Book review: The Odyssey

Or, The Odyssey by Homer, rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original, by Samuel Butler. Although in fact SB's brilliant theory is that it was written by a young woman. But as far as I can tell - not very far - that theory doesn't affect his translation, beyond the addition of a few snarky footnotes that keep pointing out the author(ess)'s interest in womens' matters.

I read the text from Gutenberg on my Kindle whilst wandering in the mountains, since it was all de rage then; a month later all interest has naturally faded, since we are goldfish. Speaking of goldfish, I read it a month ago, so the details have naturally faded.

Odysseus lies shamelessly to everyone he meets, including his wife and father, frequently for no obvious reason, and generally after saying "I will tell you true". This is one of the ways to tell he is not a modern hero. Is he even the Hero? He is definitely the protagonist; I naturally assume he is the hero, because that's what I was told as a child, but maybe he isn't.

He also keeps losing his men, who routinely die horribly in one way or another; they even do this in the lies he tell, when it wasn't even necessary for made-up strangers to die. But he has clearly got so used to the pattern that it even appears in his fantasies. And so after a while one begins to wonder if their deaths are really all their own fault, as his stories alwys make out, or is it perhaps possible he was just a crap leader of men?

The bit about shooting through the axes at the end really doesn't make sense and has "obviously" been hopelessly garbled; or perhaps it is the kind of weird thing a young woman might invent as an archerly feat, who had no knowledge of archery? I also think that a wooden bow that had been left in a storeroom for twenty years would be useless. It is also a bit odd that only he is strong enough to bend the bow; his super power is wiliness, not crude raw strength.

Speaking of wiliness: although - perhaps mostly towards the end - we see Odysseus racking his mind, sleepless, trying to think up stratagems, he fails totally and has to be spoodfed by Minerva, repeatedly.

But enough carping, what of the good bits? The multi-layered-ness of the story is kinda fun, and not at all what I would expect from the rustic simplicity of the antients compared to our modern sophistication; yet another reminder that people have been intelligent for quite a while now (there is another possible explanation, that the text started as scattered myths and fragments of stories and was woven together into a whole with the funny shape that comes down to us). The various components of the story are interesting, but suffer from me having known them since childhood, so they lack novelty. The bit at the end - when Big O is slowly oh so slowly winding himself up to finally do something about the suitors - reminds me of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Cleese the knight is attacking the castle with the wedding celebrations, and we see him running towards the gate - then cut away to the guards squinting into the distance - then back to Cleese, who is no closer; and so repeat a few times before he turns up and slaughters a pile of people, pointlessly.