{"id":89907,"date":"2026-07-18T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=89907"},"modified":"2026-07-17T18:08:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T00:08:39","slug":"well-help-you-find-your-next-great-book-spoiler-its-the-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/well-help-you-find-your-next-great-book-spoiler-its-the-odyssey\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019ll help you find your next great book. (Spoiler: It\u2019s The Odyssey)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"We\u2019ll<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cOdyssey\u201d is a 2,800-year-old, 12,000-line poem. This summer, it\u2019s also a major motion picture, starring Matt Damon as the wily, beleaguered Bronze Age hero Odysseus, a veteran of the Trojan War trying to get home to his wife, Penelope, and their son, Telemachus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a 10-year journey, during which Odysseus contends with raging storms, seductive sirens, an angry Cyclops and a gaggle of local horndogs trashing his house and threatening his marriage. Penelope does what she can to hold off those suitors; Telemachus tries to fill his dad\u2019s shoes; and the gods of Olympus work out their own family issues by meddling in the affairs of mortals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an amazing story. Really, it\u2019s all the stories. The \u201cOdyssey\u201d is a venerable literary masterpiece, but in its time the poem was also popular entertainment, performed aloud by virtuosos known as rhapsodes. (One of these original rappers may or may not have been named Homer.) What kept their listeners enthralled was variety: This epic is full of comedy, pathos, adventure and suspense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the critic and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn puts it in the introduction to his recent translation, \u201cThe \u2018Odyssey\u2019 bequeathed to the West entire genres,\u201d from science fiction to romantic comedy. In that spirit, we offer this guide, confident that whatever kind of story you\u2019re looking for, you\u2019ll find it in Homer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want adventure on the high seas<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick O\u2019Brian, the all-time master and commander of nautical dad-lit, has nothing on Homer. Odysseus\u2019 winding journey home to Ithaka takes him all over the Mediterranean, and much of the peril he faces comes from the water. He is a capable sailor, though he also loses countless friends and ships to the fury of the sea and his own shaky judgment. It doesn\u2019t help that Poseidon, the god who rules the ocean, holds a serious grudge against our hero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homer and his translators know that few things are more elementally thrilling than the story of a man and a boat at the mercy of the weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A great wave drove at him with toppling crest<\/p>\n\n\n\n

spinning him round, in one tremendous blow,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and he went plunging overboard, the oar-haft<\/p>\n\n\n\n

wrenched from his grip. A gust that came on howling<\/p>\n\n\n\n

at the same instant broke his mast in two,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hurling his yard and sail far out to leeward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like science fiction and fantasy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We still wonder what lies beyond the boundaries of the known world, and we send out voyagers and vessels, imaginary and real, to discover new landscapes and life forms. Odysseus wasn\u2019t looking for any of that, but we can infer that Homer\u2019s audience was eager to hear about monstrous creatures and magical islands. The poem has a lot of them \u2014 sometimes dreamy and alluring, sometimes scary and violent. Kind of like the planets the Enterprise used to visit on \u201cStar Trek,\u201d a franchise that owes quite a lot to Homer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Book 10, Odysseus recalls a harrowing encounter with enormous man-eating beings who inhabit an island called Lamos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hearing, the mighty Laestrygonians<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thronged from all sides, not humanlike, but giants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With boulders bigger than a man could lift<\/p>\n\n\n\n

they pelted at us from the cliffs. We heard<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the dreadful uproar of ships being broken<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and dying men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(translated by Emily Wilson)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How about a spooky ghost story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After escaping the Laestrygonians (and spending some time with a sorceress named Circe), Odysseus sails to the edge of the ocean, a liminal zone where the living and the dead commingle. In the underworld he meets a blind seer, Tiresias, who foretells his future, after which Odysseus encounters the ghosts of his mother and some of his fallen comrades from the Trojan War. The mood in this section shifts back and forth between terror and pathos, a reminder that even in the ancient world supernatural horror was bound up with intense human emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then in my heart I wanted to embrace<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the spirit of my mother. She was dead,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and I did not know how. Three times I tried,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

