Sean Murray  05:26

Well, you know, another element of…that made it interesting as I was reading your book was the fact that it was a seminar-style class, where your father…you knew very well that your father would be interacting with the students in a very back and forth discussion sort of a format. He couldn’t just sit in the back and just kind of hide. He was going to be right in the mix.

Daniel Mendelsohn  05:47

Yeah, of course. I mean, I knew my dad at the beginning of this semester, you know, we had discussed what exactly did he think he wanted to do in the class. How much would he participate? He was at first, you know, he was like, “Oh, no, no! I’m just going to sit there and listen.” But I knew my dad, who was a very feisty, argumentative guy with very strong opinions of his own. And so, from the very first day as I described in the book, he started to interrupt me; argued with me; put forth his own interpretations, you know? But at the time, I have to say it was very challenging because of course, the students thought it was hilarious. But it was sort of very useful in a way, you know?

When you teach, well, actually when you teach whatever. I was going to say when you teach literature, but I think any subject. You sort of get into your own groove about the subject. You kind of think you know it all. You have your interpretations or ideas. And as you know from reading the book, because in a way this is the story that the book tells. I learned a lot from my father’s arguments and disagreements during the course of the semester because he had his very…he has a very particular idea about what the Odyssey was about, which is quite different from mine. And a lot of ways, I would say the sort of drama of the book, so to speak, is me thinking I was going to teach my dad about Greek literature and instead learning a lot from him, actually.

Sean Murray  07:21

Well, as I read your book, I found myself like your students really enjoying your father’s presence in the classroom. He came from a different generation than the other students in the classroom, obviously. He certainly had more life experience. He was married. He had children. He had watched his parents die. And as you mentioned, he had very strong opinions. He’d often say, “Well, I think Odysseus is a cheat!” Or he’d say, “Odysseus is obviously lying here. How can we respect him? I don’t think he’s a hero.” And you’d have to defend Odysseus and explain why he is a hero, and through this give and take, I got the feeling that your father at the very least shifted your perspective a bit on the Odyssey. How did your interpretation of the Odyssey change by having your father in the classroom?

Daniel Mendelsohn  08:07

Well, so, I mean, one of the sort of famous things about the Odyssey and his hero is that people are impressed by his quality of mind. Odysseus is the hero of cleverness. He keeps getting out of complicated and sometimes almost fatal situations by using his brain and not only his physical strength. And so, in World Literature, he sort of stands for the power of cleverness. That’s an adjective that’s often used of him in the Odyssey. How clever he is; how tricky. Notoriously, he is a very great storyteller. He often makes up complicated stories in order to bamboozle his enemies and trick them. So if you’re a writer, you know, you admire Odysseus because he sort of does what you do, which is to make up stuff to impress people. That’s one of his great talents. And this is what I meant before when I say, “You get used to your own ways of thinking about a text, when you’ve taught it many times.” It never occurred to me that you could look at Odysseus as anything but a hero. He’s so attractively smart, and funny, and clever, and tricky. And that always seems self-evident to me.

Daniel Mendelsohn  09:22

But my dad was a scientist, and he looked at things in a very different way. And he was genuinely perplexed as to how anyone could think this liar and cheat was a hero or admirable. To me, it seemed totally self-evident. And that, having a different point of view constantly in my face during that semester was a real learning experience. And it taught me to be a better teacher because, you know, sometimes I found myself trying to sort of steamroll my students into my way of looking at things. But having my father there always arguing with me, I think made me a better listener. He was always saying, you know, “I don’t think he’s a hero. He lies. He cheats, whatever.” And I think that was really good for me. So that’s the sort of central conflict of the book was sort of learning to be a better teacher and a listener through my father, even though he sort of had cranky disagreements with me.

Sean Murray  09:39

Yes, and it makes the journey more enjoyable for the reader, too, because we get your perspective and your father’s perspective. We get the students’ perspective as well, which is often quite different.

