Literary controversy of the week
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As you probably know, Emily Wilson wrote a critical review of Christopher Nolan's Odyssey movie, and Joyce Carol Oates posted a negative evaluation of Wilson's review, among lots of other (mass and social) media coverage.
My favorite so far is today's SMBC:
The mouseover title: "I can barely enjoy Amleth anymore."
The aftercomic:
Wikpedia tells us that Amleth was
a medieval Scandinavian legend, the direct inspiration of the character of Prince Hamlet, the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The chief authority for the legend of Amleth is Saxo Grammaticus, who devotes to it parts of the third and fourth books of his Gesta Danorum, completed at the beginning of the 13th century.
Disputational amusements aside, I mostly agree with Wilson's discussion, though I haven't seen the movie yet.
And for a more linguistic take, see Taylor Jones' discussion of πολύτροπον:
Update — An interesting discussion of the film's psycho-social dimensions is here, and Yiyang Zhuge's interview with Christopher Nolan is here.
Jonathan Lundell said,
July 30, 2026 @ 9:57 am
Wilson’s is the best take on the movie that I’ve read. Oates’s suggestion that EM oughtn’t bite the hand that feeds her is … I’m searching for a word. Or words. Beneath contempt? Something like that. Wilson seems to have made a conscious effort, as she should have, to set aside those considerations, both Nolan’s use of her translation, and the increased sales of her books. Good on her.
Of course Nolan can make any movie he cares to, and it can be true at the same time that it’s an entertaining movie and that EW is right about it.
Ryan said,
July 30, 2026 @ 1:50 pm
That is so not Oates' suggestion that I question whether you even managed to read the entirety of Oates 150-word tweet. In fact, Oates subtly (but I think accurately) suggests that Wilson is not acting in good faith. And acting in bad faith precisely in order to create controversy that will help her sell books.
Jonathan Smith said,
July 30, 2026 @ 3:02 pm
Oates says Wilson was not "collegial" despite having "benefited enormously from Nolan's film." So Jonathan Lundell's characterization is not unreasonable.
"Assume good faith" is for Wikipedia edits; Wilson disliked the movie and said so (because it has "nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war [etc., etc., it] lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal.") So what, she read the book first, it happens.
Ross Presser said,
July 30, 2026 @ 4:51 pm
Is the 150 word tweet the entirety of what Oates has said about Wilson's essay? I do not have an X account so it's difficult for me to track the discussion.
Stephen Goranson said,
July 30, 2026 @ 5:11 pm
Since I have not yet seen the movie, I would hesitate to agree, even mostly, with her characterization, plausible though it may well be.
wgj said,
July 30, 2026 @ 11:48 pm
Wilson's screed is a self-indulging "get off my lawn" rant. Everyone is entitled to such an indulgence – and publish it on their personal blog. But to do so in the LRB is indeed an act of performative sabotage, because the heavily subjective nature of her arguments, not to mention the abusive, smug and show-off tone of her diatribe makes it impossible to be of any service to the public debate (assuming that she even intends to have one).
RP said,
July 31, 2026 @ 4:22 am
Anyone particularly interested in the Wilson review might like this discussion from Slate. It makes some interesting points about what may or may not be fair in Wilson’s commentary.
https://slate.com/culture/2026/07/the-odyssey-christopher-nolan-emily-wilson-review-critique-translation-lrb.html
Stephen Goranson said,
July 31, 2026 @ 8:45 am
NYT coverage:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/arts/the-odyssey-emily-wilson-christopher-nolan.html?unlocked_article_code=1.11A._CwA.Z33CcfpW51tK&smid=url-share
Yves Rehbein said,
July 31, 2026 @ 2:47 pm
I did not see anything wrong in the review. You have to grant that it is the aim of a subject matter expert to argue about expertise albeit subjectively.
Many people probably don't realize how much research goes into a translation of such a monstrous piece, be it onto the silver screen or into metric English. It seems to me that criticism is leveled fairly in different domains in proportion to how much can be said while focusing on the target.
Stephen Goranson said,
July 31, 2026 @ 5:52 pm
Daniel Mendelsohn's take in NY Review of Books is more mixed than Emily Wilson's.
Mary Beard said the film is missing the original's "elusive sexiness."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2026/jul/20/the-odyssey-nolan–mary-beard-stateside-podcast
David Marjanović said,
August 1, 2026 @ 3:46 am
Lots more discussion here, with links to several other reviews (…most of them in English) and further discussion of some of them.
David Morris said,
August 1, 2026 @ 4:33 am
I would suggest 'a man of many stories', playing on 'trope' as 'a story-telling device' as well as story (a tale) and storey (a level of a building). A man of tales on so many levels.
