An Odyssey A Father, a Son, and an Epic

Daniel Mendelsohn

eBook - 2017

A New York Times/PBS NewsHour Book Club PickFrom award-winning memoirist and critic, and bestselling author of The Lost: a deeply moving tale of a father and son's transformative journey in reading—and reliving—Homer's epic masterpiece.When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enroll in the undergraduate Odyssey seminar his son teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired research scientist who sees the world through a mathematician's unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his "one last chance" to learn the great literature he'd neglected in his youth—and, even more, a final opportunity to more fully ...understand his son, a writer and classicist. But through the sometimes uncomfortable months that the two men explore Homer's great work together—first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son's interpretations, and then... more