Myth-cellaneous books
Dec. 29th, 2018 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxIn the past week, I read Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, both of which are retellings of the Iliad and the Odyssey, respectively, from the perspective of secondary characters (Patroclus and Penelope) with a modern twist (LGBT representation and feminism). The two books really complement each other, and in a way fill in each other’s gaps. As much as I love TSOA, it does have an issue re: women’s voices – i.e. the complete neglect of – while Atwood’s book is nothing but women’s voices. It was also interesting to see how Odysseus (the one overlapping character) was portrayed differently in each book.
I know that, objectively, The Song of Achilles is not a good adaption of the Iliad.* It is probably not even that great of a book in general (I’m not sure if I didn’t notice the first time around or I simply forgot, but Miller has an obsession with similes that is not even a writing quirk, it’s more of a tic) but counterpoint: I love it, deeply. I was absolutely on board the fandom train around the height of its popularity on Tumblr. I had an Achilles/Patroclus playlist, which to the best of my memory included a lot of Sufjan Stevens and Bright Eyes. I loved their deep, dramatic, fate-defying love, the sweet moments they were able to eke out in the midst of a ten-year war, and the deliciously devastating twist at the end. A reoccurring theme of this year has been re-visiting old obsessions (Doctor Who, Pacific Rim) that I had grown embarrassed and self-mocking about since high school and realizing that they're actually pure delight and were all along and then throwing myself straight back into enjoying them; TSOA is definitely on that list.
*I know that a big complaint about TSOA is that in the Iliad, Patroclus was also a warrior – and a really good warrior – so Miller’s decision to make him Not Good at Fighting and a healer instead was like… emasculating or playing into stereotypes, making him the ‘wife’ in the relationship, or whatever. Which… honestly, I don’t have the time or energy to unpack that, but I will say that whatever Miller’s intentions, I think it made for better narration to have him ‘outside’ of the actual fighting.
The Penelopiad was also super interesting since Penelope's narration was interspersed with commentary from the twelve maids killed by Odysseus on his return to Ithaca, in the form of poems, skits, a court transcript, even a mock anthropology lecture on the maids as symbols of a matriarchal moon cult (which ends with a punch-to-the-stomach quote along the lines of “isn’t it so much easier to think of us as a metaphor, instead of actual flesh and blood girls, because then you don’t have to acknowledge that we suffered?”) As ever, Atwood is really good at playing with unreliable narrators, in terms of fact vs. myth, as well as fact vs. fact, i.e. the contradictions between Penelope’s and the maids’ accounts of the same events.
I also just finished Michelle Obama’s new memoir, Becoming, which is absolutely worth all the hype. I especially appreciated the insight into her early professional life, because she discussed not just her experiences but what she wished she'd known as she was starting her career. She had a really interesting career path, since she started off, as she described it, ticking off all the right boxes - Ivy League, law school, a job with a prestigious firm - before realizing she wasn't fulfilled and turning to less well-paid, but more meaningful, work with non-profits and local government. She also talked about learning to acknowledge, and be upfront about, what she wanted to get out of a job and needed in order to be effective at it, whether that's a flexible schedule so she could pick her kids up from school or a higher salary since she had student loans to pay.
I know that, objectively, The Song of Achilles is not a good adaption of the Iliad.* It is probably not even that great of a book in general (I’m not sure if I didn’t notice the first time around or I simply forgot, but Miller has an obsession with similes that is not even a writing quirk, it’s more of a tic) but counterpoint: I love it, deeply. I was absolutely on board the fandom train around the height of its popularity on Tumblr. I had an Achilles/Patroclus playlist, which to the best of my memory included a lot of Sufjan Stevens and Bright Eyes. I loved their deep, dramatic, fate-defying love, the sweet moments they were able to eke out in the midst of a ten-year war, and the deliciously devastating twist at the end. A reoccurring theme of this year has been re-visiting old obsessions (Doctor Who, Pacific Rim) that I had grown embarrassed and self-mocking about since high school and realizing that they're actually pure delight and were all along and then throwing myself straight back into enjoying them; TSOA is definitely on that list.
*I know that a big complaint about TSOA is that in the Iliad, Patroclus was also a warrior – and a really good warrior – so Miller’s decision to make him Not Good at Fighting and a healer instead was like… emasculating or playing into stereotypes, making him the ‘wife’ in the relationship, or whatever. Which… honestly, I don’t have the time or energy to unpack that, but I will say that whatever Miller’s intentions, I think it made for better narration to have him ‘outside’ of the actual fighting.
The Penelopiad was also super interesting since Penelope's narration was interspersed with commentary from the twelve maids killed by Odysseus on his return to Ithaca, in the form of poems, skits, a court transcript, even a mock anthropology lecture on the maids as symbols of a matriarchal moon cult (which ends with a punch-to-the-stomach quote along the lines of “isn’t it so much easier to think of us as a metaphor, instead of actual flesh and blood girls, because then you don’t have to acknowledge that we suffered?”) As ever, Atwood is really good at playing with unreliable narrators, in terms of fact vs. myth, as well as fact vs. fact, i.e. the contradictions between Penelope’s and the maids’ accounts of the same events.
I also just finished Michelle Obama’s new memoir, Becoming, which is absolutely worth all the hype. I especially appreciated the insight into her early professional life, because she discussed not just her experiences but what she wished she'd known as she was starting her career. She had a really interesting career path, since she started off, as she described it, ticking off all the right boxes - Ivy League, law school, a job with a prestigious firm - before realizing she wasn't fulfilled and turning to less well-paid, but more meaningful, work with non-profits and local government. She also talked about learning to acknowledge, and be upfront about, what she wanted to get out of a job and needed in order to be effective at it, whether that's a flexible schedule so she could pick her kids up from school or a higher salary since she had student loans to pay.