KevinM said,
August 1, 2026 @ 9:59 am
She renders polytropos as "a complicated man". Am I the only one who can't stop thinking of the theme from Shaft?
Yves Rehbein said,
August 1, 2026 @ 2:22 pm
@David Morris, the least I can say is as a rhyme on ἔννεπε (Ándra moi énnepe Moûsa polútropon) it makes sense to think of 'trope' as 'a story-telling device'. For English, see under winged words (épea pteróenta) and epos ("something spoken: speech, story, song" [WT: ἔπος]).
I want to argue somehow that polytropon may be compared to Polydeuces, one of the Dioscuri, but my argument is hopefully incomplete.
@KevinM, "… no one understands him but his woman" — right on the money, if Moûsa polútropon shows chiastic concord.
languagehat said,
August 2, 2026 @ 6:56 am
I mostly agree with Wilson's discussion, though I haven't seen the movie yet.
I can't even begin to understand how you can agree with a review of a movie you haven't seen. I am also boggled by the apparently large number of people who care so much about the fidelity of a movie to its source when that source happens to be Homer (which almost all of the complainers have read only in translation, if at all; doesn't that bother them if they're so concerned about fidelity?). And I entirely agree with wgj regarding Wilson's screed; here's Cole Haddon's response, which I also agree with. If you want a review by an actual classicist. here's a good one.
It's a good movie, if you actually care about movies more than showing off your culture.
Philip Taylor said,
August 2, 2026 @ 10:13 am
"Am I the only one who can't stop thinking of the theme from Shaft ?". well, you may be, if I am typical of those whom you are addressing, since I have no idea what the theme from Shaft is (or for that matter, what Shaft is, although I think it may have been a film from fifty years ago or thereabouts). But would I be correct in thinking that you are not referring to the theme music from Shaft (about which I also know nothing) but rather to the theme underlying the story line ?
Andrew Usher said,
August 2, 2026 @ 4:24 pm
Philip Taylor:
I have also no idea but am sure he meant the theme music. When we say 'the theme from' some production, that is almost always meant; as if we did want to use 'theme' in the literary meaning we'd surely say 'the theme of …' instead.
[I see the post you replied to has been removed, but as yours hasn't, mine should not be either.]
Now, about all I can say coherently about the subject of the thread is that Emily Wilson's translation, no matter how much work she invested, does not give her ownership of the story (and I think that's the fundamental attitude people are perceiving in her piece) and others have no less right than her to interpret the source material, as it has always been interpreted.
However, criticism of the film (though it will have no effect on its box-office success) is not entirely out of bounds, and the allegation that Nolan was so unfaithful to the source material as to constitute a travesty is not in itself absurd. He has the right to make his points, but others have the right to criticise him for it, especially if it seems he's stretched the story beyond recognition to do so. Finally I must note that 'classicists' are very likely not a homogeneous group on this matter, and that those that speak out in public on it not likely a representative sample.
JPL said,
August 2, 2026 @ 5:58 pm
Philip:
The musical theme unfolds behind the opening credits and an overhead view of the main character to be, striding across the streets of New York City, with the rapid sixteenth-notes of the ride cymbal. with hi-hat accents, soon followed by the newly fashionable wah-wah sixteenth-notes of an electric guitar, and the horns, then the trio of ascending triplets from the bass, hitting the bottom note at the end of the second bar, all of that laid down by what any hip youth from that era would recognize as the Bar-Kays, a funk group from Memphis who had just burst onto the scene in no uncertain terms. After that extended intro the Isaac Hayes vocal begins by asking the questions all inquisitive minds wanted to know, "Who's that cat?". The lyrics finally summarize with, "He's a complicated man, but no one understands him but his woman." By that point the youth of the era knew they were in good hands. This was going to be the quintessence of cool, and the film didn't disappoint. I don't recall the character being as uxorious as Ulysses, but the line added to the mystery of his inner life. The theme of the film, in addition to the usual themes of the mystery genre, was, what kind of a guy is this? For anyone who had seen the film it would be a memorable line. I would wager five quid you would have liked it back in those days; I don't know about now. There were a lot of good films in the seventies; this was not a "blockbuster", far from it. (I can't say the same for the sequels.) I wonder if "Ulysses" had a similar effect on the youth back in the days when Homer told it. The New York City of the early seventies was a wild and strange world. (Not comparing the two as works of art.)
JPL said,
August 2, 2026 @ 7:14 pm
I meant "Odysseus" above; I don't know why the Latin version came out.
