A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes is a telling of the Trojan War from the perspectives of the various women experiencing it–conspicuously neglecting Helen. It is instead a story of the many victims and heroes that are largely unsung because, as Haynes puts it, the majority of war stories should not be told about only one half of the people. The men of the story are not heroes; Odysseus is a cunning and conniving as he is in an honest reading of the Odyssey and Iliad, with frequent chapter breaks written as letters from Penelope to her wayward husband growing increasingly hostile. There are also frequent breaks spoken by the muse Calliope scolding the orator of the stories for trying to steer them towards the men and their usual paths, towards Helen who Calliope has no use for.
Instead the full fate of Cassandra is discussed, the full fate of Hecuba, Andromache, Polyxena, Laodamia, Iphigenia, and others. It made me realize I couldn’t remember how Cassandra had died and that was a portrayal which stuck out to me sharply for how compelling and well written it was.
Overall the story was cleverly crafted and an extremely fresh breath of air for the topic.
The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half Savage Alix E Harrow
This short story, at about 20 pages, has such vivid and beautiful atmosphere which I’ve come to expect in Harrow’s work. She has the ability to create such a complete world in very few pages. The story follows Oona, a mixed indigenous woman who is forced by circumstance to become a mapmaker for colonizers in order to secure her younger brother’s safety. It is a gorgeous story of culture and revenge and I truly love Harrow’s ability to create a complete life and world rooted in some primal understanding of human behavior.
This book was beautiful; a retelling of the Twa sisters, it follows three siblings through an Arthur-adjacent tale with links both to real history and myths in The Matter of Britain. As an Arthurian nerd (read: everything nerd), I loved seeing a story I wasn’t familiar with, a murder ballad that I was familiar with, an amazing queer representation, and a new take on Merlin. The story manages to do all of it without beating you over the head with its source material, instead guiding through a world that feels totally Holland’s creation. The narrative and characters are remarkably organic and conflicted. I would absolutely recommend it, especially to a queer audience which all too rarely sees representation outside of mundane coming out stories.
As always when I read any collection of short stories there are particular ones which catch my attention, but I really can’t stress how much I enjoyed ‘Never Whistle at Night’. The collection is extremely well put together, spanning a variety of topics impacting indigenous communities, whether that be indigenous folk lore inspired, inspired by racism, classism, internalized trauma, religious trauma, or all of the above and of course more. The cultural weight of each story has its place in the anthology.
The editors deserve all the credit in the world, it’s a wonderful collection. Please support them.
One, the trouble I had with Mythos the first time is precisely the same reason I loved Heroes as I did. It is no fault of Stephen Fry’s whatsoever. I did, indeed, fail him.
In Mythos, I knew many of the stories presented already. I am, horrifically, a nerd. I don’t say this as though it has just dawned on me. I say it with the sigh of looking down at myself and humming, ‘ah, yes.’
I read the Aeneid aloud, voluntarily, to my infant babies, in Latin, with the hopes that they would one day be better equipped for pronunciation as development of phonemes quickly scissors off as you age.
I am, horrifically, that guy.
And that meant that Mythos had little to offer me, the asshole of Latin class, in terms of novelty. What it did offer, what I was most able to appreciate, was Stephen Fry’s voice. He has a unique voice, both out loud and in writing, and it is something highly envied. The tongue-in-cheek presentation of Greek and Roman myths in modern parlance is delightful.
The many references to Edith Hamilton —hey, I know her. I read that book as a child, too. And so in slowing myself down and coming to Mythos with less tired eyes, I was able instead to see a sort of kindred spirit in it. This is how I tell Greek and Roman myths when I summarize them to other people, this same ‘ah, yes, Zeus’ wink wink say no more.
It’s nearly impossible not to talk about Greek or Roman mythology where I don’t sound like an asshole. It’s one of those few areas in life where I spring up, ready to fight, because of all of those horrid Latin trophies I got once upon a time.
I think it’s why I like Norse mythology and Egyptian mythology and indigenous myths and legends. I don’t know them well, nor should I. They don’t belong to me.
