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"When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enroll in the undergraduate seminar on the Odyssey that his son Daniel teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired research scientist who sees the world through a mathematician's unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his 'one last chance' to learn the great literature he'd neglected in his youth--and, even more, a final opportunity to more fully understand his son. But through the sometimes uncomfortable months that follow, as the two men explore Homer's great work together--first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son's interpretations, and then during a surprise-filled Mediterranean journey retracing Odysseus' legendary voyages-it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too: for Jay's responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the son to understand his difficult father at last. As this intricately woven memoir builds to its wrenching climax, Mendelsohn's narrative comes to echo the Odyssey itself, with its timeless themes of deception and recognition, marriage and children, the pleasures of travel and the meaning of home. Rich with literary and emotional insight, An Odyssey is a renowned author-scholar's most revelatory entwining yet of personal narrative and literary exploration."--Jacket.… (more)
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So, when
Mendelsohn’s professorial insights into [The Odyssey] are truly interesting and easy to follow even if you’ve never previously read it. (I fall into this category, although I’m familiar, of course, with the story.)
Since it’s a seminar, everyone is encouraged to give their opinions. But although Jay Mendelsohn has promised to sit quietly without speaking, he, too, unabashedly give his opinions (How can Odysseus be a hero when he cries and cheats on his wife?). As the young men and women interact with his elderly father’s comments with recognition and respect, Daniel becomes more open to his father’s thoughts. We see the modern father and son begin to interact and understand each other played out against one of the greatest father and son stories ever written.
Finally, the two Mendelsohn’s take a Mediterranean cruise following the path of the Odyssey. And what they truly find are each other.
This is a touching and instructive story, recommended for anyone who has a love for the classics or a father (elderly or otherwise).
It is a touching memoir of Jay Mendelsohn and Daniel Mendelsohn and their relationship that was straightforward and complex at the same time. As he works his way through the Odyssey, he draws parallels between that and his own life journey with his parents and his father in particular. He is open with his relationship that he has had with his father and takes time to be open and explain details as the discovery of things that were to clarify what made his father the way he was. One challenging part of the book was was that I have never read the Odyssey, so this book was a voyage of discovery in certain ways for me. It is a book that has never crossed my radar before but might give it a go one day. Worth reading for those that was a different take on a family memoir.
Early in his book Mendelsohn brings up the topic of “ring composition,” a literary device where an author uses flashbacks and flashforwards but always circles back to “present” events in the tale, and this device, introduced in reference to The Odyssey, allows him to examine with deepening understanding the life and motivations of the father he loves but has long regarded as cold and tough. Mendelsohn and his father follow up the spring course with a summer “literary cruise” around the sites made famous by Homer's epic, and that experience too offers him new perspectives on his father.
Like I said, this made me want to reread the Odyssey, and that's saying something, as I've always agreed with Mendelsohn's dad in finding Odysseus is a hard guy to admire. He fails to bring his men home, he cheats on his wife, he's a braggart, etc. Mendelsohn's a skillful teacher, though, and he helped me see details, parallels, and connections in the work that I'd previously missed or not fully appreciated. While I still don't like Odysseus, Mendelsohn showed me that the poem is more concerned with the bonds between family members and profound in its insights in these matters than I'd previously appreciated.
Erudite, heartwarming, and sometimes amusing, this was a delight to read.
“I don’t know why he’s supposed to be such a haihhro,” he says. “He cheats on his wife, he sleeps with Calypso. He loses all of his men, so he’s a lousy general. He’s depressed, he whines. He sits there and wants to die.”
Mendelsohn uses ring composition to weave different strands together. Ring composition, as he explains in the book, involves digressions in narrative, with frequent forays into the past to explain what is happening now. Mendelsohn shows how ring composition is used in [The Odyssey] and also uses it liberally himself. I had noticed this technique when I read Mendelsohns earlier book; [The Lost; A Search for Six of the Six Million]; but at that time, I didn't realize it was a technique; I thought he was just writing like an old man talks. I do like this technique, as it helps in making connections between past and present; which, as a classics scholar, is one of Mendelsohn's strong suits. However, I think he overuses it in this book, and a more straightforward narrative could have helped certain parts of the book. However, that's a minor quibble, and overall this book is a jewel.