longing to touch her. But three times her ghost<\/p>\n\n\n\n

flew from my arms, like shadows or like dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sharp pain pierced deeper in me as I cried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(translated by Emily Wilson)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Give me action!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cOdyssey\u201d is a sequel to the \u201cIliad,\u201d an intense epic of combat, sacrifice, honor and betrayal set in the midst of the Trojan War. This poem is episodic, focused on individual derring-do rather than clashing armies. It\u2019s more \u201cRaiders of the Lost Ark\u201d than \u201cSaving Private Ryan,\u201d as Odysseus outwits and outruns various threats, including an enraged Cyclops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blind thing in his doubled fury broke<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a hilltop in his hands and heaved it after us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahead of our black prow it struck and sank<\/p>\n\n\n\n

whelmed in a spuming geyser, a giant wave<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that washed the ship stern foremost back to shore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got the longest boathook out and stood<\/p>\n\n\n\n

fending us off, with furious nods to all<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to put their backs into a racing stroke \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

row, row, or perish. So the long oars bent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

kicking the foam sternward, making head<\/p>\n\n\n\n

until we drew away, and twice as far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, I mean action with lots of blood and gore<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Odysseus comes back to Ithaka intent on violence. The suitors who are defiling his house and bothering his wife \u2014 believing that she\u2019s actually his widow \u2014 are marked for death. The climactic books of the poem show Odysseus and Telemachus preparing for slaughter and then carrying it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s possible that ancient codes of honor dictated such brutality, though it\u2019s also worth remembering that the world depicted in the poem was already ancient to the rhapsodes, who may have relished shocking their listeners with tales of the wild old days. In any case, Homer understood what filmmakers and comic book artists have always known about the appeal of graphic mayhem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Odysseus aimed and shot Antinous square in the throat<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and the point went stabbing clear through the soft neck and out \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and off to the side he pitched, the cup dropped from his grasp<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as the shaft sank home, and the man\u2019s life-blood came spurting<\/p>\n\n\n\n

out his nostrils \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thick red jets \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a sudden thrust of his foot \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

he kicked away the table \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

food showered across the floor,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the bread and meats soaked in a swirl of bloody filth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(translated by Robert Fagles)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about sex? Spicy romantasy is more my thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Odysseus spends a lot of the poem pining for Penelope. He also spends a lot of time in the company of other women, including two literal goddesses. The poem and its hero offer some excuses for this behavior \u2014 she put a spell on me! Really! \u2014 but mostly follow an age-old sexual double standard. He\u2019s a complicated man. Boys will be boys. All of which brings the \u201cOdyssey\u201d sometimes into the neighborhood of historical romance and other times into a land of pure raunchy comedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Book 6, our hero washes up on the shore of Phaeacia, where Princess Nausicaa comes to wash her laundry, attended by her handmaidens. The thing is, he\u2019s not wearing any clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow, girls,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

wait at a distance here, so I can wash<\/p>\n\n\n\n

my grimy back, and rub myself with oil \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

it has been quite a while since I have done it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please let me wash in private. I am shy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of being naked with you \u2014 pretty girls<\/p>\n\n\n\n

with lovely hair.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(translated by Emily Wilson)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m more in the mood for an old-fashioned love story<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Odysseus reaches Ithaka, he has been away for 20 years. He arrives in disguise, partly to test Penelope\u2019s fidelity but also to underscore that, after all this time, the two of them are strangers. Slowly, over the course of several books, interrupted by household intrigue of various kinds, they start to know each other again, in anticipation of a blissful reunion. They re-establish their sexual intimacy, and they also tell each other what has been happening during their long separation. The reunited couple fill a long night privately reciting their own versions of the poem we\u2019ve been listening to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the two had taken their pleasure in love\u2019s entrancing delights,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They took their delight in stories, each telling a tale to the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She, who glowed like a goddess, spoke of all she\u2019d endured in these halls<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watching that gang of Suitors who wreaked so much hellish havoc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And who, on her account, slaughtered many a head of cattle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And fatted sheep, and drained so much wine from the huge storage jars;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Odysseus, sprung from Zeus, spoke of the woes he\u2019d inflicted<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On people, and those he himself had endured with such great anguish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told it all, and she took delight in listening, nor did sleep<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drift upon her eyelids until he had told her everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(translated by Daniel Mendelsohn)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ready to dive into the \u201cOdyssey\u201d? Here, in chronological order, are the translations cited in our story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n