One of the most popular current works in the field of Classics, or certainly the most notorious among academics, to the point that I and many others were asked whether we had read it in admissions interviews, is The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller.
If you are applying for a degree in literature, such ‘so have you read-?’ questions obviously fall well within the purview of the interview’s investigation of you. Likewise, it is perhaps reasonable for a Classics interviewer to expect a prospective student to have a keen enough interest in the classical world that when a novel directly based on the Iliad takes the world by storm (it won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012 and reached #31 on the New York Times Bestseller list) they will be ecstatic to read it.
Well, why would I want to read that when I can just read the Iliad?’
However, there is an alternative perspective, and that is ‘Well, why would I want to read that when I can just read the Iliad?’ After all, I am applying for a Classics degree, not an English one. Nevertheless, the expectation that Classics students must have read this book in order to be taken seriously by professors, relatives and strangers alike oddly persists, alongside several other apparent staples. There isn’t, either, a very convincing way to answer these people if you haven’t devoured these books like a small Renaissance monk in South Italy. ‘You haven’t read The Song of Achilles? You can’t be that interested then.’
But I think someone really ought to say it - The Song of Achilles is just Call Me By Your Name for classicists. It’s not exactly highbrow stuff. Like Aciman’s paperback romance, the tensile strength of the novel, and what allegedly keeps you reading, is a thread of homoerotic yearning which runs through the narration of the otherwise predictable saga. However, unlike Call Me By Your Name, that thread never quite pulls taut enough to provide any real fervent allegiance to the lovers’ cause, nor to elicit much sympathy when said cause does not, shall we say, ‘pan out’.
You may well notice a trend that those students who worship Miller’s books are the ones who are already deeply in love with Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and thus have the ballast of his epics’ richly layered worlds, stakes and characters to populate the background that Miller does not properly convey. But then, after all, how could she? And furthermore, what would be the point? As I mentioned before, we already have Homer. And even Virgil couldn’t beat him. That should speak for itself.
As I mentioned before, we already have Homer (...) even Virgil couldn't beat him. That should speak for itself.
It was unfortunately inevitable that, as reviewers like Daniel Mendelsohn of the New York Times report, ‘the epic reach exceeds her technical grasp.’ The Guardian is less damning. It lauds what Mendelsohn calls ‘lyrical overwriting’ as ‘more poetic than almost all translations of Homer.’ This ultimately chalks up to an issue of taste, but personally I find her relentless romanticism (‘his voice wheedled and ducked, like a weasel escaping the nest’) rather trying. But who knows, that may be your kind of thing.
However, the relevant fact remains that nothing you can get from The Song of Achilles you can’t get from Homer if you are paying close enough attention - which, as a Classics student, you will be.
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