Is the Odysseus Discourse on X an Op?

 

No cap, if the commenter is just fooling with us, this is totally goated. After all the "Gen Z" don't write cursive, don't write checks, can't read entire novels, don't know what a rotary phone or a Walkman are stuff, pretending not to know the first thing about Homer would be, um, EPIC!

How does Christopher Nolan even find these wild things man? Does he even speak like, Greek? 

What even is this:

Yes, because when Ulysses, as he was then called, was a big old book in the early 20th century, it was written by an entire American not a notable Irish...

Grrr. I do not believe this discourse. I picked up The Iliad and The Odyssey both in one of their many, many English translations, from the used books at a Salvation Army thrift store when I was like, eight years old. I already had some acquaintance from sword 'n'sandals movies and Classic comics what I was looking at. I wanted to read the Big Kid Books. The serious grownup literature.  Are there young people seeing "Odessey SUV's" and hearing about "Achilles' tendons" and going around with no idea what those names are all about?

What Faustian bargain has our youth unaware of Helen of Troy, whose face launched a thousand ships?  What have they gotten in return? Joe Rogan and Mr. Beast? 

What do kids get read to them these days? Do they know what the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales even are? 

I feel weirdly conservative when I say that kids should learn of Achilles and his wrath or Odysseus and his peregrinations and feel like Keats looking into Chapman's Homer--like some part of the ancient past had the power to totally blow their little minds. Knowing ancient mythology and the names of ancient heroes is only additive for appreciating so much of what came after: Frankenstein in the context of Golems and Galatea, the Wicked Witches of Oz through Circe. Bryan Johnson and his desire not to die through Gilgamesh. 

Every human story spawns a replay of an old game in which not a single one of us is an NPC, but all of us are everyday heroes, with a tie to something greater than ourselves. Is that the missing puzzle piece? Are the youth fooled by false narratives because they haven't been schooled on the existing really cool ones? 

These kids today, they don't know what the old heads have been saying. This is why they are so disrespectful. Which I know from my reading goes back at least to Aristotle. At least! 

But now, these kids need to know about gorgons outside of Versace labels and all that. (They can't be missing out on The Kraken, Percy Jackson, I mean, these ancient stories are still out there--anime, and whatnot, right?) I'm happy to send kids to Padraic Colum and Edna St. Vincent Millay (I'm an old soul!) and let them go wander into a world where we had belles lettres before no one knew how to write thank you notes. What harm would it even do?

(None.) 

I Like Orwell but these quotes...

You know, in political writing, poor Eric Blair gets quite a bit of trotting about. He's so quotable. He was insightful and a very clear user of language. But I found these two quotes while looking for where he ever said "All art is propaganda"--because of course it is--and was immediately dissatisfied. Here they are:


He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.

and

Liberal: a power worshipper without power.

I've considered myself an atheist and a liberal for some time, and have always imagined myself to be a god worshipper without God and a person who does not so much disbelieve in the use of power, as much as I personally dislike it.

So, there's my being a well-read contrarian for the day.

Do You Like Vampires and Movies? Kim Newman has Somethin' for ya.

I'm going to preface this by saying it does help a little if you are already a reader of Kim Newman's awesome takes on the supernatural, vampires, and alternate history through his other "Anno Dracula" tales and maybe his Diogenes Club stories as well (You guys! What I'm technically saying is you might like everything he writes!) But if you like movies and tv, and genre fiction--if you like subtle name-dropping and pastiche, if you like fast-paced stories and a developed fictional alternate history--and if you reaaaalllly dig vampires?

Oh, baby--this is for you. Because Newman covers the last quarter of the 20th century Hollywood style with some fangs for the memories, looking back through a cinematic lens while developing a story that will entertain as it chills. In it, the young get of Dracula slogs his way from the slums of Transylvania to the Hollywood stars, and there's no stopping him--or is there?

Well, you just have to read to see, and maybe you, too, will be aware of "the horror". I don't want to give away too much of the episodic doings that bring together characters from Anno Dracula novels past and some of the fixtures of moviedom's firmament, but it's good old fashioned disturbing social satire and art crit fun.

I understand D.H. Lawrence better when watching this turtle--

(The blog-title is only funny to other lit majors, probably. The video is probably funny and poignant to most people, though.)