Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad

Rating:
Summary: The Canon Without the Retort
Review: Brann has done a delightful thing in writing Homeric Moments, and in so doing has won, with her much-glancing and everywhere-sparkling wit, a battle in the War on the WC. While many react to the relegation of the essential books to the backshelves of decaying library stacks, Brann has placed one copy of Homer in a magic box so that boys and girls one day, after all the Seven Volumes of Harry Potter are written and digested (a little boy wizard goes a long way), might find something that is more moving than magic, more charming than charmed.

I think many of us who would advocate for the traditional canon are quite aware that nobody's been reading it for years and years. I went off to college in the early 70's (yes, to the place where she taught--although I read Homer with two other incredible teachers, and I don't believe there was a single faculty member in the entire school who couldn't teach Homer). My friends who went to other schools did not read Homer. Or Plato. Certainly not Euclid. Absolutely not Apollonius of Perga on the Conic Sections. So the fiery umbrage over reading books "not like us" seems a little like the lady protesting too much over what is more insubstantial than sound and more fleeting than fury. Yes, I love reading the outraged and wonderful arguments of Harold Bloom--but he's only written for those of us who are so made as to delight utterly in our own pretensions and affectations. Or worse, for those who simply want to buy that lovely big book in the hopes of reading it someday--and who know people seeing it lying around on the sofa will be far more interested in what Bloom has to say about everything than what Ben Johnson has to say about anything (well, enough to read the New York Times Review of Books to find out what Bloom might have to say about something).

Brann has written for anyone, and she just well might succeed in getting a few people off on a race that only starts with Homer--once you start you can't stop,--and you'll be reading Lucretius, Heroditus, Cervantes, Joyce, Tolstoy. It's one of the few ways we have before us to earn the space we take up in this world--letting Homer and his ilk say to us what they would have us hear and teach us what we know we ought to know.

There is a side to the Brann's book, though, that I never expected. The most casual comments about learning (i.e., that you start to learn wisdom only after becoming who you are--finishing the growing up part--because if you aren't who you are, then who's there to grow wise), are stunningly beautiful. Her years of learning are informed by her years of teaching, and the interplay of these two essential, and entirely contrasting, enterprises in the life of a real teacher illuminate this book with a sweetness that I believe few of us get to experience in the halls of academe.

Her delight with Homer reflects, I think, her delight with her own luck at being alive in the world--this is apparent from the smile on her face in the tiny photo on the back.

Come on in. Jump into the wine-colored sea. When you get over thinking how fruity it is to call it wine-colored you just may get drunk on common sea water. Brann's quite willing to pour another glass for you.

Rating:
Summary: A virtuoso work
Review: Homer is, sadly, too often intimidating to the general reader who believes, wrongly but understandably, that he is archaic, irrelevant, and likely to be unreadable. After all, a book length poem -- as the contemporary high-schooler would say, give me a break.

Eva Brann accomplishes, remarkably, two quite different achievements. First, she shows that even after nearly three millenia Homer remains completely relevant and accessible to the contemporary reader. Second, she provides insights which make the poem far more enjoyable to read, and demystifies many of the aspects which might confuse the modern reader.

She does this with a subtle but delightful wit, and with a patient wisdom honed in forty years of teaching.

Homer is not simply about the Trojan war and its aftermath, but is about what it means to live a life of honor and integrity. Brann understands this perfectly, and indeed echos it in her book, which is not simply about how to enjoy Homer, but is itself about what it means to be a successful human.

Brann's academic home, St. John's, is one of the few colleges in the country -- probably in the world -- to abandon the concept of academic departments and to focus on the teacher as a guide to the great minds of history rather than as the teacher in his or her own right. This is the perfect background from which she writes a book which is rich in scholarship but in no way academic or professorial.

Rating:
Summary: A virtuoso work
Review: Homer is, sadly, too often intimidating to the general reader who believes, wrongly but understandably, that he is archaic, irrelevant, and likely to be unreadable. After all, a book length poem -- as the contemporary high-schooler would say, give me a break.

Eva Brann accomplishes, remarkably, two quite different achievements. First, she shows that even after nearly three millenia Homer remains completely relevant and accessible to the contemporary reader. Second, she provides insights which make the poem far more enjoyable to read, and demystifies many of the aspects which might confuse the modern reader.

She does this with a subtle but delightful wit, and with a patient wisdom honed in forty years of teaching.

Homer is not simply about the Trojan war and its aftermath, but is about what it means to live a life of honor and integrity. Brann understands this perfectly, and indeed echos it in her book, which is not simply about how to enjoy Homer, but is itself about what it means to be a successful human.

Brann's academic home, St. John's, is one of the few colleges in the country -- probably in the world -- to abandon the concept of academic departments and to focus on the teacher as a guide to the great minds of history rather than as the teacher in his or her own right. This is the perfect background from which she writes a book which is rich in scholarship but in no way academic or professorial.

Rating:
Summary: Homer without the "angst"
Review: Ms. Brann is a much-beloved Tutor at St. John's College, long a bastion of focus on the "Great Books". She has an amazing ability to reach behind the "scholarly" interpretation of Homer to the essentials that rare relevant for all of us. While the book focuses primarily on the Odyssey and the illuminative "moments" in the text, the Illiad is also well represented.

You will not have to re-read the Illiad and the Odyssey to take great pleasure from Ms. Brann's book, though you will probably want to. She isolates specific areas of the texts as illustrative of the great insights of Homer and demonstrates how these incidences showcase some of the basic thoughts that ultimately resonate through Western literature.

The text is crisp, flows well and "Homeric Moments" makes for interesting, challenging and very enjoyable reading.

Rating:
Summary: a helpful addition to Homer commentaries
Review: The first thing the reader will notice is that this book is much more accessible than more overtly scholarly texts -- this is a good thing for either first time readers or long time fans of Homer's works. The opening chapters set the scene well and explain her methodology of picking special moments that illuminate the work as a whole. I enjoyed the first half of the book tremendously and found many fresh insights and interesting observations about both the Iliad and the Odyssey. My only slight disappointment was with the last 50-100 pages which focus mostly on plot summary of the Odyssey rather than her interesting commentary although she points out things along the way the readers should note. The last section reads more like Cliff's Notes while the first two-thirds of the book genuinely added to the reader's delight in Homer's works. Overall an excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: Laying apart insights in motive and character
Review: Written by Eva Brann, a literature teacher who has studied The Odyssey and The Iliad for fifty years, Homeric Moments: Clues To Delight In Reading The Odyssey And The Iliad is a thoroughly "reader friendly" and insightful study of these great classic masterpieces of history and epic. Deeply examining the key figures, laying apart insights in motive and character, and illumine Homer's work for the unique and enduringly popular saga that it is, Homeric Moments is a superb companion for dedicated students of ancient literature in general, and those new to the mythic sagas of the blind poet Homer in particular.

Rating:
Summary: Laying apart insights in motive and character
Review: Written by Eva Brann, a literature teacher who has studied The Odyssey and The Iliad for fifty years, Homeric Moments: Clues To Delight In Reading The Odyssey And The Iliad is a thoroughly "reader friendly" and insightful study of these great classic masterpieces of history and epic. Deeply examining the key figures, laying apart insights in motive and character, and illumine Homer's work for the unique and enduringly popular saga that it is, Homeric Moments is a superb companion for dedicated students of ancient literature in general, and those new to the mythic sagas of the blind poet Homer in particular.