Unlike The Iliad, I do have experience with the Odyssey. Back in grade school, we did cover it at one point. I'm certain it was some sort of abridged version, because I doubt we would've gone the whole poetic mile. But I'm at least familiar with what all this one covers.

Reading Notes

This goddamn translator! I hate these goddamn Roman names! Motherfucker, what book are we translating? Would it be the Ulyssey? Because I don't think that it is. Standard Ebooks, why have you done this to me? Look, I get that norms have changed over time. And it's not like we're even consistent about who gets to be Greek and who's Roman (Heracles found dead in a ditch). But god, it just sucks. I know I could look around. It's the Odyssey, there's a millionty billion translations. But I really like Standard Ebooks. They're standard! Nice formatting, great mission statement. I like them. So whatever. Fucking fine. What's cloud-compelling Jove up to this time? I do like that in the little intro, the translator was having to defend their decision to use the Roman names in their Iliad translation. Even back in the 1800s, they were getting pushback. I don't care for the gaslighting where he tells me that he simply must use Roman, because the audience has literally no idea who Hera, Demeter, or Athena are. Fuck off.

Only just finished the first 4 chapters, but appreciating the inclusion of a plot in this one. As opposed to a bunch of shitheads sitting around jacking off for 24 chapters like in the Iliad. Also, I'm fairly sure whatever version of the Odyssey we got peddled in grade school filtered out massive amounts of it. Absolutely none of the pre-Odysseus stuff is particularly familiar. Other than in the abstract, I'm aware of the setup of the story. Don't really recall Telemachus going anywhere. Also, I'm fairly sure whatever version I read did actually start with the Polyphemus incident or maybe the lotus-eaters. So I imagine it just rewrote everything to be in chronological order for the kids. Rather than previous events getting recounted via in-story storytelling.

I do also enjoy that we are occasionally going back and forth between people. Proper meanwhile. This was happening over here, meanwhile the blue-eyed maid Pallas is sending out phantoms to do her dread work over there. We are progressing with the storytelling, people. There's dimensions. Still would like for us to stop referring to people with their epithet every single time. That still annoys me.

There is way less wacky mythological adventures with monsters in the Odyssey that I remember and I strongly suspect the rest of the public remembers. We are blazing through all the notable moments in like a couple chapters and there's a lot of book left to go. I have to assume we waffle around Ithaca way longer than expected.

I fucking hate some of these insane moral lessons we're being taught. So let's talk about the whole Helios cow situation. So it's storming continuously for long enough that the Odyssey crew go through absolutely all of their supplies. (Storming because Zeus mind you) Odysseus is then magically lulled to sleep and his crew kill the cows. Helios is pissed off naturally and demands redress. Poseidon loves fucking up Odysseus for literally the most insane of reasons. Odysseus didn't allow Poseidon's son to eat him and his crew. A horrible sin. So Zeus blows apart his sumptuous barque and sends the crew straight to Hades. Then the Phaecians escort Odysseus to Ithaca and shower him with the wildest level of neighborly kindness. So Poseidon turns their boat to stone? Fucking why???? This theme keeps coming up of how to treat guests. But the ones who treat guests well are punished, while the others are endlessly rewarded. Polyphemus gets an unending blood debt that Poseidon, bitch that he is, will never forget about. Nothing happens to the Laestrygonians. Nothing happens to Circe or Calypso. But no, the Phaecians in particular we really gotta punish them. Fuck these stupid gods. I genuinely don't understand what the Ancient Greeks are getting from this lesson-wise. There's no rhyme or reason.

We do in fact waffle around Ithaca way longer than expected.

Review

I would definitely say that I liked the Odyssey more than the Iliad. It felt more focused and there was more effort put into making an actual A to B story. We got a long ways to go before we get to actual modern storytelling, but there was way less meandering in this one than in Homer's previous work. Far fewer times where I stopped and thought to myself "What are we even talking about? How is this relevant to anything?" That very much still happens. Where we're writing an actual story and then Homer feels the terrible pull. And then we gotta painstakingly describe exactly how it is we take the sacrifice of hecatombs and prepare them for the gods. It's at least always easy to see these passages coming and start speed-reading over them.

