DANIEL MENDELSOHN is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. His books include the international best seller The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and many other honors; a memoir, The Elusive Embrace, a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; a translation, with commentary, of the complete poems of C. P. Cavafy; and two collections of essays, How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken and Waiting for the Barbarians. He teaches literature at Bard College.
"Subtle, profoundly moving . . . an intricately constructed,
multidimensional journey of a father and son and their travails
through life and love. Mendelsohn weaves his basket with many
wands; the complexity seems natural, an account of the quality of
life itself, a route to revelation. Mendelsohn explicates the
Odyssey with exemplary and generous clarity. A book of shimmering,
beautiful, dapple-skilled intelligence." --Adam Nicolson, The New
York Times Book Review
"Rich, vivid, a blood-warm book . . . a deeply moving tale of a
father and son's transformative journey in reading--and
reliving--the Odyssey. Mendelsohn wears his learning lightly yet
superbly. What catches you off guard about this memoir is how
moving it is: it has many things to say not only about Homer's epic
poem, but about fathers and sons. Mendelsohn has written a book
that's accessible to nearly any curious reader. The book partakes
of at least four genres: classroom drama; travel writing;
biographical memoir; literary criticism. Revealing and funny . . .
Mendelsohn makes Homer's epic shine in your mind." --Dwight Garner,
The New York Times
"My favorite classicist once again combines meticulous literary
investigation with warm and wrenching human emotion--books like
these are why I love reading." --Lee Child "Poignant, tender,
affecting. . . . Mendelsohn is one of the finest critics writing
today; he's also an elegant and moving memoirist. One of the
pleasures of reading him in any genre is being in expert hands.
Mendelsohn's new book draws on all his talents as he braids
critical exegeses into intimate reminiscences, to illuminate them
both. In An Odyssey, a seminar at Bard College becomes a voyage of
discovery, not just for his students but also for Mendelsohn. He is
alert to ambiguities, aware that the path to any truth is a winding
one; his defining skill is his ability to trace those paths in rich
detail and intricate layers of revelations that build to a deeper
understanding--of art, of life--that is humanly and artistically
satisfying. Mendelsohn's use of the classical Greek technique of
ring composition perfectly captures the stop-and-start rhythms of
his progress . . . Brilliant." --Wendy Smith, The Washington Post
"When Daniel Mendelsohn's mathematician father lands in his son's
Homer seminar at Bard, the older man sets in motion an odyssey both
hilarious and heartfelt. Father and son start in the pages of an
epic, board a ship to follow the hero's path through the
Mediterranean, and finally end where all our stories do. An Odyssey
melds genius-level lit crit with gut-level moving memoir. Beautiful
and wise." --Mary Karr
"A happy homecoming of another kind. Dread of the alien thrums
through [Homer's] Odyssey; for Mendelsohn, the ancient tale becomes
an occasion not only to explore his relationship with his father,
but to transform it. He recounts the progress of the seminar he
teaches, in which his father is a lively (often obstreperous)
presence. The students are invigorated. In acknowledging the power
of the Homeric poem to bring depth to human relations, Mendelsohn's
father is acknowledging the value of his son's world and expertise.