Daniel Mendelsohn  10:30

Exactly. Part of the book is me sort of reconstructing key moments in our classroom discussion, where we’re arguing over points of interpretation. And it’s a way of letting the reader of the book sort of into the discussion. And so, at the end of the day, the reader of the book has a kind of position, you know? Or at least you know what all the arguments are. And I thought that was an important part of the book apart from flashbacks to my childhood and anecdotes about my father, and sort of alternating that with the story of the class. But I think it was important to sort of give the reader, who may not be that familiar with the Odyssey and all of this other, you know, a way of understanding what it was we were arguing over and why it’s important. And of course, a lot of the Odyssey is about Odysseus’ relationship with his son, and how complicated that is, when he finally gets home after 20 years to find this young man, whom he had left 20 years earlier as a young baby, and having to start a relationship with him. So I tried to sort of interweave the story of Odysseus’ relationship with his son with my own story about my relationship with my father because they are sort of parallels in many ways.

Sean Murray  11:51

Yeah, and I think that’s what makes the book so touching and so rich as you read the book. If you’re familiar with the Odyssey, you see so many connections, and I won’t reveal all of them. They’re wonderful as they come up. And even if you haven’t read the Odyssey, I think your book could be a great introduction to the Odyssey. It could be a way to just get interested in it. I want to make a case for people to read the Odyssey. If you haven’t, and it may come across as there may be a perception out there that it’s an old poem. What does it have to really teach about life today? I mean, if I look at my own journey, I can relate to your father in many ways. I studied math in college, and your father was in…studied hard sciences, and engineering, and physics. And he was on a path to learn; take Latin to the next level in high school, and the words of his Latin teacher really struck my heart because he said something like, “You’re going to miss out on the joys of reading the Aeneid and other poems.” And I think I did this. I sort of passed up my opportunity to do that as a young man and didn’t read the Odyssey until later. When I did, I thought it was very powerful, and I got a lot out of it. And reading your book helped me reflect on that.

Daniel Mendelsohn  13:12

The best kind of mail I get about my book is people, who after reading my book decided that they wanted to go see what it was all about. And, look, these things would not be around if they did not have something to tell us. You know, it doesn’t matter how old they are. The gadgets change, but everything else stays the same: husbands and wives; fathers and sons. Really think any of that has changed over 2500 years? I don’t. The Odyssey is very smart about human relationships, and it packages it in this irresistible adventure, homecoming story. But, you know, I always tell my students don’t get distracted by the surface stuff. Yes, they had a different religion. They wore different clothes. They had a lot of nutty ideas about things that we no longer share.

Daniel Mendelsohn  14:03

But the core of the Odyssey, it’s about a man trying to get home to his family. And how is that going to work, when he finally confronts them after 20 years? Will they recognize him? How do you recognize someone after 20 years? How do you know who someone is? All these things are still pressing kinds of human concerns that transcend, you know, actual culture that they came from. That’s why the Odyssey is still being read. It’s not because the Odyssey had a better agent than some other poems that we don’t read. It’s because it tells us true things about what it means to be a human being. And that’s what I’m trying to show in my book by sort of interweaving my father-son-family story with the Odyssey’s father-son-family story, because at the end of the day, they’re not so different.

Sean Murray  14:57

Well, the first few books of the Odyssey are about…they’re not about Odysseus at all. They’re about his son, Telemachus. And Telemachus is on a journey to discover and learn about his father, who he never got a chance to know. As we’re learning about Telemachus’ journey to learn about Odysseus, we’re learning about your journey to learn more about your father. And of course, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking about my own journey, about trying to understand my father.

Daniel Mendelsohn  15:23

Yeah, I mean, I cannot believe there is a single man, who will listen to this podcast who at some point in his life was confronted with some kind of desire to understand who is this man who was his father, or who is his father. You know what? For that matter, I can’t imagine that there’s no woman listening to this podcast, who has not been confronted with the question of who really is her father or her mother. You know, it’s about parents and children. That’s a universal thing. And at a certain point, when you get maybe middle age or whatever. And they’re old or they just died as was the case with me. You look at this person, and you say, “Who is this person who made me?” You know? That’s a universal question. And one of the things the Odyssey is, it’s an attempt to frame that question. Now, how do parents and children interact? What does that mean? Can you ever really know your parents? You know, they always know you better than you know them, I think. Anyways, that’s what I think. I think it’s just a universal question that this fabulous ancient epic happens to be very interested in.

