Three topics in this post: my upcoming interview with Seth Fleisher about his historical fiction, The Farther Shore, a thoughtful quote re Nolan’s movie, The Odyssey, and a short video of mine re my Trojan War novel, Hand of Fire. A potpourri to contemplate and feed the brain.
The Farther Shore, a Novel of Identity, Inheritance and Memory
This Saturday I’ll be interviewing Seth Fleisher at Avid Reader Bookstore in Davis, CA from 6:30-7:30 pm. The author and store would love you to rsvp if you’re coming, free of course, although no one will turn you away if you don’t. The Farther Shore is a deeply considered novel set in South Africa and at Harvard University both at the beginning decade of the twentieth century and in the 1930’s. Fleisher does an impressive job of exploring fascism, identity, and memory while immersing readers in the lives of a little known South African naturalist/journalist and his son, a professor of ancient Buddhist history. The novel’s themes resonate today, and the storytelling is compelling. This promises to be a conversation and question session worth listening to and joining in with. I look forward to seeing my northern California historical fiction-loving friends there. If you live farther afield, the book launched today, so you can find a copy on Bookshop.org or Amazon (affiliate) or your favorite bookstore.
“A mirror held up to our own moment: a world still grappling with identity as both inheritance and invention.”
—New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, JAMIE FORD
Thinking about The Odyssey
On another note that is nonetheless surprisingly related, I’ve spent a lot of time this summer and now fall talking with readers about the remarkably blockbuster film, Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey. Marketing aside, it’s interesting that an ancient story has so grabbed today’s audiences. As I said in my own assessment of the Odyssey film, I liked the movie and I respect Nolan’s interpretation even as I saw it as a new take on what drove Odysseus the man. In the case of the Homer (and Greek legends and myths generally), this is a constantly renewing tradition that thrives on fresh understandings and imaginative ways of telling the story or answering the underlying questions.
I enjoyed reading a review of the film’s ideas by Joseph Earp in The Guardian. He makes the case for how relevant to our moment, politically and socially, the film is. That is not unlike the case I’d make for The Farther Shore, but with an entirely different historical moment at use to illuminate our current crises. Here’s a brief excerpt from the Guardian article, “In The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan worries the end of politeness will destroy civilisation. I fear he’s right”:
In the days since I saw The Odyssey, I have found it difficult not to see Trojan horses everywhere. We live now in a state of perpetual distrustfulness. The paranoiacs, it turns out, are right – there is poison in every water supply. Thanks to AI, no picture is a picture. To borrow a turn of phrase from David Foster Wallace, the content we endlessly consume – whether it be on our phones, or our TV screens – is not being made by people who love us. It’s being made by people who want something from us. Our politicians will lie to us, endlessly, for no other reason than they can. Cruelty now takes a friendly face, and our biggest polluters have carefully curated Instagram pages.
In short, I can’t remember the last time I saw a stranger as containing the divine; a horse as just a horse. And looking back from the point of view of our post-fall of Troy world, politeness no longer seems like the vaguely pathetic instruction that we mind our p’s and q’s. Instead it’s a bond, a default approach of care that says, the other is not a demon, but possibly a God in disguise. An approach that says, this person you do not know has something for you, and you should take it. Because, after all, what are the chances that they mean you harm? –Joseph Earp
The Trojan War in historical fiction
In one of my Odyssey film-related conversations a couple weeks ago, I made the case for my own Trojan War “take,” a more female-centric view. I wrote Hand of Fire a number of years ago, but it keeps striking readers as timely. I happened to tape this snippet of conversation, so you may listen in: