After the strange, gasping fascination with which I read the Iliad recently, I felt like I had to know more. Like I didn’t want to forget the shape of it and the Odyssey, like I needed to understand the way the archetypes from misty, almost pre-historic Greece influence our metaphorical view of ourselves through the ages.

And, viola! Manguel’s treatment and investigation in this “biography” (as it were–of the poems, not the poet) is a work of adoration, sensuous and nested with complexity. It’s really a book that’s a bit beyond me. The more I try to be well-read, the more I realize I am not, and here again I am reminded. Manguel bounces Homer off of Pope, Milton, Dante, Joyce, Tennyson.

What I see this book as is as a gate–a viewport to the things I can learn about and read next; a guide to the interconnectedness of epics throughout time.

Sometimes Manguel’s chapters wax into pure philosophy, at which I glaze over sometimes–my own weakness. But what a wonderful context-builder! ( )