Following Lattimore in his courageous defiance of contemporary English idiom, Mendelsohn presents Odysseus as if he were enduring a journey very much like driving through Milton Keynes – a nauseating and banal passage through one traffic circle after another. [loc. 2925]
Subtitled 'Journeys through Ancient Literature', this collects a number of essays by Emily Wilson (author of that damning review of Nolan's Odyssey). She discusses the art of translation, and the ways in which the modern world responds to, revisits and repurposes the classical world and its culture. She is often funny, and often extremely scathing.
There are chapters on Roman comedy, on Stoicism (and its malappropriation by wealthy technocrats, on Edith Hamilton, on Helen of Troy, and -- longest of all -- on her own experience of translating Homer's works. She's adept at mapping ancient tropes, stereotypes and behaviours to modern life: I especially enjoyed her comparison of WAP with Ancient Athenian comedy. I also liked her 'Twenty Rules for Translators', which explore the ways in which a translation can be made fresh and still honour the original.
There's also an essay about the controversy surrounding the English-language translation, by Deborah Smith, of Han Kang's The Vegetarian: "what matters most ... is not whether Smith preserved Han’s syntax (she certainly did not), but whether she managed to turn an important work of Korean literature into a novel that was equally powerful in English translation." ploc. 465] As a monoglot fascinated by language, this book helped me think more clearly about translation and about what gives a text its unique flavour.
Read because: on offer. Having bought the ebook, I also bought the audiobook -- read by the author, often vehemently, and very listenable.
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