Sean Murray  16:43

That point you just made about the fact that our parents will always know us at a certain level, and we will never know them to that same degree. It struck me as a deep truth and something I hadn’t thought about much before, but it’s worth reflecting on because I think we always are on that journey to know our parents.

Daniel Mendelsohn  17:03

You know, I mean, look! The central paradox of being a child, which every person is, of course, is your parents necessarily had a life before you were born. And that life is always going to be opaque to you. There’s always a part of your parents’ life that can never be wholly known, whereas, all of your life, you know your parents if you see what I mean. They always have this sort of funny, you know, I don’t know how to call it, a kind of advantage over you. And anyone with any imagination at a certain point in their own life, whether it’s because you yourself become a parent, but that’s not necessarily the case, are going to wonder, “Who is my parent, who had this life before I was born that I can never really penetrate into?” And it gets your imagination going.

Sean Murray  17:56

You’re right in that hidden part of your parents’ life that we don’t get to experience in first person. We come to know through stories.

Daniel Mendelsohn  18:05

Yeah.

Daniel Mendelsohn  18:06

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s where another central theme of the Odyssey comes in, which is this wonderful theme of storytelling. The Odyssey is filled with scenes of people telling stories about themselves and particularly, Odysseus the hero. But because he’s also a famous liar, you never know if the stories are true. And as you know, my own part of my book is an attempt to reconstruct the early life of my father, who did not generally like to tell stories about his early life. And, as you yourself just said, quite often, when faced with what you think you know about your parents as you get older, it turns out to be, you know, it’s not lies, then partial truth or misinterpreted statements, or you know, there are some of the major, let’s call them climaxes of my book as it goes on are revelations about how wrong I was that my father and how I had either misconstrued, or misunderstood, or just been ignorant of key things about him. But I think that’s also something that so many people experience as you get older. Because as you get older, you accumulate more and more tools to understand your parents because you’re now the age they were.

Daniel Mendelsohn  20:16

And so, the whole process of life is a continual education. You’re always getting better and better tools to understand your parents in a funny way. And so, it’s always evolving. And I think, again, I think that’s something the oddity sort of dramatizes because throughout the course of the epic, you see Telemachus getting better and better at sort of being with his father. And so that, by the same token, you see Odysseus getting better and better as a parent, I think. You know, Sean, if people know anything about the Odyssey, even if they’ve never read it. If they’ve just seen references to it in popular culture, whatever. I remember when as a kid watching an episode of The Little Rascals based on the Odyssey if you can believe that. They do know that it’s about a guy trying to get home to his wife, right?

Sean Murray  21:05

Yeah.

Daniel Mendelsohn  21:06

That’s something people know. He’s been away. They meet. They don’t necessarily recognize each other. She makes up this contest to determine whether it’s him. You have to shoot a bow to gain access. But this whole parenting theme is just as important. Although, it sort of gets less press, so to speak. And obviously, that’s the aspect I wanted to focus on in my book because I happen to have my own parents sitting in the classroom with me.

Sean Murray  21:34

Yeah, there are some moments, especially when Odysseus comes back to Ithica and confronts his son, where you see Odysseus kind of becoming a father again.

Daniel Mendelsohn  21:47

We learn kind of retroactively, you know, about two-thirds of the way through the poem, Odysseus has been gone for 20 years, and you see that one of the servants in Odysseus’ household; the guy who takes care of the pigs on the farm, the swineherd. He’s called Eumaeus; he has become a father figure to the young prince, who has never known his father. And there is this incredibly touching scene, where Odysseus has now finally made it back to his kingdom, and he’s incognito. He’s disguised as an old beggar, and he takes up residence for the time being in the hut of this loyal servant, the swineherd. And there’s a moment, when Telemachus, who of course, is ignorant of everything that’s happening. He just happens to come into this hut, and he warmly embraces the swineherd with whom he’s obviously developed a very strong relationship. And Odysseus is sitting there watching his own son warmly embraced this father figure, and he at that point in the plot can’t reveal himself as the real father. But he has to…he’s made aware that his son has formed these attachments to other father figures during his own absence. And it’s really very painful and poignant, you know?