And Heroes, Heroes achieved exactly what I had wanted for in Mythos– it told me a few things I didn’t know.
I read Mythos very quickly, partly because I’ve already read it once and partly because I knew the tales.
I needed to give it a closer examination, because it deserves it, because it is very good.
It’s charming, dry, ribbing. It is a book that does exactly what I like in mythology collections–it tells the myths. It’s a wonderful introduction, an eloquent refresher.
I would be doing a disservice if I hadn’t given it the try it deserved.
But this gets at a point of mental health maintenance that I think needs to be addressed. It is possible to read too much, too quickly, and to dislike something seemingly made for you. It’s possible to come to a book (or anything, truly) at the wrong time, the wrong place, then spend your days blasting Madam Bovary only to find that in old age that you see it with kinder eyes.
Except let’s not go that far for Madam Bovary. I still have my hang ups.
Conversely, you may reread something you loved at one age and find yourself saying ‘dear god what pretentious, poorly crafted bullshit’.
Many times you will do this to yourself.
And it’s okay.
It’s perfectly decent of you to give something another try. It’s perfectly decent of you to change your mind, your opinion, yourself.
I know a lot about comic books. I recently decided that for the month of July, since I enjoyed doing the Friday reviews themed, I was going to dip my toe into something I have tried very hard not to. Which is taking about comic books on the internet.
These aren’t going to be proper reviews so much as a couple essays about comic book material.
Which I am–as always–so looking forward to being told I’m wrong about.
All media are the result of their writers, their publishing companies, their political climate, their contractual obligations–none so obviously in recent years as those tied to film production companies.
I’m coming down from my mythology month by talking instead about what Denny O’Neil referred to as the American Mythology.
I can’t recall the source of the interview, it was ages ago that I saw it, but Denny O’Neil upon becoming the head editor of all Batman titles referred to himself as the custodian of an American mythology.
So, on the heels of talking about Antigone, it only makes sense I would talk about a different princess.
I’ve threatened to do this for ages when people chuckle nervously after asking me what I thought of WW84 and my eyes apparently turn white and start glowing.
In the past I’ve been deeply apologetic on behalf of the DCCU.
I will have to sing the sweet cries of Doom Patrol or Peacemaker some other night.
WW84 is a movie so deeply disappointing I had to write about it.
The good:
Pedro Pascal’s entire character arc. I would not cut a single scene. It was such an interesting and dynamic way to introduce magic into the unnecessarily gritty DC live action franchises and it’s true to WW writing. It had such potential for wonderment. From the instant his character wished to become the wishing well himself, I was immediately hooked into ‘oh shit, they’re doing DC-weird.’ I expected the character to be a Trump-esque joke and he was legitimately the most endearing, human character.
Kristen Wiig as Barbara/Cheetah was excellent, though I was a little bummed that she wasn’t utilized more in the final act. But the characterization, the scenes that she was in, all felt real. When they were playing villain music over her beating up the mugger, it was big ‘why are you booing, she’s right’ energy. I could have done with less establishment scenes of her being super strong. Like. I got it in one. She has super powers now. Time could have been shaved here. But Kristen Wiig was good and I didn’t mind seeing the cgi cats.
Barbara taking the moral high ground over Diana, repeatedly. Good. It was good. Barbara saying ‘I’m not going to let you hurt this man’ etc, and Diana being like ‘well, we could just kill him’ or Barbara saying ‘You want me to renounce my magic amulet wish, but you won’t do it?’ Good. GOOD.
Steve Trevor falls into multiple categories. Steve Trevor was….good? Chris pine was good. The concept that he was what she accidentally wished for from the stone, and getting to have fun acclimating him to the 80s as a newly rematerialized dude was fun. Way too long. I can only look at Chris Pine being slack jawwed so much. We get it, he’s from the past.
Gal Gadot is literally a better actress if Chris Pine is there. Her line deliveries are more smooth, their chemistry is great.
