nonfiction
Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist
Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Knopf, $15.
Though slim, this
manifesto is a masterpiece.
Each suggestion is
thoughtful, meditating on
the problems of patriarchy.
Adichie is passionate, but
her anger is not biting.
When she criticizes the
patriarchy, she seems
amused by the poor logic
behind society’s failings.
This book is deeply
rooted in the Nigerian
female experience, but the
trappings of that culture are easily mirrored in this one.
Her writing is deeply personal: The book is written as a
letter to her close friend, who has just birthed a daughter.
Here’s an example from the sixth suggestion: “Teach her
to question language. Language is the repository of all
our prejudices, our beliefs, our assumptions. But to teach
her that, you will have to question your own language.”
But Adichie’s suggestions always extend toward a
clearheaded analysis of society at large: “Teach her to
question men who can have empathy for women only if
they see them as relational rather than as individual equal
humans.” Dear Ijeawele is an excellent candidate for your
coffee table, and the lessons in it are, unfortunately, pretty
timeless. — Kelly Kenoyer
J. Michaels
Books
160 E. BROADWAY, 541-342-2002,
JMICHAELSBOOKS.COM
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund. Grove, $16.
Elmet by Fiona Mozley. Algonquin, $15.95.
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. Scribner, $28.
Local author Cai Emmons calls this “… One of the
best novels I’ve read in years, beautifully plotted and
researched, with characters who are as fully dimensional
as anyone I know and language that is gorgeous.”
Future Home of the Living God: A Novel
by Louise Erdrich. Harper, $28.99.
Where The Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir
by Amy Tan. Ecco, $28.99.
The Art of Loading Brush
by Wendell Berry. Counterpoint, $26.
Our great agrarian essayist and philosopher brings us a
new book filled with insights and new revelations.
The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben.
Greystone, $24.95.
k Birding Without Borders by Noah Strycker.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27.
Eugene born and raised, Strycker wrote a memoir of his
Big Year, a seven-continent journey to note more bird
species in a year than anyone ever before.
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500
Year History by Kurt Andersen. Random House,
$30.
Devotions: Selected Poems of Mary Oliver.
Penguin, $30.
Lou Harrison: American Musical
Maverick by Bill Alves and Brett Campbell. Indiana
University Press, $55 (paper).
Perhaps the most
influential Oregon
native you’ve never
actually heard of
was the avant-garde
musical pioneer
Lou Harrison, who
managed to be born
in Portland in 1917
and then almost
immediately depart
for places he was
more likely to make
an artistic mark, such
as San Francisco,
where he learned
about Chinese opera
and enjoyed the 1930s
gay community, and North Carolina’s Black Mountain
College, where he took part in “happenings” with the
likes of John Cage and Merce Cunningham. In this hefty
(583 pages) but readable biography, Southern California
composer Bill Alves joins forces with Eugene Weekly’s
own classical music writer Brett Campbell (OK, Brett
also writes for such lesser-known publications as the Wall
Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle and Oregon
ArtsWatch) to illuminate the life of the man they call
“the godfather of world music.” The result is a detailed
account that combines serious music history with dishy
gossip in just the right proportion to keep non-musical
readers awake while offering them a substantial account
of 20th-century American culture. — Bob Keefer
Tell Me The Old Story
The Odyssey rendered by a woman BY EMILY DUNNAN
T
he song of a blind bard in ancient Greece still echoes
through the halls of imagination and the chambers of our
minds. Homer’s Odyssey, epic in every sense of the word,
resonates in the 21st century on a deep level, speaking to
the universality of human dilemmas across time.
Odysseus, the eponymous hero, can be interpreted variously as
an arrogant bastard seeking glory, a veteran suffering PTSD, or a
conflicted husband and father voyaging homeward. His journey
home after sacking Troy consumes much of the narrative, but so
do the struggles of his wife and son and his eventual homecoming.
Emily Wilson is the first woman to publish an English transla-
tion of The Odyssey. In an email to me, she clarifies that plenty of
women, like Sarah Ruden, have translated the classics, and that
women do read ancient Greek poetry.
But Wilson’s translation clearly involved more thought and re-
search than an extempore reading.
Translating poetry is a tricky business. The translator, necessar-
ily both a poet and a scholar, walks a tightrope between meter and
meaning, Greek idiom and common English.
Wilson has struck the golden mean in sleek, modern English.
Her iambic pentameter is robust and fluid, propelling the reader
through adventure after adventure.
Homer’s poem was written in hexameter, with six syllabic units
per line. Wilson says she chose iambic pentameter because it is
natively English — the rhythm of such greats as Chaucer, Shake-
speare, Byron and Keats. (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”)
Wilson’s word choice is particularly contemporary — for example, Menelaus serves
“canapés” at his house. Some classicists prefer using archaic language when translating the
ancients, and take issue with Wilson’s modern style.
However, Wilson tells me she writes in clear, speakable English to mark her awareness
that her readers live in 2017, and that the English of the 1930s is
no more like ancient Greek than today’s English is.
Wilson says she tried to create a standalone piece of literature
that has its own power and life. She succeeded.
Her poetry reads with the pace of a novel. Even her section
titles feel like this: My favorite title is Book 6, “A Princess and
Her Laundry,” chronicling that one time when Odysseus ended up
naked by a river and met a foreign princess washing her clothes.
Wilson provides a fresh take on the women of The Odyssey.
She comments in a translator’s note that her Helen, the beautiful
cause of the Trojan War, “refrains from blaming herself for what
men have done in her name.”
Evinced by her characterizations of other women in the epic,
Wilson says she wants to “allow the reader to feel deep and genu-
ine sympathy for the female characters.”
In the end, why should you read The Odyssey? Wilson says
it addresses many strikingly pertinent questions: Are you inter-
ested in whether your identity depends on your relationships? Or
what you should do for migrants and refugees? Whether gender is
fixed? Whether war permanently damages a people? What binds a
family together? What it means to have a home?
You’ve come to the right place.
“I wanted the language to come alive, and each of the char-
acters to come alive too,” Wilson says in conclusion. “I hope that
people who read my translation will find themselves feeling the
suspense and pace of the story, and caring deeply about what happens to each of these
characters.”
The Odyssey is full of characters whose struggles shed light on our issues today. Indeed,
on the very first page the poet invokes the muse, “tell the old story for our modern times.”
The Odyssey, W.W. Norton, $39.95
eugeneweekly.com • December 14, 2017
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