An Odyssey:
A Father, a Son, and an Epic
PRIX MÉDITERRANEÉE (France), WINNER
BAILLIE-GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NONFICTION (UK), FINALIST
PRIX TRANSFUGE (France), WINNER
LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE (UK), FINALIST
<>NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017: NPR, LIBRARY JOURNAL, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSDAY
KIRKUS BEST MEMOIR OF 2017
A deeply moving tale of a father and son’s transformative journey in reading–and reliving–Homer’s epic masterpiece.
When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enroll in the undergraduate Odyssey seminar his son teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired computer 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, a writer and classicist. But through the sometimes uncomfortable months during which 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’s famous voyages–it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too: 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 triumphant entwining yet of personal narrative and literary exploration.
PRAISE and REVIEWS
“A book of shimmering, beautiful, dapple-skilled intelligence…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.”
–Adam Nicolson, New York Times Book Review
“A poignant and funny memoir as well as a stirring work of literary criticism.” —
—Vulture Best Books of 2017
“A brilliant new memoir…At its core, it is a funny, loving portrait of a difficult but loving parent: Mendelsohn’s father, Jay, who is, like Odysseus and perhaps all of us, polytropos: “many-sided” or “much-turning.” Mendelsohn sets an account of the Homeric Odyssey alongside a nuanced portrait of his own complicated familial and quasi-familial relationships, including a vivid picture of Mendelsohn’s anger, anxieties and embarrassments about his father…Most powerfully, Mendelsohn contrasts his account of Homer with his father’s more critical response; the meeting of the two perspectives leads to a far richer reading of the poem. The fault-lines mapped in the disagreements of father and son correspond to some of the most fascinating interpretative questions of The Odyssey itself. Mendelsohn is a perceptive literary critic and a self-consciously elegant writer. An Odyssey is a stellar contribution to the genre of memoirs about reading—literary analysis and the personal stories are woven together in a way that feels both artful and natural.”
–Emily Wilson, The Guardian (UK)
“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…Mendelsohn makes Homer’s epic shine in your mind.”
–Dwight Garner, New York Times (daily)
“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…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
“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…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)
“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, The Wall Street Journal
“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
“Extraordinary . . .Mendelsohn is the closest thing American classicists have to a hometown celebrity; his nonpareil prose has been recognized in wide literary circles. An Odyssey will speak to souls already well-watered by Homer and to those who have yet to drink from his well. An Odyssey is about the challenge we face in attempting to assemble our own prehistories. It is, in other words, the challenge of figuring out your parents. A deeply personal, profoundly moving meditation.”
–Johanna Hanink, Eidolon
“A marvellously entertaining and wise chronicle of [Mendelsohn’s and his father’s] odyssey, first in the classroom and then on a tour of the seas around Greece. Mendelsohn senior reveals himself to be a clever questioner and someone capable of motivating a class of reluctant youngsters. Revelations about the sorrows of war, the pangs of love, the craft of matrimony and the laws of travel are had. ‘A good book leaves you wanting more,’ Mendelsohn’s father observes after finishing his son’s seminar. This is powerfully true of this moving new odyssey as well.”
–Alfredo Manguel, Literary Review (UK)
“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…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
“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
“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, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Wise and deeply humane—a many-layered memoir; a remarkably warm and intimate book, one that brings an ancient wonder into modern life and creates heroes on a less than epic scale. Mendelsohn explains how his relationship with his father was historically spiky, characterised by patches of silence and distance. Under the teacher-pupil bond, however, it flourishes. Even as Mendelsohn lights up hidden meanings in the Odyssey and universal resonances for the reader, he is not only conveying his knowledge about the epic, but about the little things, too, those details that make a person who they are. In every way, this book is an education.”
–Victoria Segal, The Sunday Times (London)
“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
“Brave . . . A memoir that itself is a deeply Odyssean work, not just structurally, but thematically: as Mendelsohn takes us through Homer’s epic, he reveals how its themes – the passing of time, identity and recognition, the bonds between fathers and sons, husbands and wives – resonate across his and his father’s lives. The book thus enacts a truth that has long been central to Mendelsohn’s writing and teaching, which is that the great works of antiquity remain relevant today. This is a gentle, at times almost nostalgic, work; Mendelsohn’s lithe prose flits seamlessly across intervals and registers, switching from erudite exposition one minute to emotion-filled reminiscence the next. This accomplished book testifies to what is perhaps the Odyssey’s most abiding message: that intelligence has little value if it isn’t allied to love.”
–William Skidelsky, The Guardian (UK)
“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…Mendelsohn 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…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.”
—Publishers Weekly
“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…Ultimately, this is a book about what [father and son] 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… Revelations for Mendelsohn provide epiphanies for readers as well.”
—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)