The meh:
The Amazon’s representing truth/valuing truth over success. This is the more enduring theme of Wonder Woman. It’s why she has the lasso of truth. It’s Lex Luthor saying, ‘Superman seeks to pull out the best in us. Batman seeks to curb the worst. You…seek the truth.’
It was handled clumsily. A lot of the Diana a-plot felt badly edited while the villains b-plot was amazing, and that’s the ultimate summary of where everything in this movie went wrong.
Asteria’s armor. This is a grey zone between the good and the bad, because they clearly cut this entire story line for time and just….she just…..she just fucking had it in her closet. She just..she just fucking…’hey what’s that?’ ‘oh, it’s the armor of the most powerful amazon ever, don’t worry about it’. They didn’t even call it the golden eagle armor. Like
It’s an established thiiiing. I feel like there was an entire goddamn storyline here that just got cut for time because they didn’t want to spend too long on mythology elements, and that’s why this movie fails. Hard. They’re afraid to talk about mythology….in a Wonder Woman movie….If they had played up the importance of Asteria and the armor, the pay off would have been good. Instead, ‘oh, this old thing. M’not gonna wear it now when it’s plot relevant. Gonna wait till later for no discernible reason’. I want the Asteria plot.
The bad:
Why did…uhhhhh…why did we do that very long sequence in Thymiscyra to teach us about the importance of truth and not cheating and like…not mention ASTERIA and her sacrifice? Instead they were like ‘let’s have a long ass sequence, point at a statue of ASTERIA, and not tell you what she did.’ Why…uhhhh….why beat us over the head with a clumsily written theme and leave out the super important sacrifice altogether? When they talked about ASTERIA later it wasn’t like ‘oh yeah, that lady’ because we knew nothing about her, but we do know that Diana ran real fast at 10 years old.
Oh, and hey, while we’re here, WHERE DID SHE GET THE ARMOR? HAS SHE BEEN LOOKING FOR ARTIFACTS? IS THAT WHY SHE BEFRIENDS BARBARA, TO CONTINUE HUNTING? IS THAT WHY SHE’S WORKING AT THE MUSEUM? IT SURE WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO KNOW.
The random ‘hey look, we’re in the 80s. Haha, everyone is inconsiderate and bad, cause 80s!’, whoops, mini montage of WW saving people. Yeah. Cut it. Cut it? Cut it the fuck out. Everything about it felt heavy handed, top long, and stupid.
We also followed this mcguffin too closely? Like instead of following a consistent character in the beginning to establish a frame of reference, we talked almost exclusively about the rock.
The first ‘oh no’ I had was Barbara/Diana at dinner. That was so very clearly a date. I chocked up Gal Gadot being awkward to it being a date, though I was to later decide it was because that is how she acts. Maybe that’s how she thinks people talk? How did Kristen Wiig have good chemistry with Gal Gadot but not the reverse? Even when they introduce Steve to Barbara, Steve says he’s Diana’s ‘old friend’ and Barbara immediately, defensively, says ‘well I’m her new friend.’ Where the FUCK was my sapphic arc? Why did it die there? It’s never acknowledged again? And hey! Barbara’s smart! Steve said he’s a pilot and she goes ‘pilot’ and looks aside CAUSE SHE KNOWS HE’S A WISH. Because SHE IS A SMART AND GOOD CHARACTER. Barbara’s entire arc was wanting to be more like Diana and admiring Diana and wanting to be with Diana and it just….stops? Not even a ‘you rejected me?’
That poor man that the ghost of Steve Trevor possesses. Why couldn’t they just rematerialize Steve? Why did they disrupt this man’s life?
FUCK YOUR INVISIBLE JET. I’d like the invisible jet sequence more if you didn’t spent so much time showing us Chris Pine’s tonsils. This movie actually suffers from way too much Chris Pine. Is that a thing? Was that a thing before? Nothing …happened? It was him trying on outfits, then him going to museums, then him stealing a goddamn jet to go to CAIRO so they could be weirdly racist for a long fight sequence that had little payoff both in plot and action.
WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT ENTIRE SCENE IN CAIRO? I looked away for one (1) second and they were all in tanks??? And then there were children playing soccer in the road IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT? So we had to stop the weird tank thing and shoot a bullet from the TANK so she could ride it to catch the children from being run over by tanks?? And then? Like? None of this was good, well choreographed, or necessary. It was all literally so Diana could have somewhere to go in the invisible jet, be weird about middle easterners, and then get vaguely injured so they could say ‘oh noooo having your wish is diminishing your powers’. This whole thing could have been done LITERALLY ANY OTHER WAY. THIS WAS THE POINT AT WHICH I STARTED HATING THIS MOVIE.
Diana has to give up her wish-Steve to get her powers back, good. A good concept. Sacrifice. Would have tied nicely into that ASTERIA PLOTLINE that we didn’t get for some reason. She might have put on the super powerful armor THEN when her powers were diminished, but didn’t, for some reason. Wish-Steve saying ‘you don’t have to say goodbye, I’m already gone’ nice. Nice. Would have been a nice end to act 2. Sad. Except that it was undercut by web slinging the lasso into the sky and finding out that she knows how to fly now, a thing which receives a lot of visual but no verbal mention?
WONDER WOMAN CAN FLY, I DON’T DISPUTE THAT, I’VE READ A LOT OF COMICS, BUT WHY DID SHE NEED TO SOOOO MUCH? IT ADDED NOTHING EXCEPT AS A CALL BACK TO HOW SHE FEELS ABOUT STEVE. SHE COULD HAVE DONE IT ANY OTHER WAY AT ANY OTHER TIME. THE PAY OFF FELL COMPLETELY FLAT. And it lasted 27 YEARS.
Overall, this movie was so many interesting ideas cut together HORRENDOUSLY.
The best parts,
My compassion for Chris pine when he says ‘well shit, Diana’ as she fails to prepare him or the audience for what’s happening.
So why is this dumpster fire something I feel the need to talk about?
The last book that I reviewed was Antigone Rising. In it, Helen Morales does discuss the Amazonian princess in question made a UN ambassador after the success of Wonder Woman (2017). But also, she discusses something which our culture and which Greek and Romans loved to do before us: Killing Amazons. The most popular subject for Ancient Greek pottery, after Heracles, is dead Amazons. Amazons were used as cautionary tales in many respects: here is what we do to women who disobey our gender norms.
Wonder Woman is a reimagined Amazonian princess which flies in the face of violence against women. She avenges the injustices that her sisters have faced for all of Amazonian literature. And what she represents is truth.
What I really want to talk about, what I wish we could see in a Wonder Woman film or franchise, is content like the August 1998 one-shot Wonder Woman: The Once and Future Story.
The plot revolves around two archeologists in Ireland uncovering Grecian tablets and asking Wonder Woman to translate the inscribed story. Her translation follows the forgotten history of the Ephesians and their princess, Artemis, as she leads a revolt against Theseus in retaliation for numerous acts of violence including the abduction, rape and enslavement of her mother. The heart of the story, while describing abuses against women in the ancient world, is that one of the archeologists is being abused by her husband.
Wonder Woman is forced to confront her own privilege; domestic violence is alien and repulsive to her, she has difficulty understanding–while other characters are so inoculated that they are able to dismiss it. Wonder Woman comes in to rescue, obviously, but is ultimately shaken at how systemic the problem is and doesn’t know how to proceed or why she was fortunate enough to be spared.
That is the correct way to write a Wonder Woman story. It does not need to be so heavy or dark as depicting women being slaughtered or staging an uprising, it doesn’t even need to address a strictly feminist issue. But it must be about using Wonder Woman to uncover a truth.
This is where Wonder Woman 2017 succeeded, why it succeeded. The young Diana is convinced that the Godkiller is a physical weapon, she has to discover that it is herself. Diana believes Ares’ deceptions and ultimately uncovers him as the primary villain.
