Why Homer Matters: A History

Author: Nicolson, Adam

Edition: First

Number Of Pages: 320

Details:

"Adam Nicolson writes popular books as popular books used to be, a breeze rather than a scholarly sweat, but humanely erudite, elegantly written, passionately felt…and his excitement is contagious."―James Wood, The New YorkerAdam Nicolson sees the Iliad and the Odyssey as the foundation myths of Greek―and our―consciousness, collapsing the passage of 4,000 years and making the distant past of the Mediterranean world as immediate to us as the events of our own time.Why Homer Matters is a magical journey of discovery across wide stretches of the past, sewn together by the poems themselves and their metaphors of life and trouble. Homer's poems occupy, as Adam Nicolson writes "a third space" in the way we relate to the past: not as memory, which lasts no more than three generations, nor as the objective accounts of history, but as epic, invented after memory but before history, poetry which aims "to bind the wounds that time inflicts."The Homeric poems are among the oldest stories we have, drawing on deep roots in the Eurasian steppes beyond the Black Sea, but emerging at a time around 2000 B.C. when the people who would become the Greeks came south and both clashed and fused with the more sophisticated inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean.The poems, which ask the eternal questions about the individual and the community, honor and service, love and war, tell us how we became who we are.

Reviews:

“Highly accessible…Nicolson's amateurism (in the best, etymological, sense of the word: from the Latin amare,

"to love") and globe-trotting passion for his subject is contagious…bringing the heroic age into our own.” ―New York Times Book Review“Complex, personal and profound…a brash and brave piece of writing… [Nicolson's] book, filled with the swords and spears that inflict the carnage of the ‘Iliad,' can change the way we see ours.” ―Wall Street Journal“Stirring… Nicolson eloquently sums up what we still look for in Homer: ‘wisdom, his fearless encounter with the dreadful, his love of love and hatred of death, the sheer scale of his embrace, his energy and brightness, his resistance to nostalgia.'” ―Washington Post“If I have a serious complaint about this book, it's that it threatens to be better than Homer -- and I say this as a qualified classicist, who is supposed to be extensively trained for snottiness toward an amateur enthusiast like Nicolson. Against the howl that must be rising from the academy at my judgment, I'm standing my ground.” ―National Review“Adam Nicolson's Why Homer Matters is awonderfully sensitive and fascinating meditation on Homer, sailing, the meaning of life, and the power of poetry. The author's erudition is dazzling and discreet.” ―Louis Begley, author of Memories of a Marriage and About Schmidt“There is no better explicator of life, of art, and the process by which we experience both than Adam Nicolson. In Why Homer Matters, he is at his eloquent and rapturous best.Through the prism of this great poet, Nicolson has crafted a kind of metaphysical guidebook on how to lead a meaningful life in in a world of terrifying and wondrous change.” ―Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea and Bunker Hill

“Seldom have I been so moved, inspired, informed and delighted as by Adam Nicolson's elegant explanation of why Homer--so long forgotten in the school-time haze--is so vitally important as a lifetime vade mecum. The author must be one of the last true polymaths standing: his writings--this new book above all--give pleasure beyond compare.” ―Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and The Men Who United the States“[A] gracefully written and deeply informed book…Nicolson's spirited exploration illuminates our own indelible past.” ―Kirkus, starred review“In this passionate, deeply personal book, Nicolson explains why Homer matters--to him, to you, to the world--in a text full of twists, turns, and surprises.” ―Publishers Weekly“[A] sprawling, lyrical, and frequently...

EAN: 9781627791793

Release Date: 18-11-2014

Languages: English

Item Condition: New

Binding: Hardcover