The recognition leaves Mendelsohn free to see through his father's
hardness--his 'exacting standards for everything'--to the
vulnerable fighter within: a scrappy, strategizing Odysseus from
the Bronx. What solace or despair resides in the unexpected
relevance of this ancient poem, its encounters with Otherness
thrown into high relief by the xenophobia of our time? Three
millennia later, we have yet to habitually turn to the bedraggled
stranger and take note of his tears. . . . Poignant." --Rebecca
Newberger Goldstein, The Atlantic "Tender . . . complex and moving:
a book that has much to say about fathers and sons. On one level,
An Odyssey elegantly retells the story of Mendelsohn's Odyssey
course, complete with all the gags, competition, and good cheer of
an intergenerational bromance. [But] it dives deeper, excavating a
portrait of Mendelsohn's special student, his father: his lonely
childhood, his early brilliance, his forfeiture of Latin for a life
of numbers. Why a man so warm could be so cold. As Mendelsohn
unpeels the layers of his father's life and education, he
dramatizes the beauty--and tedium--of the classroom. The reality of
instruction is messy; Mendelsohn happily shows us how difficult the
transference of passion can be. In this way, the students become
supporting characters to the book's hero, Mendelsohn's father, who
lurks in the corner like a hero in disguise. There is but one
ending to the book; within a year, Jay would die, and so
Mendelsohn's journey--indeed like Homer's--would be undertaken
after the fact, when something remained to be learned. It is a
remarkable feat of narration that such a forbiddingly erudite
writer can show us how necessary this education is, how
provisional, how frightening, how comforting." --John Freeman, The
Boston Globe
"By turns family memoir, brilliant literary criticism, and a
narrative of education. Most of all, An Odyssey is a love story.
Mendelsohn makes his way through the text of the Odyssey, but also
tells a larger, personal story--of his family. Both odysseys focus
on quests, recognitions, homecomings. The book asks: How can you
really know anyone else? A truth everywhere acknowledged in
Mendelsohn's odyssey is that everyone has a story, just as every
hero has a flaw, and that everyone needs stories to get through
life. Mendelsohn is the professor every college kid dreams about:
learned, sympathetic, encouraging and challenging in equal measure.
Like Homer, Mendelsohn makes us grateful for journeys, and the
companions--especially our families--who accompany us along our
individual and collective paths. . . . In An Odyssey, he reels us
in with a storyteller's strongest gifts: passion, clarity, and
timing." --Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal "Fascinating. .
. intensely moving. There are many moments to cherish in this
tangled and passionate investigation. Mendelsohn's exploration is
[both] a personal family memoir and a critical report on Homer's
epic, and the two facets illuminate each other. Mendelsohn is an
imaginative teacher, and the discussion of the Odyssey sparkles.
The Mediterranean cruise that father and son take pays off in
surprising ways; we get a haunting glimpse of the fear that the end
of your journey means finis, the hope residual in permanent
postponement. Best of all are the various small recognitions that
combine to build the late-blossoming intimacy between father and
son. This is an honest, and loving, account of the improbable
odyssey that gave them this one last deeply satisfying adventure
together." --Peter Green, The New York Review of Books "Heartfelt,
touching . . . a dazzlingly rich story of identity and recognition
from an exacting critic and award-winning memoirist. . .When his
father enrolled in Mendelsohn's undergraduate seminar, Mendelsohn
didn't know his father would only have a year to live. The course,
and the cruise retracing Odyssey's voyage to Ithaca a few months
later, set in motion an emotional journey neither man could have
anticipated. With each new foray in his oeuvre, Mendelsohn
discovers deeper truths about those we think we know, including
ourselves. Mendelsohn's intelligence glitters on the page." --Rajat
Singh, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Mendelsohn is a force. His sentences are freighted with knowledge,
observation, and feeling. Both the classroom experience--where
Mendelsohn's father Jay serves as a counterpoint to Mendelsohn's
sharp reading of the story--and the boat excursion they take offer
opportunities: his father slowly sheds his carapace and gives
himself over to the adventure, revealing a side that we--and his
son--may not have seen before. Mendelsohn is an encouraging teacher
with enthusiasm and wonderful energy. But perhaps most
significantly, readers come to understand him as a man with
long-borne emotions, for his relationship with his father has not
been the easiest. [This] father-son journey with Homer as guide
[is] no buddy story, but a hard-fought, hard-won, late-life
conciliation." --Peter Lewis, Christian Science Monitor
"Fascinating . . . Mendelsohn expertly examines the Odyssey with
depth and classical acumen, extracting meaning from even its most
subtle moments. He explores [its] historical importance with the
comfortable clarity of someone who has spent decades immersed in
Greek literature. He details his own relationship with the ancient
poem, and he culls from the narrative many insights into his own
familial bonds, specifically with his father. But the most
entertaining part may be the classroom scenes. By the end of the
semester, Mendelsohn's father had become part of the class and his
presence leads to a revealing and dramatic moment. An Odyssey is a
journey worth taking." --Jonathan Russell Clark, San Francisco
Chronicle
"Moving . . . a surprising piece of art--a masterful memoir of
reading, teaching and learning; a book as full of twists and turns
as its subject, often beautiful too. The Homeric questions about
fidelity, heroism and survival are elevated from Mendelsohn's
seminar by the relationship between the two men. This is a story of
reconciling a scientist and an artist; Jay, the man of calculus,
comes to influence both his son and his fellow pupils. As well as a
contribution to the art of memoir, An Odyssey is a vivid defence of
the close rereading of a classical text, the tiny questions from
which bigger pictures become clear." --Peter Stothard, The
Financial Times
★ "Enlightening--engaging, gripping and deeply moving . . .
