Let Us Eat Cream-Cheese-Cucumber-Tomato-Sandwiches, On Rye-Bread

I love my students and my colleagues, and I love the discussions that are possible in the classroom and among scholars, in academic contexts. But I also love the fact that so many people beyond the academy are ready and eager to engage with literature, history, ideas and language. Over the past decade, I have done a great many events of various kinds for general, non-academic audiences, focused on ancient literature, history, philosophy and literary translation. I’ve repeatedly been impressed and moved by the depth of curiosity among people of all ages and from many different backgrounds. I love the energy and excitement in these gatherings. I’ve learned so much from these events, from audience questions and discussions. It’s been a source of great joy.

I have also repeatedly been frustrated that a small number of journalists seem to assume that “the general public” will be interested in such topics only if they are framed in the most simplistic ways. When my Odyssey translation was published, there was a lot of coverage that fixated on my gender, as if there was no possibility of people being interested in the actual poem or the interpretative stakes of translation, unless it was framed through the highly debatable lens of “yay, girl power”. When my Iliad translation was published, there was a new round of coverage fixating on the imagined “modernity” of a translation in regular iambic pentameter, as if readers were supposed to be unable to take an interest in an ancient poem unless it was presented as “modern”. In my experience, these assumptions are false. Humans are curious. We like learning new things.

In recent weeks, I have done a number of talks and events focused on my current book of essays, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea. Most of these have been wonderful experiences, and I’ve been very grateful to both my interlocutors and audiences for rich, enlightening conversations about ancient Greek and Roman literature, and the discontinuities between past and present. I’m always glad of opportunities to talk about ancient literature, history, language and translation, themes that I think are very important and don’t get enough airplay in our times, and I hope that some of these events will lead more readers to discover or re-discover ancient literature.

But in a few recent cases, when I’ve signed up supposedly to talk about these topics, journalists have insisted on asking me to comment, yet again, on the long-dead-horse of online “discourse” that briefly reared up surrounding my review of this summer’s Odyssey. These reporters have asked me to explain why “everyone” was ostensibly outraged about one of the negative reviews of one Hollywood movie. I don’t think it’s my job to explain other people’s feelings or responses. Certainly, nobody has to agree with anything I’ve written, including about this particular film. Difference of opinion can be the starting point for an interesting and enlightening conversation, and I’ve been glad to learn about many people spending many hours discussing both the film and my piece about it. But it’s reductive and implausible to think that “the public” will always be more interested in endless rehashing of reactions and yet more reactions to one film review than in any of the literary or historical topics that are the actual subjects of the book - even when “the public” have voluntarily turned up to hear about these literary and historical subjects. To me, this is related to the deeply patronizing notion that scholars and critics who care about “outreach” must be unremittingly positive about all popular culture, regardless of their actual views, for fear of offending “the public”. The public is made of sterner stuff.

This is a symptom of a larger and invidious tendency to equate any kind of criticism with either “hating” or “fangirling”, to try to slot everyone and everything into pre-packaged boxes, like so many sad, pale little supermarket apples - and to treat journalism and criticism as if they were necessarily subservient to big corporate endeavors, like Hollywood and Twitter. It is a tiny instance of a poisonous trend in media coverage, to be constantly reacting to lowest-common-denominator “takes” on the internet, rather than taking up the responsibility to reframe, investigate, listen, and educate.

In the great children’s classic, Bread and Jam for Frances, the eponymous protagonist, everyone’s favorite stubborn little badger, refuses for a time to eat the varied, interesting and nutritious meals provided by her mother, insisting instead that she will eat only bread-and-jam. So her parents test her resolve by offering her only bread-and-jam for every meal. For a while, it seems like a win to enjoy this mild, sweet food again and again. But the bland satisfactions of jam become cloying soon enough, and our heroine rejoins the family meals, beside her younger sister who is eager to practice with a green bean when she can. Things would have gone poorly if the family had instead decided, “Let us all eat only bread-and-jam forevermore, since there may be some who do not feel like venturing into the unfamiliar terrain of hard-boiled eggs sprinkled with celery salt”. I’d like to imagine that editors and journalists understand the need to mix up the cultural diet, sometimes in surprising or challenging ways, rather than choosing to cater exclusively to the limited, predictable whims of every internet phase.

If you read this, thank you for letting me get it off my chest. I’m done now, and I will try to look on the bright side. I am an extremely lucky person in many different ways, not least that I get to spend so much of my time reading, writing, and discussing literature and language with people who care about them, of whom there are many. I also know that this issue is fundamentally trivial. There are far worse things in the world to worry about.