An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic

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. Although at times he comes off as a rather stereotypical haughty professor of classics, he doesn’t shy away from highlighting his own failures to connect to his father; the ways in which he missed opportunities to see his father. In this way, the book can be sad. And yet, for all these failures, there is a connection made; their relationship is transformed, and I think, father and son do come to know each other better.

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 the author ingeniously casts both of these genres into a Homeric literary form.

Mendelsohn's An Odyssey is a satisfying venture into how a classic epic poem mirrors some of the issues that every son confronts in learning about his father. I enjoyed the class of students analyzing Homer's work, but I found real meaning in the uncovering of things about the author's father that he had not known before. This is Telemachus earning his education, into being an even more compassionate man regarding decisions his father had made. Some of the analysis of Homer's work drags a bit and I would have enjoyed the book more if the things he learns about his father were meditated over a bit more in terms of consequences for the author. But Mendelsohn writes well, captures the essence of his father in a number of key, repeated phrases, and knows how to craft a tale that engages the reader. I recommend this book to anyone who wonders why his or her Dad did THAT?

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 actions, their mother's thoughts. As children we might know what our parents have done, but we usually don't know what they feel. Daniel Mendelsohn intersperses what happened in the family's past with passages from "The Odyssey". How Odysseus felt after not seeing his home, his wife, his father, and his son for twenty years can't exactly be paired with a man's life two thousand years later, but just the working through the passages of the epic with his father helped bring the two closer and helps Daniel understand - a bit - about his father. I am not a classicist. I've never read any of the epic poems Daniel Mendelsohn writes about in "An Odyssey",in English, let alone in the original Greek. I enjoyed his previous book, "The Six" better, but then I am an armchair historian and have read a lot about the Holocaust. So, I was a bit in uncharted waters when I began reading "An Odyssey". But I had enjoyed Mendelsohn's references to classical studies in "The Six" - yes, he managed to combine personal history and the classics in that book, as well - and so I looked forward to reading his new book. I'd say I understood most of it but thoroughly enjoyed it.

The author of this book is operating on several levels. First, it is a primer on the Odyssey that unravels the heartfelt reason why Odysseus and Penelope yearn to be reunited. Secondly, it is a look at the world and training of a classicist. Then it is a dual father son story. One story is between the author and his father who enrolls in his son's Odyssey seminar at Bard College. In the middle of this semester the pair sails around the Mediterranean Sea visiting sites in the Odyssey. And this journey of theirs is the collision of the baby boomer generation and the warrior World War Two generation entwined in both love and competition. And this leads to the other father son story, the relationship between the trickster warrior Odysseus and his post Trojan War warrior generation son. A professor of mine once asked if Shakespeare was our greatest writer what have we been doing for the last five hundred years to which I say nowadays if Homer was our greatest writer what have we been doing for the last 2,800 years. The answer is waiting for this touching book from Professor Mendelsohn.

Mendelsohn has crafted a triumphant, immensely human, and moving memoir of his father in the midst of the shared experience of a seminar at Bard College on THE ODYSSEY, itself the foundational Western story of sons searching for and understanding their fathers. In prose of great beauty, the author journeys deeper and deeper into the mind and life of his 80+ year old father, Jay, a brilliant but elusive research mathematician. In so doing, the son Daniel comes to understand the limits that sons face in knowing their fathers even when a host of previously-unknown details of their lives are revealed. All of this takes place within the context of an in-depth exploration of THE ODYSSEY itself as Mendelsohn details the unfolding story of Telemachus, Odysseus, and Penelope in the college seminar the taught and which his father attended as an auditor. Tremendously engaging and thought provoking. A very satisfying reading experience.

This is a wonderful meditation on a son, a classics professor and his father. The son teaches a seminar on the Odyssey, his eighty two year old father tends the seminar as an auditing student. Later they go on a cruise and tour the places Homer mentions. As in the Greek epic, there are diversions and flashbacks. One suspects Mendolson used his lecture notes (he is an excellent teacher) but the heart of the book is the son’s effort to discover his brilliant but difficult father. I was impressed by theKatsanzakis version of the epic but this deepened my appreciation of the saga.

In this delightful work Daniel Mendelsohn reviews his late father's life and personality by taking us through the story of the old man's last year, during which he audited a college course (taught by his son) on Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey. As a followup, father and son took a cruise which visited various landmarks said to be locations visited by Odysseus on his long trip home from Troy. As we read the accounts of the classroom dialogue and descriptions of the cruise, we realize that both the poem and Mendelsohn's book describe a son's search for his father. Jay Mendelsohn had a fascinating life story, and his son weaves the details in with questions which are brought out in the poem. At the conclusion, I felt I had learned from both. I do think it important to be familiar with The Odyssey, and I found it easy to read a paperback translation before I opened the book.

Fabulous book. Recommend it highly

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An extremely knowledgeable writer taking you on a journey to discover family ties and Ulysses...

We used it for our Book Club and everyone enjoyed it. Beautifully written and we all felt we learned a lot. I'm giving it to my son-in-law for his birthday!

A masterful rendering of the classic which continues to resonate through his life experience. A worthwhile refresher of the Odyssey to be sure, but also a thought-provoking tale of family bonds and all their joys and pitfalls.