Mendelsohn explores the enduring relevance of Homer's Odyssey
through a memoir tracing the complex relationship between father
and son." --Library Journal (starred review) "Beguiling. . . in
this memoir, Mendelsohn recounts a freshman class on the Odyssey he
taught at Bard College with his father, an 81-year-old computer
scientist, sitting in. ... Mendelsohn gradually unwraps layers of
timeless meaning in the ancient Greek poem; Homeric heroes offer
resonant psychological parallels to a modern family. Mendelsohn
weaves trenchant literary analysis and family history into a
luminous whole. A gem." --Publishers Weekly
★ "Sharply intelligent. . . A frequent contributor to the New
Yorker and the New York Times Book Review, Mendelsohn is also a
classics scholar. His father, a retired mathematician, had been
interested in the classics during his school days and decided to
continue his education by studying with his son . . . Ultimately,
this book [is] about what they learn 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; he skillfully, subtly interweaves textual analysis
[with] the lessons of life outside it . . . A well-told story that
underscores the power of storytelling."--Kirkus, starred review
"There are a handful of books that have captured the pleasure and
romance of [the classics]. Donna Tartt's The Secret History was
one. This is another. What happens in this book isn't really its
point; it's more about the telling than the tale. And the telling
is breathtaking. Homer has a phrase for those who can speak
bewitchingly: they have 'wing�d words'. Mendelsohn has wing�d
words." --Catherine Nixey, The Times (UK) "Radiant . . . a candid,
majestic book on the art of teaching, and the push-pull
relationship between professor and student, especially if the
student is one's father. At the book's center is [Mendelsohn's
father] Jay, whose presence in the classroom bewilders and charms
the other students and his son . . . Mendelsohn artfully allows Jay
to define himself through bluster and unexpected moments of
tenderness. With skill and passion [Mendelsohn] underscores how and
why Homer still resonates today. Intimate connections between Greek
myths and our own lives reveal the author at his singular best.
With this graceful and searching memoir, we all drink from the cup
of knowledge proffered by one of our leading philosopher-writers."
