69 books like Virtue's End

Long after I began studying Italian, I resisted reading Italy’s greatest poet. His classic book seemed too daunting, too distant, too dull. Then, an Italian teacher gave me the first adaptation of the La Divina Commedia that she had read as a girl: a vintage Italian Walt Disney comic book featuring Mickey Mouse (Topolino in Italian) as Dante with Minnie Mouse as his adored Beatrice.   

I was so intrigued that I bought an English translation of the Divine Comedy—several, although I’m partial to John Ciardi’s. My unanticipated reaction: Wow! Like modern readers ensnared by the wizardly world of Harry Potter, I skidded into a fully imagined alternate world. An action-packed, high-adrenalin, breath-taking, rip-roaring yarn leaped off the pages into vivid, writhing, pulsating life. If you love action-packed tales and also seek insights into the Italian soul, read The Inferno. Purgatorio and Paradiso are optional. 

If you are fed up with the mundane, the triviality of everyday life, and if you want to experience the sublime – writing that is sublime, that lifts you up to see imaginary and heroic worlds where the invisible forces that underpin reality battle for supremacy, then this is the poem for you. True, its language can seem difficult, but so can Shakespeare’s; instead of thinking that’s a problem, embrace it – let the language work its magic and soar to the stars and back! I have loved this poem ever since I read it when I was twenty, and quote it all the time. It will inspire the warrior in you.

From two great past epic classics, I now move to the contemporary present: Benson Brown’s is a mock epic a la Byron (think, Don Juan). Brilliantly funny, witty, exposing the American War of Independence in ways you have never seen before – a laugh-out-loud poem, and full of rich historical details as well as mythological conceits which makes it a unique reading experience. Weirdly, for all its parody, I probably learnt more about the American War from it than from actual historical texts. The back page blurb says: "Thomas Jefferson is sent to Hell for a mysterious sin." Find out what – get the poem!

This is a remarkable book, truly a modern epic poem. The verse is not strictly formal but somehow throughout its length Glaysher maintains interest, so that although his language can seem archaic in places, yet because the poetry is about such current issues that concern us – the fate of planet Earth and humanity more specifically – and because the linguistics are so varied and skillful, we realize that this is a poet working for deliberate effects, and not one who has only read poetry from three hundred years ago. One fabulous quality of this poem is its clarity and luminous quality. I love the fact that this poem is easy to understand and follow: it is a poet writing for people, not one trying to show off.

Homer’s Iliad is a fabulously exciting tale of action and heroism, as the mightiest Greek heroes fight beneath the walls of Troy for the most beautiful woman who ever lived. But there is so much more to it! It’s partly the tale of one man’s anger, and partly a timeless tale about war and sacrifice for all humanity. Homer confronts some of the most significant human problems with amazingly contemporary power and nuance: the beauty and horror of combat; the inseparability of glory and destruction; the raw emotional power of reconciliation between mortal enemies; and the fact that there is more to life than revenge and more to being a man than slaughtering other men. Richmond Lattimore’s inspired translation makes you feel like Homer himself is reciting the tales to you.

This is my favorite novel in Rieu's prose translation which has a real freshness, as if the very first book. I wanted that sense of freshness for my book, as well as the story of a man desperately trying to get home to his wife. The story takes place in the framework of Sam's 11-year-old imagination, and so carries him and his father through fantastic adventures as trying as those Odysseus faces in The Odyssey. 

This book is an epic about a war fought over a woman (Helen, the “face that launched a thousand ships”), yet this is the first major translation by one. Emily Wilson’s translation sounds fresh and up-to-date yet stays closer to Homer than the versions I encountered growing up.

I love how Wilson treats Homer’s women, avoiding the clichés and derogatory language used by previous translators. And her work has the narrative drive that Homer deserves, making this very old, very familiar story a real page-turner.

This story has always struck me as a quest to identify and regain humanity, as its hero repeatedly faces strange and powerful obstacles to his voyage home. I first read it as a child and then again, but in Greek, as a student—a time in life when anyone is trying to find their feet as a human being!

Perhaps the most comforting thing is that amongst all the gods and monsters and cursing and fighting, eating habits often characterize the work’s characters. Odysseus is always looking for sitophagoi, bread eaters, i.e. civilized people who make their own food, rather than man-eating monsters. I can identify with a hero looking for nice people to share a nice meal with.

Once, on a weeks-long gig far from home, I stayed in a bare attic room with no TV, no internet, not even a radio. I didn’t mind. I had this translation of the Odyssey to settle down with every evening after work. I would think about it all day long: the vivid language, the fantastical events, the struggle and suffering of the protagonist. Reading it was like going to a technicolor movie every night, except that the movie was inside my head.

Talk about an essential human story—the Odyssey is four thousand years old, but its characters have the same emotions, fears, vices, and virtues we have today. Their struggles make my heart race and my eyes tear up. My imagination goes into overdrive, and I revel in the wonder.

For fantasy, adventure, and humanity, I find no book like Homer’s Odyssey. Some prefer the Iliad, but for me, the Odyssey has greater depth, resonance, and experience of life. Most of us know about Odysseus’ wonderful adventures, but the whole second half of the epic is about his attempts to get home and, once home, to reintegrate himself into his family and society, from which he has been absent for twenty years.

I love the way the epic relates stories but also makes you think about what stories mean, why people tell them, and how to tell false ones from true. There are many fine translations of the Odyssey, including Emily Wilson’s recent one; my favorite, however, though a bit dated, remains that of Lattimore.