The Spouter-Inn

15. The Odyssey.


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                           “To outwit you

in all your tricks, a person or a god
would need to be an expert at deceit.
You clever rascal! So duplicitous,
so talented at lying! You love fiction
and tricks so deeply, you refuse to stop
even in your own land. Yes, both of us
are smart. No man can plan and talk like you,
and I am known among the gods for insight
and craftiness. You failed to recognize me:
I am Athena, child of Zeus. I always
stand near you and take care of you, in all
your hardships.”

Homer’s Odyssey tells us of a complicated man,

Odysseus, who spent ten years away from his family during the Trojan War (for
more details, read The Iliad) and spends
another ten years trying to get home to his wife Penelope and his son
Telemachus. But the Gods intervene, and Odysseus and his men get bounced from
one marvellous island to another. Meanwhile, a gaggle of suitors are insisting
that Odysseus has been gone so long he must be dead, and they’re going to keep
bothering Penelope until she picks one of them to marry. When Odysseus finally
gets home, he and Telemachus devise a brutal plan to solve the situation.

Suzanne and Chris have a conversation about how the poem depicts cleverness,

home, manliness, and
water—and what about it
has inspired so many adaptations.

Show Notes.

The Odyssey, in a recent translation by Emily

Wilson. [Bookshop.]

Wilson offers a pronunciation

guide to several of the
characters on her website.

Wilson has been interviewed by the Los Angeles Review of

Books and the New York Times
Magazine about her translation.

Suzanne was a guest on This Is Your

Mixtape.

We made some ridiculous

t-shirts based on The Tempest.

We talked a little about Tiresias in our episode on The

Metamorphoses.

James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Dear Reader on Madeline Miller’s Circe and Margaret Atwood’s

Penelopiad.

Derek Walcott’s Omeros.

Vergil’s Aeneid.

Percy Jackson’s The Lightning Thief.

Our episode on Dante’s Inferno.

Lucian of Samosata’s A True

Story.

Next episode: Middlemarch by George Eliot. [Free

ebook and
audiobook.]

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The Spouter-InnBy Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris Piuma

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