--Hamilton Cain, Star Tribune "Lucid textual analysis [of Homer's
the Odyssey], and a profound meditation on the inherent
unknowability of the men who raise us. More than that, An Odyssey
is a moving portrait of the father Mendelsohn comes to know in the
last years of his father's life--[a] quest that is the beating
heart of the book. I came away with a renewed and deepened sense of
the rewards found in a close reading of the Odyssey. The poem is
about life itself: marriage, fidelity, homecoming, fatherhood,
sonship, duty, honor, love, and in true Greek style, preparation
for death. To encounter the poem, and to read it deeply, is to
encounter ourselves." --Thomas Jacobs, America Magazine
"Spellbinding . . . multi-layered, inclusive. . . With bardic
capacity, Mendelsohn tells a story that is heroic in scope yet
distinctly humble in manner. Mendelsohn's keen, penetrating
observations plumb the micro-emotions of the several stories
interwoven here. Slowly, painstakingly and with abiding, warm
humor, Mendelsohn pursues reconciliation with his prickly father,
who becomes a cantankerous student in Mendelsohn's seminar at Bard
College. The book's magic is in moving from topic to topic, setting
to setting, insight to insight, ancient to modern over what is
sometimes no more than a paragraph break, and with no creaking of
the narrative machinery. A meditation on filial love as candid,
tender and in its own way ruthless as its counterparts in the
Bible, Shakespeare and Homer . . . written with style as remarkable
and flexible as the Odyssey, with sentences Proustian in complexity
yet lucid and balanced . . . both dense and fleet, and wholly
captivating." --Tim Pfaff, The Bay Area Reporter
"It's hard to pierce a legend, even when it's just generation-old
family lore . . . As author-professor, Mendelsohn doesn't lecture;
his storytelling leaves room for other teachers -- including his
current students, his former professors and relatives who decode
multi-layered family myths. All of these relationships yield an
emotional bounty, nourished by memories, loyalty, love or some
combination of the three. Equal parts lit-crit class, language
lesson and memoir, An Odyssey create[s] its own unique and
compelling sub-genre. Each element of Mendelsohn's story is buffed
to perfection . . . Brilliant." --Alison Buckholtz, Florida
Times-Union "A memorable mixture of literature and life. . . One of
the students in Mendelsohn's spring undergraduate seminar on
Homer's Odyssey was quite different from the others: Mendelsohn's
own father. Classroom discussions of Odysseus' long, wandering
journey home to Ithaca led father and son to undertake a real-life
Mediterranean cruise retracing the Greek warrior's travels.
Mendelsohn begins to see his father in a new light even while the
older man challenges the basic tenets of Homer's epic. . . [It is]
a journey of understanding they undertake together. Interesting and
instructive." --Bridget Thoreson, Booklist
"Brimming with longing and heartbreak . . . A noted memoirist and
venerable contributor to a myriad of respected periodicals, Daniel
Mendelsohn doesn't hold back. In this memoir, he turns his
attention to two men who have influenced a large portion of his
life: Homer, and his own father. An Odyssey carefully unpacks
details from Homer's epic poem, with the author taking the stance
of a vigilant observer. Witnessing his father's guileless
rediscovery of the ancient text, Mendelsohn's life's work as a
classicist is turned on its head. The revelations and thoughts of
the central characters of Homer's Odyssey serve as portals to
deeper understanding of contemporary relationships. Studying (and
essentially mirroring) Homer's legendary work allowed both the
Mendelsohn father and son to find new dimensions for their love of
one another. While the events of An Odyssey conclude with Jay
passing away, the vibrant stamp he left behind on his son is
evidenced by the profundity of the memoir's pages. It's an epic
reconciliation, albeit a quiet one, focused on all that he'd been
given by his father, celebrating their mutual love and respect."
--Michael Raver, The Huffington Post
"Family memoirs are often chronicles of estrangement and
rapprochement, typically seeking to wring meaning from the haze of
grief or regret. In this quest, Mendelsohn transcends the demands
of the genre with his customary blend of linguistic elegance and
narrative panache. He dares readers to engage with the complexities
of [Homer's] epic poem and apply its lessons to their own lives. As
the memoir unspools, Mendelsohn's narrative grip tightens, and the
son's search for his father becomes poignant and powerful." --Julia
M. Klein, The Forward
"Compelling . . . a memorable journey through worlds both ancient
and contemporary. As I read Mendelsohn's wonderfully precise
textual analysis of Homer, I couldn't help but think how similar
his interpretative method is to the ways in which Biblical scholars
parse the Torah for deeper understanding. With each reading, there
is also more to glean. So, too, does Mendelsohn gain more insight
into his father, and thus himself, at every step along the way. An
Odyssey is a multi-layered tale; a lesson in learning through the
journey of life." --Diane Cole, Jewish Week "Deeply personal. . .