Daniel Mendelsohn  23:08

It’s a brilliantly constructed scene. Very devastating, I think, because it’s the moment when Odysseus realizes, well, one of many moments, when Odysseus realizes just what he has missed being away for 20 years. That’s time that he’s never going to get back. The whole relationship with his own child is a part of his life that he has lost. And I think, you know, people will relate to that in various ways. But it does remind you that lost time really is lost. You don’t get it back. You miss things, you know? Somebody wrote me an email saying, although, obviously, in modern life, the situation may not be so dramatic, but as a parent, who focused a lot on his career, he now felt, having read this particular part of the poem that I described in my book that he realized he missed so much time with his children, while he was madly working to shore up to build a career. So I think we can relate to this idea in different ways. You know, what do you miss when you’re not with your family?

Sean Murray  24:13

Absolutely. I travel a lot for work. I thought of that as well, when I read that passage. And I also thought about this other universal kind of trait of parenting, which is we have to sort of let go at some point, too, to let our children learn from other people and have other influences.

Daniel Mendelsohn  24:30

Yeah!

Sean Murray  24:31

And it can be hard sometimes if you see your child bonding with someone else. You think, “Wow, I wish I sort of had that bond with my child.” And you have to sort of let go. We all are going to learn. You had some great examples of other people, who stepped in and taught you different things about life that maybe your father couldn’t, and you saw it differently as you look back on it, and how now that you’re a father to think about having to go through that emotionally.

Daniel Mendelsohn  24:58

During my teens, I was not very close to my dad. I was a little intimidated by him. And so, just like Telemachus in the poem, I did find other mentors; other father figures for a number of years before I started to appreciate my own father. But, you know, that’s not easy to acknowledge.

Sean Murray  25:18

Now, the other parenting moment that I think of when Odysseus returned was, as they were sort of battling the suitors, when Odysseus came home. His kingdom was overrun by suitors who are trying to marry his wife. And she was trying to keep them at bay as long as she could. And they were sort of eating them out of house and home. So they, Telemachus and Odysseus, kind of pair up to fight the suitors, and there was a plan that was hatched, and there was one key element, which was Telemachus had to, I think, completely lock the door, where all the arms, and bows, and arrows of the…and swords of these suitors were going to be locked away, and he just forgot.

Daniel Mendelsohn  25:58

He blew it.

Sean Murray  25:58

He blew it! Oh, man!

Daniel Mendelsohn  26:01

I always hold that moment, which you very perfectly described. They’re a handful of men fighting a 108 suitors, and so the young boy just froze up and forgets to lock this, you know, closet where the suitors’ armors are stored, so suddenly they can get their armor and the fight becomes a little more precarious for the good guys, so to speak. I would see that as the great omen in Odysseus’ career, you know? I mean, I couldn’t prove it. But my strong sense is that someone…there’s a certain point in the battle, where they see that the suitors now have arms and armor, and people are like, “Oh, how did that happen?” And Telemachus to his credit, you know, sort of steps up and owns it. And he said, “I’m the one, who left the door open. It’s my fault.”

Daniel Mendelsohn  26:52

And instead of jumping down his throat; reprimanding him, Odysseus sort of lets the moment pass. And we know from other scenes that he’s not always so generous and can be quite severe with subordinates, who screw up. And I think it’s very interesting that in this moment he let it go. And I think it’s part of his evolution as a character. He becomes a better parent. At that point, what’s he going to do? They’re in the middle of a battle. It’s not the time for reprimand. I think that’s a very important moment in the poem. You see him letting it drop and just moving on. And I think that’s a great little moment. I think you’re right to land on it.

Sean Murray  27:33

Well, the other big theme in the Odyssey is this theme of husbands and wives or spouses…

Daniel Mendelsohn  27:39

Yeah.

Sean Murray  27:39

Or couples that are sharing their lives together. And in many ways, it’s a love story. And I, again, I have to chuckle a little bit about your dad because of the way he was sort of always pointing out, “Well, Odysseus is, you know, sleeping with this nymph, and forced to sleep with this cirque over here. And he doesn’t seem to be very faithful. Does anyone want to talk about this?” You know? And so, maybe you could talk a little bit about that part of the story and in the poignancy.

