Apparently a number of people, inspired by the movie, are reading The Odyssey – or claiming to. I am not one of them. I read it in 2003, before a trip to Greece for the Sun-Sentinel, and while I know there have been new translations, notably one by Emily Wilson (daughter of A.N.), I was not captivated by it the way I was by the The Iliad. This might seem surprising – a war poem versus a travel poem – until you learn that I read The Iliad while auditing a class on Greek literature in translation at Florida Atlantic University. The professor – one of the best professors I ever had – made that epic poem come to life in a way that I, reading The Odyssey by myself, was unable to. And I’m not going to give it another try. I plan to give the movie a pass too.
