Saturday afternoon I was walking back from our small neighborhood grocery store, where the annual customer appreciation event included free hot dogs and one dollar beers (from the in-store bar) when I passed a Little Free Library down the block. Our neighborhood has a dozen of them, and I’m well-acquainted with their owners’ reading tastes. (I can’t imagine any pedestrian saying, “Hey, I want that 1986 accounting textbook or C+ manual,” but that’s just me.)
This particular library is reliably high quality, and two books immediately caught my attention. One was a hardcover first edition of Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism, a 1973 book whose 50-page introduction is a landmark statement of what came to be known as creative nonfiction, or a substantial corner of it. I’ve cited and taught the piece many times, from photocopies and a pdf I acquired years ago. But, heck, even in retirement, I thought it would be nice to have a copy of the thing itself.
The second book was Emily Watson’s 2023 translation of The Iliad. It was a pristine copy that had unceremoniously been discarded from the Denver Public Library. I hope and figure that the Library kept another copy or two around, that they’d just bought a bunch of them, expecting a run on Homer, and were now just paring down after the reading frenzy. It’s not that they’re lacking shelf space. My local branch, the Woodbury Library, on Federal, has about 40% of its shelves occupied. I get that folks are reading (or listening) digitally these days, but I’m thinking it wouldn’t be terrible to keep stocked at 75% or so, for the decor even if not for reading.
Anyway, I’d never read The Iliad. It seemed like something I ought to have done, and dotage wasn’t too late to check it off. I’d read The Odyssey as a sophomore in college, in a marvelous course called Biblical and Classical Literature, in which we read everything from Job to Sophocles. Liked it. Of course, I knew all about The Iliad (I thought) from pop culture references, way down to Brad Pitt’s Achilles sprinting down the beach, gold hair flying, in the movie Troy. It was time to pay dues and make good, so last night I spent three hours starting the book.
It’s good, and the translation is spectacular, happily readable. But a few things struck me. Foremost is the petty vanity of so many characters, who are motivated, yes, by a sense of duty and pride in nation but equally or more by ego and entitlement. Am I sitting the place I deserve at the banquet table? Am I getting a good cut and portion of meat? Do people respect me sufficiently? I mean, am I doing the proper thing to get recognized and honored?
So much of what’s going on is brand management.
Even when characters are doing the right thing, their reasons are misguided and conflicted. Hector comes from afar to defend Troy because he knows Greek invaders are bad for local lands. At a crucial point, he knows he should lend his considerable skills to the city battlements, staying inside where he really can do most good. But where’s the glory in that? Where, further, do people expect him to be? What will they think if he’s not out there leading charges? What will he think of himself? So he goes out, kills Patroclus, pisses off Achilles, and ultimately gets his carcass drug behind a chariot for a few days.
I can’t help but think of Iliadic behavior these days in so many Republican leaders for whom Trump is their Zeus, entertaining himself at the expense of humanity. Some of those leaders even understand that the bill, while big, is really bad, but they have reputations (for hatred? for meanness? for fascist nationalism?) to uphold. They want to sit at the right hand of Trump and eat the tenderloin. They have no greater motivating principle than keeping stature before a group of petty electors, though they may conjure some pretext of past greatness they fancy themselves restoring. Meanwhile, on the plains before Troy and in the city itself, tens of thousands die needlessly because Paris and Menelaus think with their crotches and egos, and convince enough of their bros that fame and glory are there for taking. In the end, Troy burns and arrows hit heels. I hope the latter, at least.
And to think I just started the afternoon wanting a free hot dog.