Daniel Mendelsohn  28:08

Yeah, I mean, I think, look! Famously, the Odyssey is truly and deservedly a great story about a couple. And, you know, there’s this funny Greek word, “homophrosyne.” It means having the same kind of mind. And that’s the word “Homer” uses; Homer in quotation marks, whoever composed the Odyssey, to describe the relationship; the ideal married relationship. And we understand throughout the Odyssey, that this is the relationship that Odysseus has with his wife, Penelope, who through these 20 years of his absence has never given in to any of these young guys, who were trying to woo her and court her, and has remained faithful to the memory of Odysseus. Although, one definitely gets the impression that she enjoys being courted and wooed, but she has never broken faith. And this quality between the two, you know, of having the same kind of mind because she’s also tricky, clever, shrewd, funny, smart, and can spin a good tale. And we feel, although, we keep seeing them separately because they don’t actually meet until quite late in the poem after he gets back home. We sense, because it’s dramatized in the poem, that she is the ideal mate.

Daniel Mendelsohn  29:31

And it’s very important, you know, what you mentioned about him hooking up all the time with these beautiful nymphs and goddesses. You know, all these immortal females are all over him, and they want him to marry them, and they promised him they’ll make him a god if only he’ll get with her. And he always says no, and I think that’s incredibly moving. It’s made very clear in the course of the poem that he gives up the chance of being immortal; of being a god because he wants to get back Penelope, even though it means he’ll grow old. He won’t be beautiful anymore. They’ll both eventually going to grow old and die. And he chooses that over immortality. And that is an implicit and very powerful acknowledgment of the greatness of Penelope, who is a powerful figure in her own right. And so, the poem is also about what it means to be truly suited to someone. Because all these goddesses, who throw themselves at him, they’re more beautiful than Penelope. Naturally, you know, they’re never going to get old, blah blah blah. And yet, they’re not right for him.

Daniel Mendelsohn  30:23

And part of how the Odyssey is constructed, he goes from island to island; shipwreck to shipwreck. He sees different kinds of civilizations; cultures; families. Part of what the Odyssey is about is knowing what is the right life for yourself. And the right life for him is the life that he left behind, which is why he never stays in any of these amazing, fantastical places, where he ends up because he knows where he belongs. And he knows with whom he belongs, which is this amazing, smart, clever woman with whom he does share a kind of quality of mind.

Daniel Mendelsohn  31:11

So part of my book is to weave all of that from the Odyssey into another personal story, which is once my father fell ill, I began to appreciate my parents’ marriage, which turns out to have been a lot more like-minded than I had ever given it credit for. And then, the other sort of big arc in my own book is how after my father took my courses, he had a bad stroke, and had a period of attempted recovery. And it was during that period that I, like Telemachus, began to appreciate things about my parents’ relationship that I’ve never understood.

Sean Murray  31:50

Yes, and that provides just kind of another level of sort of richness to the story. And, you know, I think about marriage and the Odyssey and relating to that story. I mean, most of us don’t get married and leave for 20 years, and then come back and have to get to know our spouse again. But, and as always, the insight of Homer is just amazing because what I got out of that story, thanks to your…the way you kind of I think picked a few details out for me as I read it was that Odysseus has been gone for so long. They don’t recognize each other. They’ve changed physically.

Daniel Mendelsohn  32:25

Right.

Sean Murray  32:26

And we change physically throughout a long-term relationship. And there’s this wonderful part of the book, where your father’s in class, and he speaks up. He says, “I am the only person here, who’s been with someone long enough that they don’t look like the person you started out with.” And that’s the story of my parents, too.

Daniel Mendelsohn  32:46

Right.

Sean Murray  32:46

When I look at my parents today, and the love is still there. It’s just an amazing accomplishment. It’s the human journey.