Very importantly–one of the minor villians, Dr. Isabel Maru, is wearing a mask. I can wax poetic about this quite a lot. The female counterpoint among the villains is visually obscured because her appearance doesn’t please the men in power around her. It was flagged as abelist, it’s shitty, and that’s kind of the point. In interviews, discussing Dr. Poison, director Patty Jenkins referred to the injuries to the character’s face as self inflicted. Each element of what Dr. Poison represents, from her sadism to her callous indifference for herself, places her among the Nazi forces as ‘one of the good ones’–the only female in Nazi command. She is ultimately subservient, provided she isn’t interrupted from engaging in the experimentation she cares about. She does not care about the broader consequences of her actions, she celebrates them.
She is meant to be the counterweight to Diana. Diana is ‘one of the good ones’ not because she follows along with what the men tell her but because she is defiant in pursuing truth, not self interest.
I made mention above referencing a panel between in Dark Knights Death Metal (Nov 2020 issue) by Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo,
This book was suggested to me by my sister based on a reading she’d had from it in a Classics course in her undergrad. I had been trying to think of a book that I had read that could finish out my mythology month that didn’t feel….overdone. There are plenty of amazing adaptations and re-envisionings of what we call classical literature—which frankly births from an extremely exclusive swath of location and time period and speaks to our fixation.
Classic should apply to more than one coastline.
This is one of the central arguments of Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of Ancient Myths. We’re in a bit of a bind with the Greeks and Romans. We both look back to them for credibility in the duration of our cultural touchstones and we—idealistically, we realize that they were remarkably flawed.
Most of our modern interpretations of classical myths are heavily romanticized—which, frankly, the root word of romance is Roman. Our understanding is heavily through a pro-Roman, pro-Greek lens.
Brought to you by the battle of Thermopylae! May we present: centuries of narrowly defined social expectations.
I would guarantee that a given white cismale that I went to college with and sat in a theater watching 300 with could tell you wonderful things about the men of Sparta which glorify their warrior lifestyle. I know many people who gleefully took courses in Roman warfare. If I asked a single one of those men the role of the Gynaeconomi —I’d bet even money that they don’t know. And because it doesn’t effect them, they likely aren’t going to go too deep into investigating it.
That’s the pro-Roman bias.
Even in briefly looking up some supporting material before I wrote this review, there’s very little about the murky underbelly of Greek and Roman culture—yeah, believe me, whatever you think; it can get worse—that isn’t heavily blockaded behind paywalls.
But if you would care to dive deeper, I found Antigone Rising to be a highly accessible, well thought introduction to feminist topics laden within mythology. And given our propensity to look back to the Greeks and Romans as cultural touchstones inexorable from our society, it is certainly a stone worth overturning.
Consider, just briefly, the controversy surrounding Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I’m going to pick on this one because it’s personal. I like Ovid. That alone is controversial. I remember from my Latin days how Ovid was something the boys snickered about because of the depictions of rape and bestiality and all manner of frenzy which the sixteenth century-to-present ‘westerners’ went on to cherry pick for their personal use. But as the argument is made in Antigone Rising, Metamorphoses was a deeply political book. Removing it from the political atmosphere of Augustus we fail to see how these allusions to Apollo raping virgins were criticisms of the empire—not religious text. Ovid purposefully chose gods and mythical figures which the empire had aligned themselves with in symbolism to debase and villainize as a critique of the end of republicanism.
This is a huge issue in interpretation of ancient text, particularly when you dip your toe into looking at who has been allowed to do the interpreting for the past few centuries. If we look at Ovid with absolutely no context, we can interpret a glorification of rape, of sexism, of many things which don’t align with political or historical evidence.
Back quickly to the gynaeconomi—that term refers specifically to the magistrates assigned to police women’s behavior, dress, and public lives in Athens. Morales discusses the gunaikonomoi still being a topic of Oppian Law which was disputed as unnecessary by Cicero—and I use this as example of how we today cherry pick our roman heroes.
My latin teacher was obsessed with Cicero. Keekarooo. Her beloved.
