Headnote Penetrant and Simple: The Common Reader

Abstract

I wrote a Cormac McCarthy guide for the common reader with classic masters and current cultural debates in mind. W. B. Yeats in an essay on Homer’s Odyssey notes “the swift and natural observation of a man as he is shaped by life.” Some still read the Greek epics as cultural benchmarks and codes of behavior. Odysseus is an alert man on-the-go, wily, passionate, quick-witted, and strong-hearted, a man among men admired by women. More statesman than warrior, more storyteller than soldier, the Ithacan king questions war and empire, serves country and clan when required, saves the day at Troy, and traverses the unknown seas returning home. He loses many good men along the way. Where are the valiant of honor, action, and grace in our own time—the fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers beside us through peace and war? Western canticles keen elegies for assassinated leaders and lament fallen comrades back through the whaleroad Seafarer’s ubi suntto Virgil’s sunt lacrimae rerum, “these are the tears of things” destroyed by war in Carthage.