Daniel Mendelsohn  32:55

It is the human journey. I mean, the Odyssey because it’s a work of fable, and myth, and fantasy sort of exaggerate the terms, so to speak. But, you know, when you’ve been married to someone for 20 years, or in my parents’ case, if you’ve been together 64 years as my parents were, the person you’re looking at after year 60 doesn’t look anything like the person you started out with, as my father memorably said that day. That’s what the Odyssey is really about. I mean, it mythologizes it, right? But, you know, how do you know after 20 years, whether this person you’re looking at is “the same person you started out with?” And you know what, they can’t be the same person. I always joke with my students. You know, the tragedy of taking the freshman Odyssey seminar is you’re too young to understand this. I say, “Wait till you go to your 20th high school reunion, then call me.” Then, you know what it’s like to have somebody walk up to you, and say, “Oh, hey! How are you doing?” And you’re like, “Who is this person?” Right? Time does change us, and not just physically, right?

Daniel Mendelsohn  33:54

In the Odyssey, there’s this great question of…they don’t look the same anymore, so that’s the first impediment to recognition. But it also changes who you are. Hopefully, right? You don’t want to be the same person at the age of 38 that you were at 18, or at the age of 58 that you were at 38. And that’s what the Odyssey is interested in. How do you know who someone is? How does time change us as husbands; as wives; as lovers; as parents? You know, the time factor, it’s so poignant in the Odyssey because you want the person to be the same, so you can recognize them. And yet, in a weird way, it would be a disaster if they were identical to the person you left 20 years earlier. And that’s the paradox. I think it’s a paradox we all know, right? In ourselves, we always feel we are us. I am I. I’m an unchanging thing. And yet, we know intellectually that cannot be the case, right? We have to be evolving; changing interior, as well as exterior. I think that paradox is central to the Odyssey.

Sean Murray  35:08

Yeah, I mean, the I that I sense today as I talk feels like the same I of 10 or 20 years ago, but we know it’s not. We know we’ve evolved. And it gets to that central theme of identity. How do we know our relationships? How do we really know? And it’s a mystery. But we all have to sort of figure it out. And the Odyssey sort of gives you this mythical roadmap or reflection that you can think about some of your own relationships and your own experiences in life.

Daniel Mendelsohn  35:39

Yeah, I mean, I obviously couldn’t agree more. And I think, you know, what the Odyssey and not just the Odyssey, but that’s what literature is for. It takes basic human experiences, and it gives them a framework or an armature that is a great story. And it hangs these true things about being a human on a great story that you want to keep going through and getting to the end of. And it tells you something true about life. There’s no great trick to it. That’s why we respond to these amazing works, you know? And I always feel lucky teaching the Odyssey. You know, I’ve been teaching the Odyssey since I was a graduate student instructor in 1989. That’s what? 31 years now. And every time I teach it to a different bunch of students, I learn something new about it. It always had something new to tell me, and I think that’s the definition of a great work of literature. It never runs out of things to tell you.

Sean Murray  36:39

Well, maybe in closing, we could talk about just one last thing that I like to bring up, which is we talked about the Iliad right at the beginning of our discussion. And there’s a point in the Odyssey, where kind of the Iliad and the Odyssey sort of kind of connect. And Odysseus goes down into the underworld and meets some of the heroes from the siege of Troy, which of course he’s still returning home from. And you make a case that what Homer or whoever sung these poems originally was trying to make with that scene there was trying to make a case that the story of Odysseus or the moral life, virtues of Odysseus are really…the good life is really shown to you in the Odyssey and not the Iliad. And maybe you could explain that a little bit to the listeners because I thought that was still relevant today.

Daniel Mendelsohn  37:30

Well, I mean, it’s a great theme for you to focus on, Sean. I mean, it’s one of the…to me, the central moments of World Literature, really. Because, you know, here you have these two great epics. I mean, many thousands of lines of poetry devoted to these amazing stories. The Iliad is a poem about war, right? You know, Helen of Troy runs off with Paris, the Trojan prince, and her husband’s allies comes to Troy to besiege Troy until they give her back, and it goes on for 10 years. And the Iliad is about heroism in death. And the Odyssey, you could say is about the heroism of living. So what do I mean by that? The Iliad’s hero could not be more opposite to the Odyssey’s hero. The Iliad’s hero is Achilles, the greatest of Greek warriors; the absolute prime specimen of the human species. And he notoriously decides that he’s going to go fight in this war, even if it means he’s going to die because he decides it’s better to have a short life filled with glory than a long life, just sort of sitting around watching soap operas. And that’s the central choice of the Iliad.

