The Man, The Myth, The Trickster

 The regular readers of my blog entries (both of you) will not be surprised that my wife and I went to see Christopher Nolan's new film The Odyssey the first day it was available. We are achraeology and mythology buffs.

Short review: Not a masterpiece but not an embarrassment. To paraphrase Lincoln's book review, people who enjoy this type of film will definitely enjoy this one.

But what I want to discuss here is how, inevitably, Nolan had to make this 3,000-year-old character more palatable for a modern audience. Because Homer's Odysseus is a long way from what we would call a hero.

The very first sentence of the poem describes him with a word translators have been struggling with ever since. "A man of twists and turns." "A man skilled in all ways of contending." "That ingenious hero." "The crafty man." "The Shifty."

Emily Wilson translates it as "a complicated man," and she is worth noting because her 2012 version is the most popular these days (Nolan mentioned it in interviews) and has sold more than a walloping million copies this year alone.  I imagine Christopher Nolan is on her Christmas (or Saturnalia) card list.

So Odysseus is not just smart but tricky.  He lies, he cons, he gloats about it, and Homer expects us to admire him for it. This doesn't fit our idea of a hero these  days, so Nolan burdened the big O. with a guilty, post-traumatic conscience.  Sure, the guy dreamed up ther Trojan horse, leading to the destruction of the city and the slaughter of men, women, and children, but doggone, he feels awful about it.  In fact, you could argue that except for the phony horsey his wife Penelope does more tricking in the movie than her husband.

But tricksters were held in high regard in those cultures. I think one of the more interesting examples is Flavius Josephus, who was a Jewish general during the Jewish War against the Romans.  He was part of a group of seventy soldiers who, trapped by the enemy, decided to commit mass suicide, killing each other,  rather than surrender.  When only two were left Josephus and the other survivor promptly surrendered.  

How do we know about this dastardly deed?  Because he bragged about it in his book The Jewish War, written while he was a guest of Vespasian who he had correctly predicted would become emperor.  He knew his Roman readers would appreciate his cleverness, rather condemn his treachery.

Folk tales are full of tricksters, especially admiring those who outsmart stronger enemies: Aesops's fox, Anansi, Brer Rabbit, Loki, Puss and Boots, Jacob.

Actual armor from Odysseus's age

I've been trying to think of good examples from mystery fiction.  Sherlock Holmes, multiple disguises and all, seems too straight-forward to qualify.  Nero Wolfe? Perry Mason?  Possibly.  

Jackson Lamb?  Absotively.

I want to leave you with one anecdote from the Odyssey which didn't make it into the movie, not quite having that heroic vibe.

In Book Nine (where Wilson has Homer describing our guy as "the lord of liars") he talks about his ships arriving in the land of a people called the Cicones. Odysseus and his men sack the city, killing most of the men and taking the women as slaves.

But then, wouldn't you know it? The Cicones called on their allies and attack, killing many of Odysseus's men.  "Poor us!" Wilson's O. laments.

Imagine the unfairness of it.  You declare an enemy's ability to conduct war has been obliterated and they keep fighting back.

Thank the gods that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore.

A Bond By Any Other Name?

I'm writing this week's post from Atlantic Beach, NC, where my son Dash and I are spending the week visiting with my parents and my brother. It's almost squarely the middle of our trip as I'm beginning this post, and it's been a fine, fun week already—and fine and fun also describe nicely the beach reading I brought down with me.

While most of my reading throughout the years relates to work of some kind or another—texts on my syllabi, a book I'm slated to review,  readings for an anthology I'm helping edit or a contest I'm helping judge—I do try to balance out those stories or books with a few solely for pleasure. For our getaway this week, I packed Forever and a Death by the late Donald Westlake. The book began as a film treatment by Westlake, who was asked to contribute a story to the James Bond film franchise—but when elements of the book proved too political for the filmmakers, the film itself was never made, and Westlake wrote a novel instead, one never released during the author's lifetime. Hard Case Crime finally published the book just last week—the third of Westlake's previously unpublished works to be released by Hard Case since the author's death.

Donald Westlake and James Bond?!?! As a fan not only of Westlake's writing but also of the Bond series in both books and film, how could I resist? I snapped it up immediately.

Before we get to that Westlake + Bond equation, I want to mention the Bond + beach equation. My family has had a home somewhere along North Carolina's Crystal Coast for most of my life, and even the anticipation of reading a new Bond novel in this setting brought back several fond memories, since I discovered so many of Fleming's original books at the beach and then too the subsequent series by John Gardner, who began writing his own Bond novels when I was in my early teens—perfect timing for me as a reader. I distinctly remember being in our house in Emerald Isle one weekend during the school year when I was supposed to be pushing through Homer's Odyssey (at left is the cover of the W.H.D. Rouse translation we'd been assigned) and yet being drawn instead to Fleming's Spy Who Loved Me, such an unusual and fascinating book in the series as anyone who's read it knows. (As I recall, I balanced things out by rewarding myself with a little Bond for each section of Odysseus's journey I pushed through. And thinking about it now, aren't there many similarities between Odysseus's travels and Bond's own travails? Tempting Circe, the threatening Cyclops, twists and troubles at every turn of an international adventure.)

Speaking of Gardner: Though I don't remember his books as clearly, I do remember enjoying them very much, and I should add that I'm generally fascinated by what other authors have done with the character and the series. I still haven't read Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun, the first non-Fleming Bond book, and I never got around to Raymond Benson's contributions, but in recent years I've very much admired the various treatments offered by Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, and William Boyd—the ways each of these authors have balanced the iconic character/story against their own interests and aesthetic temperaments. (I leave Anthony Horowitz out of the list here only because I haven't read it yet either.)

So it was with some mix of both nostalgia and anticipation that I opened up the new Westlake—and found myself immersed immediately in what seemed familiar terrain: a powerful, wealthy villain in the first stages of a diabolical plan that would ultimately prove catastrophic for millions of people. Between Westlake's deft prose, the short chapters cross-cutting between several characters' perspectives, and cliffhangers at every turn, Forever and a Death has proven a joy from the start—and yes, the perfect beach read, even without the fact that so much of the novel's thrilling opening section takes place on the water.

And yet, more than 200 pages into it as I write this post, one perhaps key element of a James Bond novel seems missing—namely, James Bond himself.

Having read only small bits of advance press on Forever and a Death—more about its backstory than the story itself—I'll admit that I did expect some Bond-like figure here in one form or another. Maybe not Bond by name, of course, and who knew whether the character would be more Connery or more Craig or more Moore? But certainly he would be a secret agent of some kind, missioned and skilled and licensed to kill, right?

Whatever those expectations, however, my enthusiasm for the book hasn't waned a bit, even as Bond himself has failed to show up. On the contrary, I'm actually finding myself intrigued in fresh ways by that central character's absence—imagining the process by which Westlake must have reworked this story from the original film treatment, the decisions he must have made in translating that original story into this new one.

I understand that there's an afterword here by a producer from the Bond franchise, and I've hesitated so far looking at it for fear of plot spoilers. But I'm hoping that the essay will offer some glimpses at the original treatment and some insights into how it became this.

In the meantime, though, I'm just enjoying the ride. 

I know many of my fellow SleuthSayers are devoted Bond fans too from previous posts here—so how about a quick question: What's your favorite Bond book not written by Ian Fleming? From what I'd read myself (see exceptions above), I'll vote William Boyd's Solo, and my review at the Washington Post detailed the reasons why. Your choice? 

(Or for folks who aren't Bond fans, what author continuing another author's series ranks as your own favorite?)