Over the past several months, many writers—prominent classicists among them—have penned reviews of The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. Anticipating this film release, too, the political theorist Patrick Deneen recently published American Odyssey, a book that sees in Homer’s pages several “honorary Americans” who reflect, in Deneen’s view, a kind of spiritual and moral “homelessness” that is a constitutive part of modern American life.
I had the opportunity to review Deneen’s book for Commonweal, where I consider the limitations of looking for one’s own national character in a timeless work like Homer’s Odyssey:
In my view, part of what makes a book like the Odyssey or Faust a great one is its ability to resonate deeply with all sorts of people—not only those of one nationality. Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is itself a great book because it is not just about either democracy or America. This is not my own radical interpretation. Tocqueville insists that, despite its title, his magnum opus is interested in matters well beyond the Atlantic seaboard: “In America I saw more than America.” Elsewhere, he considers the possibility that, as the passions for liberty and equality spread, in “all corners of the world we find the same ways of acting, thinking, and feeling.” Anecdotally, dozens of my own international students have attested to Tocqueville’s relevance to their own non-American upbringing—evidence not just of American soft power but also of Tocqueville’s keen insights into modernity. If we can gaze into a great book, whether Tocqueville’s or Homer’s, and see our own national reflection, we should consider that citizens of other nations can do the same.
You can read the rest of my essay over at Commonweal.