One big thing that helped was the homing in on Ulysses and Telemachus as our point of view characters (with brief diversions to our favorite blue-eyed maid Pallas). The Iliad was way more flowy, so to speak. It doesn't really have a central thesis or point of view. (Yes, I did in fact continue to toll my eyes at the Roman translations in the editions that I read. Got over it eventually.) Although I still have beef with the nonsense repetition going on in these stories, it's easier at least to follow the basic plot. I will say, I was greatly surprised to learn that the actual mythological silly island expeditions account for a really small portion of the Odyssey. It is way less than you remember. We're back on Ithaca and there is still like 40% of the story to go.

That division between the journey bit and the Ithaca bit are one of my biggest pet peeves. It genuinely feels a bit like different authors. There's a lot of standing around doing very little once we get to Ithaca. Things become a lot more grounded, where we're talking to individual people, eating dinners, making plans. We eschew immediate bloody revenge with what sort of kind of, if you really squint your eyes, corresponds to spy shit. Where sagacious Ulysses methodically pokes and prods at everyone to see who is loyal and will help kill the suitors and who is no good. It works in the sense that it supports Ulyssey's prior characterization as the wily planner. That's all nice and everything, but it's also frankly just boring to read. I got through most of the Odyssey pretty quickly and then really stalled out once we got home. Recall that Ulysses is constantly aided by Pallas Athena the whole time so it's not like there's any actual tension. Instead the story goes from what I would consider a bit of a breakneck pace to a slog. The bits that you remember: Polyphemus, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, all that fun shit. It's like 4 or 5 chapters (books) out of a total of 24.

I did find the first part of the conclusion genuinely comedic, even though I don't think it's supposed to be. There's a little scene of our Iliad crew talking in the fields of Asphodel. It's actually a nice little conclusion if we consider the Iliad and the Odyssey together as a larger work. Though weird that we fully change to their perspective for a minute. They're catching up together on how everyone's funerals were handled. Which is itself hilarious. Then Hermes brings in the souls of the now-dead suitors. And I just find that image very funny. These people have like almost no relation to the Iliad crew. "Here ya go, new batch o' dead!" The image of everyone who's died in these two stories just getting together and seeing more people filing in is some very good dark humor.

I do find the gods to be largely insufferable and I don't know why we worship them. Their judgements are entirely arbitrary. We must sacrifice to them literally constantly. We do not go more than 3 or 4 paragraphs before mentioning directly or indirectly a sacrifice. I don't even think I'm that far off. We most definitely do not go more than a chapter without mentioning sacrificing to them. That I would totally make a bet on. But also sometimes the gods just say "fuck you in particular". Not even for a good reason. Why are the Phaecians punished and their ship turned to stone despite being hilariously over-the-top kind to Ulysses? Poseidon just has a bug up his ass and so gets to punish them. It's arbitrary and I don't know why we stand for it. Any example you could give me of "Well they're being punished because they did X". I guaran-fucking-tee I could give you a counter-example where some other Greek bastard is hailed a hero for doing the exact same thing. The arbitrariness of it all is very frustrating.

I did find myself, with my brain rotted by Hollywood's evil, wondering why some studio hasn't started up a Greek Cinematic Universe. You got the whole Epic Cycle of interconnected characters covering the Trojan War and its aftermath. As well as just a number of offshoot works exploring the same characters (Ajax, the Oresteia, Euripides' stuff.). And let me tell you, there ain't a single bit of copyright on those. Homer can't do shit. The Iliad can be our Avengers. The Odyssey our Infinity War. Those are the big ticket items, obviously. Electra is the WandaVision. I think the Aeneid is the start of a sort of in-house DC universe offering. After we've inevitably run it all into the ground and we need to do a reboot. But this time we do it from the Trojan perspective. The world will never recognize my genius.