David Marjanović said,
August 3, 2026 @ 5:50 am
It's still here.
Andrew Usher said,
August 3, 2026 @ 5:38 pm
Yes, I don't know why I missed it, if I did.
JPL:
If we're being picky, you rather meant 'the Odyssey' the second time, and the sentence
[blockquote]The New York City of the early seventies was a wild and strange world. (Not comparing the two as works of art.)[/blockquote]
suggests, or at least suggest to me initially, that "the New York City of the early seventies" was being considered as a work of art!
I suppose it might be redundant to say this, but I may as well state, again to the original post, that beyond humor value the comparison to Shakespeare is silly: the story of Hamlet was and is obscure apart from his adaptation, which has stood the test of time as the only version people know; the Odyssey is not obscure at all, and I quite doubt that either Wilson's poem or Nolan's film will replace the original after the same lapse of time.
JPL said,
August 3, 2026 @ 6:46 pm
Andrew:
Thanks for acting as my editor! I noticed those things too, when I read the post over a little while later. The writing was getting a little loose by the time I got to the afterthoughts. (The main part was an image that was evoked as a whole in response to Philip's post, and I just typed it (the expression of it) into the little box pretty much without pause. Then I had to justify why I should post that.) Looking at it later, I realized that I really should have been focusing the character in that sentence, not the work, since Shaft was all about the character, and The Odyssey is an epic (in the classical, as opposed to the blockbuster sense). The last sentence I wrote was the one about "strange New York City"; I don't know how it got inserted before the parenthetical. One could, I suppose, compare early 70s NYC with ancient Greece wrt remote strangeness. I guess I was not in the mood for rereading just then. Oh, I also wanted to change "from Memphis" to "out of Memphis". That's why we revise.
Julian said,
August 3, 2026 @ 7:02 pm
@languagehat
I'll leave others to argue about how true it is to the original and whether that matters.**
For me?
Too long, too melodramatic, too much irritating overloud music (just like Oppenheimer).
Too much mumbling and whispering. Too many slow-moving deep and meaningful conversations with too much laughably wooden, on-the-nose dialogue.
A ridiculously overegged climactic fight scene.
No light and shade. Not a single smile or laugh in the entire 2 3/4 hours (the villainous laughter of the carousing suitors doesn't count).
Stars Wars meets Lord of the Rings meets Bruce Lee. Agamemnon as Darth Vader. Laestrygonians as storm troopers.
I accept that it was foolish to expect anything different. The American blockbuster doesn't do subtlety or nuance.
Your mileage may vary.
** proviso: I'm mystified by why the adaptor left out what are arguably the most amusing, moving and memorable scenes in the book: Odysseus's repartee with the cyclops; meeting his mother in the underworld; meeting Nausicaa; and his final recognition scene with Penelope referring to the bed.
Josh R. said,
August 3, 2026 @ 7:42 pm
I am an amateur Beowulfian, who took the trouble to learn Old English almost purely for the purpose of reading the Beowulf poem in the original language. From that perspective, the discussion of Nolan's Odyssey, and in particular the weight (both positive and negative) given to Emily Wilson's review, is truly bewildering. Although, admittedly, not all that surprising given the trend of *everything* getting sucked into the damn culture war.
The Beowulf poem is rich in theme, with weighty and poignant things to say about the human condition, and rich in composition. To quote Tolkien in his influential lecture on the poem, "When new Beowulf was already antiquarian, in a good sense, and it now produces a singular effect. For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote."
There have been a number of adaptations of the poem, and *none* of them even try to get at the themes of the original poem. John Gardner's novel "Grendel" inverts the story, making Grendel the protagonist, in order to say the things that Gardner wants to say. The 1999 film "Beowulf" jettisons the poem's themes entirely to make a sci-fi adventure story. The 2005 film Beowulf & Grendel at least makes a game attempt at some of the themes of the poem (the tragedy of cycles of revenge), but cuts off the last half of the poem to do so. The 2007 Robert Zemeckis film, "Beowulf", more or less keeps the basic narrative structure of the poem, but radically alters the characters to make its own cynical points about the nature of heroism.
I have long accepted that no one is interested in making a faithful cinematic adaptation of the poem. The poem exists, saying the things it wants to say, and adapters really just want to utilize it to say the things they want to say. Zemeckis's Beowulf was a major release in 2007, but no one cared what Robert Fulk or Tom Shippey had to say about it. Heck, no one really cared how faithful of an adaptation it was in the first place, other than some critics comparing it to what they remembered from reading Beowulf in high school.