Mendelsohn traces his emotional, intellectual and physical journeys
with his father, which he weaves with Homer's epic poem about
Odysseus' long journey home from battle." --Robert Nagler Miller, J
Weekly
"Enjoyable. . . An Odyssey describes a son's touching mission to
understand his father. In a thoroughly Odyssean conceit, Mendelsohn
questions what it takes to recognise the qualities of one's kin.
The appeal of the book lies in the lacunae between Mendelsohn's
understanding of his father and ours. Teaching his father initially
seems to teach Mendelsohn only how little they have in common,
[but] if any subject can dissolve their differences, it is
Classics. Everyone who embarks on an Odyssean quest must fail in
his own way. The author doesn't fail to achieve Odysseus's heroism.
Can a son ever know his father at all? It is to Mendelsohn's credit
that he poses the question before it is too late." --Daisy Dunn,
The New Statesman "A rich and richly textured book . . . a tour de
force. Combining an in-depth literary analysis with a personal
narrative is a bold enterprise. An Odyssey could have been, in the
hands of a lesser writer, grandiose. It isn't. It is so well
written that every page makes you feel more alert and alive. The
brilliance of An Odyssey lies in the insightfulness of the writing,
as Mendelsohn immerses himself in the text of Homer's Odyssey lives
it, breathes it, and presses it for meaning. He is particularly
good at physical descriptions; he is also good at demonstrating how
difficult it is to understand our parents, the small ways in which
we hurt one another, and the tender moments. The ending is
heartbreaking. Through Homer, Mendelsohn has created a memorial his
father: an extraordinary act of -filial love." --Helen Morales,
Times Literary Supplement (UK) "Mendelsohn is an artful storyteller
whose skills are equal to the task of weaving Homer's poem into his
own life. In this insightful, tender book, Mendelsohn gracefully
marries literary criticism and memoir to describe an intellectual
and personal journey that becomes one of profound discovery for
both [father and son]. Most impressive are his transitions from
scholarly con-sideration of 'The Odyssey' to intimate stories of
his family life, as when the class discussion flows effortlessly
into a magical moment, witnessing [his father] Jay as he offers a
heartbreakingly beautiful tribute to his wife... [There are] many
wise lessons to be gleaned from this lovely book." --Harvey
Freedenberg, BookPage "Fascinating . . . by turns cerebral, lively
and poignant. Mendelsohn has achieved an enviable renown as
essayist, literary critic and author of autobiographical
explorations undergirded by insights from classic texts. In Homer's
Odyssey, Telemachus, now 20, is searching for the father he has
never known; likewise, while teaching a course on the Odyssey,
Mendelsohn discovers that the classroom becomes a way to better
understand his cantankerous father. In lesser hands, this sort of
parallelism would seem gimmicky, but not here. It's clear that
Mendelsohn's Socratic method of teaching (via dialogue rather than
lecture) forces everyone, including himself, to see things with
fresh eyes. Every step of the way, An Odyssey charts a remarkable
journey made indelible by Mendelsohn's elegant prose. --Dan Cryer,
Newsday "Rich. . . surprising, seamless. Mendelsohn is perhaps the
most accessible contemporary ambassador of the classics; An Odyssey
makes his most convincing case to date for their vital necessity.
The book argues that Homer's classic may be, more than anything
else, a family saga. In An Odyssey Mendelsohn places himself in the
Telemachus role to ponder his relationship to his own father, who,
like many fathers seems to have at some point drifted away. This
book is as much tribute to the magic that can occur in the
classroom as an unlikely tale of a father and son's spiritual
reunion. It is an adventure in criticism and in familial reckoning,
telling the story of how Daniel and his father get to know each
other in the last year of his father's life. Mendelsohn takes us
through the Odyssey alongside his class, meanwhile drawing
comparisons between his and his father's journeys, and those of
Odysseus and Telemachus. Mendelsohn has honed a method of mixing
memoir and criticism to reflect on the problems of contemporary
life through the lens of the Greek classics. What's remarkable is
the extent to which the Odyssey truly does help him--and
us--understand our lives." --Craig Morgan Teicher, Bookforum
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