An Odyssey

July 17, 2017
Homeric heroes offer resonant psychological parallels to a modern family in this beguiling memoir. Mendelsohn (The Lost: A Search for Six of the Six Million) recounts a freshman class on the Odyssey that he taught at Bard College with his father, Jay, an 81-year-old computer scientist, sitting in; the two followed up with an Odyssey-themed Mediterranean cruise. The result is a small gem of seminar-room slapstick as the author struggles to impart a scholarly gloss to his students’ struggles with the text and his dad’s crotchety outbursts (Jay disparages the wily Odysseus as less than a “real” hero because “he’s a liar and he cheated on his wife” and because he gets his men killed, cries frequently, and is forever in need of rescue and makeovers by the gods). Gradually, Mendelsohn unwraps layers of timeless meaning in the ancient Greek poem: the muted battles seething inside the epic’s many troubled marriages (which parallel the battles waged by his own parents); the reunion of Odysseus with the grown son who doesn’t know him, their stilted unfamiliarity a template for the awkwardness lingering between the Mendelsohn father and son; and the longing to strike out for unknown parts coupled with the fear that holds men back. Mendelsohn weaves family history and trenchant literary analysis into a luminous whole. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

September 1, 2017
One of the students in Mendelsohn's spring undergraduate seminar on Homer's Odyssey was quite different from the others. That's because he was Mendelsohn's own father, an 81-year-old retired mathematician. The classroom discussions of Odysseus' long, wandering journey home to Ithaca led father and son to undertake a real-life, 10-day Mediterranean cruise retracing the Greek warrior's travels. As Mendelsohn recounts in this instructive work, he begins to see his father in a new light even while the older man challenges the basic tenets of Homer's epic (How can Odysseus be a hero, he asks, when he loses all his men and cries all the time?). As interesting as the class' progress through the epic turns out to be, it is the author's treatment of his relationship with his father, and the journey of understanding they undertake together, that makes this mixture of literature and life so memorable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 1, 2017

Mendelsohn (Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities, Bard Coll.), translator of the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy, frequent New Yorker contributor, and award-winning author of works including The Lost, here explores the enduring relevance of Homer's Odyssey through a memoir broadly parodying the ancient poem's narrative structure. It centers on the author's father, Jay, deciding to enroll in the freshman Odyssey seminar his son teaches, challenging Mendelsohn's authority as teacher and stimulating his introspection. Mendelsohn's account of the seminar provides an enlightening introduction to Homer's epic. Odysseus's adventures are represented by a father-son Mediterranean cruise, responding to sites associated with Homer. He even includes Athena/Mentor in the form of his own teachers, the classicists Froma Zeitlin and Jenny Strauss Clay. The journeys of Mendelsohn's Telemachus and Jay's Odysseus trace the complex relationship between father and son: the son's growth and self-discovery in the quest of his father; the father's coming to grips with his successes and failures, as he struggles to return home and understand his son. VERDICT Mendelsohn's narrative is immediately engaging, soon gripping, and in the end, deeply moving. [See Prepub Alert, 3/20/17; Q&A with Mendelsohn on p. 119.--Ed.]--Thomas L. Cooksey, formerly with Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2017

At age 81, retired research scientist Jay Mendelsohn decided to return to the classroom to study the great literature that passed him by in his youth. To tackle The Odyssey, he opted for an undergraduate seminar at Bard College, not coincidentally taught by son Daniel, whose international best seller, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2017

Mendelsohn (Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities, Bard Coll.), translator of the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy, frequent New Yorker contributor, and award-winning author of works including The Lost, here explores the enduring relevance of Homer's Odyssey through a memoir broadly parodying the ancient poem's narrative structure. It centers on the author's father, Jay, deciding to enroll in the freshman Odyssey seminar his son teaches, challenging Mendelsohn's authority as teacher and stimulating his introspection. Mendelsohn's account of the seminar provides an enlightening introduction to Homer's epic. Odysseus's adventures are represented by a father-son Mediterranean cruise, responding to sites associated with Homer. He even includes Athena/Mentor in the form of his own teachers, the classicists Froma Zeitlin and Jenny Strauss Clay. The journeys of Mendelsohn's Telemachus and Jay's Odysseus trace the complex relationship between father and son: the son's growth and self-discovery in the quest of his father; the father's coming to grips with his successes and failures, as he struggles to return home and understand his son. VERDICT Mendelsohn's narrative is immediately engaging, soon gripping, and in the end, deeply moving. [See Prepub Alert, 3/20/17; Q&A with Mendelsohn on p. 119.--Ed.]--Thomas L. Cooksey, formerly with Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 15, 2017
An account of the lessons learned by a son and his father as they study the Greek epic together.There have been plenty of gimmicky books about returning to the classics and unearthing the contemporary implications and timeless wisdom therein. This sharply intelligent and deeply felt work operates on an entirely different level--several of them, in fact. A frequent contributor to the New Yorker and New York Times Book Review and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, Mendelsohn (Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture, 2012, etc.) is also a classics scholar who teaches a seminar on The Odyssey at Bard College. His father, a retired mathematician and research scientist, had been interested in the classics during his school days and decided to continue his education by studying with his son. The two also embarked on an educational cruise that attempts to re-create the journey of Odysseus. This would seem to present challenges for a man nearing his 82nd birthday, but it proved to be more of a trial for his son. Ultimately, this is a book about what they learn about each other and what they know about each other and what they can never know about each other. The author uses a close reading of the epic to illuminate the mysteries of the human condition, and he skillfully and subtly interweaves the classroom textual analysis and the lessons of the life outside it. "That's how I was trained, and that's how the people who trained me were trained," he writes. "If the work has real coherence, all these details will add up, even if they're not noticeable at first and even if the big picture isn't clear. Only by means of close reading can we understand what the big picture is and how the pieces, the small things, fit into it." Revelations for Mendelsohn provide epiphanies for readers as well. A well-told story that underscores the power of storytelling.

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