So I find myself wondering: why does anyone suddenly care about Nolan's fidelity to the narrative or themes of Homer's poem? Why is Emily Wilson being asked to review a movie in the London Review of Books? And make no mistake, I would be very interested in hearing her discuss, as a scholar of the poem, some of the differences between the poem and the movie, treating each as its own expression of art. I am entirely uninterested in an evaluation of the movie by its fidelity to Homer. That has never been a criterion by which derivative artistic works have been judged.
wgj said,
August 4, 2026 @ 6:25 am
@Josh: It's very simple: People don't (and shouldn't) really care about fidelity to classics. But Ms. Wilson does (for professional, albeit misguided reasons), and people care about what she thinks (for cultural war reasons).
Yves Rehbein said,
August 4, 2026 @ 11:31 am
I can't even begin to understand how you can agree with a review of a movie you haven't seen.
First, read the review to guide your decision whether to watch the movie. Then don't watch the movie. That's easy.
Andrew Usher said,
August 4, 2026 @ 7:43 pm
Josh R. said:
That [fidelity] has never been a criterion by which derivative artistic works have been judged.</quote.
That seems very much an overstatement, surely it has never been the only criterion, but it's hardly been just invented. Yes, the continual bringing in of culture-war issues where they perhaps shouldn't belong bothers me, too, but I don't see that as directly relevant.
What do you mean by "derivative artistic works"? If you mean 'works that just borrow some old story to base a new work on', then yeah, and that's basically what Shakespeare did, but it's less overtly acceptable today. But taking a pretty familiar story into a new medium seems at least arguably a different thing, and more like a translation – where one has a right to expect fidelity in spirit if not in detail (as the written and cinematic forms don't lend themselves to expressing exactly the same detail – that's exactly why both can be valuable even if they tell 'the same' story).
In any case I do remember that fidelity to the original has been used in reviews of movie adaptations for as long as I know; it's not primarily a culture-war thing, thought like anything else it can be used for that purpose.
JPL:
I did of course understand you rather quickly, and there's no need for sarcasm. I just thought it amusing that you corrected yourself quickly on what most people would not find an error (the name of Odysseus/Ulysses) while ignoring what clearly was, as well as your confusing, perhaps mangled, last sentence.
JPL said,
August 4, 2026 @ 9:05 pm
Andrew:
I hope I didn't unintentionally express any sarcasm. I was genuinely pleased that you critiqued my prose, especially since it shows you actually read it with care (and especially since I had noticed precisely that problem when I made the correction, and it bothered me that I didn't complete it). So you were rightly amused. Not a problem with me. Don't hesitate to keep on doing it. So what about "out of Memphis"?
Josh R. said,
August 4, 2026 @ 11:45 pm
Andrew Usher asked:
What do you mean by "derivative artistic works"?
I mean any artistic work that is derived from a previous work, but is its own thing. Fidelity to the poem was not a criterion by which Gardner's "Grendel" was judged; in fact, it was praised precisely for its *infidelity*. Fidelity to the poem was not part of the discussion about the 1997 Beowulf, Beowulf & Grendel, or Zemeckis's Beowulf. These were all judged by their merits as movies, telling the stories they wanted to tell. The 2004 Troy film was not judged by its fidelity to either Virgil or Homer. O Brother, Where Art Thou? did not have to answer questions about its fidelity to Homer's Odýsseia.
The list goes on and on. Atkinson's The Natural does great violence to Bernard Malamud's story, but as near as I can see, no one cares. Stephen King hates Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining for its infidelity to the narrative and themes of his book, and yet the film remains a classic.
I understand the impulse for *fans* of a story to hope for a faithful adaptation; a "translation" from page-to-screen, if you will. I would love to see a well-made cinematic presentation of Beowulf that was period accurate in design, that told the story and themes of the poem. But I'm not holding my breath. Filmmakers are creatives in their own right, and generally do not want to tell someone else's story. They want to tell their own story, even if it is inspired by or otherwise derived from a previous one. To date, their right to do so was taken as a matter of fact, and the results have been judged on the success of their execution.
Andrew Usher said,
August 5, 2026 @ 7:54 am
You are implying that never before has fidelity to the original been brought up as a criticism toward any movie, which I find absurd and you provide no good evidence for. Ignoring that and changing the subject to only favorable reviews (which is still surely too strong a claim) shows that you're probably not arguing in good faith. For whatever reason, it's more important to you that Hollywood not be questioned.
JPL:
Fine. But that one's easy, and you could have looked it up yourself: "out of Memphis" in that case is just a more informal equivalent to "from Memphis". I don't think I'd ever write the "out of" form, and am not sure I'd say it naturally, either.