SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 5, 2021] “Ulysses and the Cyclops”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
Obviously Homer is a classic–the classic–poet. But it seemed an odd choice to pick Homer (from B.C. days) when surely there was a more recent Greek writer who deserved some attention.
I’ve read The Odyssey at least three times. However, I’ve never read it in verse form. And I found this form to be very challenging. I was certainly glad I knew the story already.
Essentially Odysseus finds himself and his crew on an island. They kill some sheep and seek shelter. But the shelter they seek is the home of a one-eyed giant Cyclops. The Cyclops murders much of his crew (I’m never sure how big his crew must be since so many of them are killed) in a most gruesome way.
Then Odysseus defeats the Cyclops in a horrifically painful manner and tricks the creature into thinking that No One did this to him.
It’s a pretty great story although the verse style is certainly cumbersome.
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