O Brother Where Art Thou

A few weeks ago, I watched the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou," and I loved it. Unfortunately, I do not have whole lot of time today, so this is not going to be a super long review. I am just going to go over the main things here. As usual, I am not going to go over the movie in detail here, so if you want to know more, click on the title to go to the Amazon page.

First of all, being a movie, and not a book, I do not feel like I can really judge it so carefully. I can't really disect the plot, or the acting, but I can certainly say that I loved it. It was hilarious, and so well done. Next, let's go on to the music, which I really enjoyed. It was light, and just beautiful.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is the Odyssey tie ins. I didn't really watch the movie expecting much in that department, though I knew, as you probably do, that it has its basis in the Odyssey. What it had was all the basic parts of the Odyssey that the majority of the population know: the Cyclopes, the Sirens, Circe (sort of), and of course the great journey back to Penelope. There is even a character who could interpreted to be Homer himself.

While that was neat, and more then I expected, I must admit that I had hope for a bit more, considering I just read the original poem last month.  There is so much more to the story then most people seem to realize, and I had sort of hoped that maybe there would be some references to the structure of the story in the actual book, or the journey of Telemachus, which takes up a good portion of the book. There was one reference to the George Clooney character (who is sort of Odysseus) as a "cool tactician" which people who have read the Odyssey and/or the Iliad will definitely appreciate.

To sum it up, I loved the movie, and I highly recommend it. 

The Odyssey - Homer

You probably remember that about a month ago, I posted my thoughts after reading the Iliad. Now, after reading the Odyssey, here are some more thoughts are opinions.

Again, the point of this post is not to help you decide whether or not to read the Odyssey. With a classic like that, you can come to that decision on your own. This post is simply a collection of my thoughts on the book, immediately after reading it.

I enjoyed the Odyssey far, far more then the Iliad. For one thing, it's a lot shorter. For another, the Iliad is a lot of detailed killing, while the Odyssey is more of his deception of his family, and the telling of his stories.

I must admit, preconceived expectations really do shape how we perceive books, and this one was the same. I expected it to just be his stories, the ones we all know, starting when he left Troy, and ending when he killed all the suitors in Ithaca, and to some extent, that was the case. However, what we think of as the Odyssey: the Cyclopes, the Sirens, Circes, ect, only took up about three of the twenty four chapters of the book. Most of it was Telemachus trying to find information about his father, or Odysseus telling his stories to foreign rulers in the last few months before he arrives home, and hiding out in his court, pretending to be a beggar.

In fact, I enjoyed the book more because of this novelty. I thought I knew exactly what I was getting into, but I was wrong. It was the same story, told in a new way. Actually, told in a very old way. :)

That's it. My thoughts on Homer are now collected. 

The Iliad - Homer

This December through January, I read The Iliad for Ancient History. Now, while I have read lots of kid versions of Homer's works (Rosemary Sutcliff's are the best), reading the original was a whole new experience. This was not the first time I had read an exact translation of an ancient text (last fall I read The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest written story in the world), but this was on a whole new scale.

The version of the Iliad I read, the Robert Fagels edition, is about 500 odd pages, all told. That length would have been no problem to me if it were a modern prose story. But, it's not. It is an ancient war story that is mainly about who killed who is what terrible way, and who each of those men's grandfathers were, and what kind of farm they used to have. Seriously. Also, it is in verse. Not rhyming verse, just... verse.

Yeah, all of that made it a tricky, though not entirely uninteresting read. Because, while I did not enjoy it most of the time, it was a challenge. It was something very new and different for me. As hard as it was, and as much as I complained, when I was done, I felt an immense sense of accomplishment. I really did something.

I also know that this is not the last hard book I will ever be assigned to read. Far from it. Now that I have fought this and beat it, all those other books (the Odyssey next month for instance) will seem just a little less hopeless, and a little more beatable.

I guess this is not so much a book review as a book triumph. I don't see any reason to tell you whether or not you should read it. There is no point with a book like this. I just told you why I read it, and why I don't regret all the hours I spent reading a book I did not really enjoy.