“And let us not set a prefect over women, in the fashion of the elected office among the Greeks,” her false feminist agenda might have read. But Cicero’s quote ends, “but let there be a censor, to teach husbands to control their wives.”
The same cherry picking is brought up and lingered on in an essay about weight loss and Hippocrates. Particularly in diet culture, Hippocrates quotes surface which are often contradictory, sometimes to the point of being meaningless, and neglect to say that Hippocrates’ wisdoms about not being fat are sandwiched in between advice about rubbing goat shit on your head.
It’s a good introductory book. I’d read more of it.
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint is an excellent introduction to mythological retellings and fiction which focuses on Ariadne, obviously, but also on her sister Phaedra. The story switches perspective between the two sisters telling both of their stories and how they diverge, beginning the with their close relationship in childhood, to the eventual tragedies both are known for. It emphasizes how different interpretations of the same familial trauma shape their personalities and choices. Neither sister is hero nor antagonist, but rather a result of the roles placed upon them within a patriarchical society—beginning with an abusive and controlling father.
To the uninitiated, Ariadne and Phaedra are both sisters to the Minotaur, daughters of King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë. Ariadne is of course most famous for assisting Theseus in his quest to slay the Minotaur and being immediately abandoned by Theseus on Naxos. And appropriately, this book portrays Theseus as the benign villain that he is. Let me explain that word choice. Theseus isn’t maliciously evil. He doesn’t abandon Ariadne out of spite or ill will; he does it purely because she isn’t useful to him any longer. It’s indifference and self importance that drive Theseus, and it is the small amount of value given to these women which justifies it.
This is largely a story of how women suffer through the inconsiderate nature of the men around them; how if men were not in charge of those women’s lives, they could be self determined. Both Ariadne and Phaedra are intelligent, clever, problem solving. But it is the hubris, pride, the need for self advancement—again and again it is the women who suffer in mythology from the hero’s pursuit of glory.
Phaedra, in contrast to Ariadne, tries to be self determined. She tries to push forward, to behave as a man would, she tries to pursue what she wants—but when she pursues an affair and isn’t wanted in return, society doesn’t behave the same way toward a woman as it does a man. She can’t be successful, she can’t force herself or her will onto others, she is shamed. She has no way out.
I liked very much the portrayal of Dionysus and his relationship with Ariadne, the portrayal of their marriage, though ultimately the story ends in the same theme that it begins—that the hubris of a man is responsible for the downfall of women in his life.
It’s not a kind book to the men in it, and it shouldn’t be. It isn’t meant to be. Because very little is actually changed. The course of events is the same as it is in the mythology. It’s merely a step taken slightly to the left, to the women in it. They have the microphone, though they’re still only wanted as stage dressing.
This one is going to be a little different. I seem to have decided that June is going to be mythology-fiction month as it is my birthday month and as I enjoy mythology. Tomorrow, in fact, is my birthday, so I’ve made more work for myself. I’m going to review two books. One I will give a good review—a spectacular review! I really liked it! And one I will give a bad review. Both books are by Stephen Fry.
Heroes, by Stephen Fry, and Mythos, by Stephen Fry.
I was given Heroes as a gift and I read it out loud to my children. Generally speaking I don’t enjoy reading out loud to children. They stop you. They ask a lot of questions. There’s a good deal of ‘wait, can we actually read something else’, ‘I need a drink’, ‘what were you saying, I saw a particularly interesting bug,’ and ‘HELP! A BUG!’
If it’s difficult to wade my way through Pete the Cat, which is ten pages long and rather easy reading; you can imagine that reading a chapter book would be tortuous. Heroes, however, I read cover
to cover– to my kids.
I love the framing, the presentation. There were stories which I was less familiar with, stories which I hadn’t known –which I then obnoxiously related those new factoids to people around me, eager to show off some detail or otherwise retell a story like a small child showing off their bedroom to house guests.
I enjoyed this book, I enjoyed the stories immensely. I like an anthology from time to time, and I liked how legends were connected and presented. A text book, nearly, without the stuffiness of academia. It was intelligent, easily read, easily understood, presented exquisitely.
