he’s doing, but he’s not burying it either.

As college professor, I enjoyed the retelling of the classroom settings and the interactions of the students. As a lover of the classics, I appreciated the insight into the Odyssey. As a father and a son, I found the story deeply touching. My relationship with my father is not at all like his—but the deeper idea of coming to see your father as person and seeing him (or trying to at least) for real is true for all fathers and sons (and as Mendelsohn shows us, is part of the theme of the Odyssey).

Mendelson is courageously honest about the portrayal of himself....

United States on Jan 07, 2020

Professor Judith Herz, Dept. of English: It's wonderful as it weaves father, son, the teacher, his students into and around a reading of the poem. One learns about words, where they come from and accrue their meanings, all the while being immersed into a deepened understanding of The Odyssey and a memoir of a family's lives.

Canada on May 20, 2018

Aran Joseph Canes: As other reviewers have noted, Daniel Mendelssohn skillfully interweaves a compelling father and son narrative along with erudite commentary on the text of the Odyssey in this book. The prose is superb, the characters engaging and the narrative makes the reader interested enough to continue reading.

What other reviewers seem to have missed is that the book itself literally is An Odyssey. That is, after describing the literary techniques and themes in Homer's Odyssey Mendelssohn employs the same techniques in relating his story. Look for examples such as ring circles in Mendelssohn's narrative, characters who both hide and reveal their personality and parallels such as Odysseus traveling to the underworld and then the real life characters in turn traveling to Hades symbolically.

What this means is that Mendelssohn has not only weaved a story about fathers and sons into a book on the Odyssey but has actually written an Odyssey of his own in this same interweaving. The degree of care and meticulousness this craft demanded must have been immense.

In short, this is not just a literary commentary, nor is it just a memoir. It is a full fledged work of art in which...

United States on Oct 03, 2017

gammyjill: Daniel Mendelsohn, a Classics professor at Bard College, has written "An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic", a book, a memoir, almost a dissertation on what seem to be two of his favorite subjects, family and classical literature. An earlier book, "The Lost: The Search for Six of the Six Million", covered the same subjects, but with a different orientation.

Mendelsohn writes about a year in which he both taught a class at Bard College on "The Odyssey" and took a Greek island cruise which traces Odysseus's 20 year journey. Although his seminar at Bard was for college students, he asked his early 80's father, Jay, to attend the seminar and to take the cruise with him. Daniel had been at odds with his father for years; Jay was famously a brilliant and taciturn man, married to his wife for over 60 years and was the father of five children. Daniel had long tried to understand his father and felt that Jay, with a long interest in the classics and Greek, might benefit from studying that father-son (and grandfather) epic, "The Odyssey" together.

Many people have written memoirs about their parents. Most never quite make that final leap to understanding their father's...

United States on Sep 16, 2017