Daniel Mendelsohn  38:47

And it seriously presents a major life issue, which is: What kind of life do you want to have? What does it mean to have glory? What does it mean to be celebrated and famous as Achilles is? Is it worth dying young for a great cause? What is a great cause? You know, all of those kinds of things. And of course, Achilles is a great athlete; a great warrior. Odysseus is a great talker; a great liar; a great trickster. They couldn’t be more opposite the one to the other. And of course, Odysseus has no interest in dying for glory, right? His whole point is to do whatever he needs to do to get back home to his wife and his kid; abasing himself; being humiliated; starving; begging. There’s nothing he won’t do. The thing about Achilles is that he couldn’t be more opposite to Odysseus. Odysseus is one who’ll do anything, no matter how humiliating to survive. Achilles would rather die than be dishonored, right? So these two opposite views of life, and the genius of the Odyssey is it creates a scene, where you get to have these two figures basically confronting each other.

Daniel Mendelsohn  39:58

So there’s an amazing scene, where as part of Odysseus’ adventurous homecoming, he has to stop in the underworld: the land where the spirits of the dead go. And while he’s there, he meets the spirit of Achilles. And so, you have this kind of very dramatic confrontation between the hero of the Iliad, who of course by now has died gloriously. And the most wrenching thing happened, because Odysseus says, “Well, you got what you wanted. You’re honored. You’re celebrated. You have all this glory, and it was worth dying young.” And Achilles makes the shattering statement, and he said, “I would rather be a slave to a serf and be alive than to be king of all the dead.” And that is a very powerful repudiation of the value system of the Iliad, right? What does it mean? It means that life is the most important thing. Life is the most important thing. Doesn’t matter how much glory you have, and I think it’s a way of the Odyssey because of course, the scene happens in the Odyssey, right? So it’s so to speak, the Odyssey telling the Iliad, we win. Right? The view of the Odyssey is the vision of humanity that we need to embrace. And I think that’s an incredibly powerful message and a beautiful one, really.

Sean Murray  41:19

Yeah, that’s the message I took away, too. It’s the life of relationships; family; staying alive; to be a part of this life; to be a part of this world; improving our lives; helping others; helping those we love. That’s what the Odyssey comes down to, whereas the Iliad is about honor on the battlefield; dying for some cause, which frankly in the Iliad is not really a great cause in the grand scheme of things. I won’t get into all that, but you know, I think it’s a central point we all make. It’s maybe not as stark as dying. You know, going the route of Achilles in today’s world may be as I was thinking about it could be life where you put money and status above all other things like relationship.

Daniel Mendelsohn  42:06

Yeah. And I think it tells you something true. Look, I don’t think this confrontation necessarily even is trying to tell you which one is right, you know? Because I know a lot of happy investment bankers, but I feel like it forces you to examine the value on which you have based your life choices. I think that’s what these poems want you to do. Even more than telling you this is the right way or that’s the wrong way. I feel like to have created this incredible theme, where two different, totally different views of how to live confront each other. It’s a way of saying to the reader, “You need to think about this stuff. You need to really think about the values that you based your whole life on.” What is important? Because at some point, you are going to die. And at that point, you know, that’s the reckoning. Did I do what was really meaningful? Or did I do what other people thought was meaningful? You know, and that’s why I think it’s such an exciting moment in the poem, and then, an important one, too.

Sean Murray  43:05

And that’s one of the ultimate questions we face. Well, Daniel, thank you so much for being on The Good Life. Where can my listeners learn more about you, and the books, and articles you write?

Daniel Mendelsohn  43:16

Best place is to go to my website, which is www.danielmendelsohn.com. And there’s a list of all my books. There’s a biography, you know, all the usual stuff. And that’s a great way to start.

Sean Murray  43:33

Well, thanks for being on The Good Life.

Daniel Mendelsohn  43:36

Yeah, thank you. I had such a great time talking to you, Sean. Thanks so much.

Outro  43:40

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