#257 - An Odyssey by Daniel Mendelsohn

I book the author events at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin, TN, and earlier this year, I saw that Dr. Mendelsohn was coming out with a brand new translation of The Odyssey for the University of Chicago Press. I reached out to Dr. Mendelsohn to see if he would be near Franklin any time soon, and to my delight, he was able to do an author event.

It was fascinating. I learned so much about The Odyssey and about his translation choices. It shed new light on the epic. You can watch the event here and here are some of my main takeaways.

The book I cover in this podcast episode is one that Dr. Mendelsohn wrote 8 years earlier in 2017. It’s account of an Odyssey cruise he had taken with his father, Jay Mendelsohn. His father decided to audit his son’s seminar course about The Odyssey and after that course, they took this cruise that stopped at all of the major locations in Homer’s epic.

The book is a fascinating look at Homer’s Odyssey, a relationship between a father and a son, and a dive into major themes through out the epic. I learned a ton. I share some of those things in this podcast episode.

I really enjoyed this book. It was not just an intellectual endeavor, it was a journey of the heart. The book is beautifully written and the format allowed for deep literary analysis, heartwarming father/son dynamics, and wonderful insight into the intangibles that make a marriage last forever.

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