Mythos was a different story. I bought Mythos on the heels of reading Heroes, with the blind confidence of ‘ah, this is more of that stuff that I like’.
I generally make a point of not reviewing things I don’t like, but I want to do a bit of a post mortem—because at this exact moment, I can’t tell you why I didn’t like it.
That’s not very flattering to me as a person who analyzes and writes about things daily.
I like Stephen Fry. I generally trust Stephen Fry. I don’t know that I would hand him a baby because I don’t know that he would be comfortable with that, but I haven’t ruled it out. If Stephen Fry is presenting a documentary or waxing poetic and I say, ah, yes, Stephen Fry. My good friend, Stephen Fry.
I like mythology. I liked other books by Stephen Fry about mythology. I was willing to read them out loud to small children, which is the equivalent of nailing jello to a herd of cats.
I just could not bring myself to like this book.
I am so sorry, my good personal friend Stephen Fry. I am truly baffled.
I learned a few things from it. I repeated factoids, as I am wont to do. I took in and absorbed information. I made a casual reference to Ouranos in regular conversation, which is not easy for most people. What am I doing wrong? Why don’t I like this book? Why have I failed you, Stephen?
Is it something I ate?
Do I need to adopt a new technique, ritual? I will admit, and I think this is worth talking about—I try to read a book a week. I have a goal of reading a book a week. But most often, I read three books in a week and other weeks I lie on the floor and have staring at the ceiling time.
It’s entirely possible I was just burnt out.
I want to revisit it. I want to challenge myself to revisit it—because Stephen Fry is an amazing story teller. But perhaps right now it is just time to stare at the ceiling.
Circe by Madeline Miller is an imagining of several mythological tales from the perceptive of one of the more notable witches in classics, focusing on Circe’s motivations, isolation on Aeaeae and interactions with various other figures from myth. Obviously, notably, with Odysseus himself.
I am a nerd.
I am a …I am a classics nerd.
I loved this portrayal and interpretation of Odysseus and his personality. I was surprised, given how much I liked this interpretation of Odysseus as a character that I then liked Telemachus more. The way each character is humanized and contended with–there is such a tender and careful amount of thought given to each character’s portrayal–a person in these circumstances, with these accomplishments, with these constraints and flaws–the portrayals feel very genuine and realistic and in a way definitive.
The stories and myths touched on and how they’re woven together is masterful and carefully unites many strands of myth which are usually presented as broken threads.
I found the story telling unpretentious, accessible, and masterful in creating the atmosphere that lends itself to its character’s logic and behavior. I think that’s something which people don’t appreciate enough in well written works; the audience not only following a character’s line of reasoning but being so embroiled in the created atmosphere that they agree with it.
I generally tend not to review books that I wouldn’t recommend, but this book is really special to me in its portrayal of femininity. Motherhood especially is shown as being unglamorous, difficult, and largely managed alone. Sexuality is often violent and not treated as something aspired to or an end goal but as another feature of life and of relationships–her relationships with various characters, though sexual, are built on respect and intellect. Her first relationship which ends poorly does so because it is built on attraction; moving forward she is more shrewd, more clever, and the relationships become more meaningful. Her competition with other females, particularly among her family or with Scylla, demonstrate the toxicity of strictly held feminine ideals. Each explore the different ways in which womanhood is weaponized and women are forced to compete with each other. Once she develops more confidence in herself and throws off a large portion of the role that she had as a demigoddess after banished to Aeaeae, she cultivates positive relationships with the nymphs and other scorned daughters sent to her. Aeaeae becomes a sanctuary for women who do not fit into a strict patriarchical ideal. And finally Aeaeae is both home and prison as the most important relationship which Circe develops is with herself. Being able to be contented in quietness, competent in self defense against the violence of men, in the labors of survival is one of the things which makes this character so compelling. She repeatedly does not back down from challenges, and she does not do so with feigned grace or the dignity of Victorian manufactured femininity but with the shit stained bluntness of: I will survive this because I must.
Aliactast 
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