A lively exploration of ancient literature.
Enchanting, academic essays about translating the classics.
Balancing close readings of nuanced passages alongside celebrations of their modern translations, Wilson (classical studies/University of Pennsylvania; The Iliad, 2023, etc.) writes with the sparkling charisma of a favorite college professor and presents each deep dive with a finely tempered fusion of erudition and accessibility. “Language is never a neutral tool by which we represent the world: every word and phrase carries with it a tangle of cultural assumptions and connotations,” she writes and slyly incorporates contemporary touchstones into her analyses. In the essay “Slut-Shaming Helen of Troy,” Wilson explores misogynistic tropes and the Helen myth’s “focus on the proliferation of virtual, unreal images that suck people into obsessive desire and conflict.” Another essay probes the bawdier side of classics and connects the “lyrical flow” of Aristophanes to Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B. While discussing Edith Hamilton’s popular retelling of the Greek myths, Wilson moves quickly past Hamilton’s scholarly shortcomings and instead applauds her ability to “[fuse] a schtick about classics with something more nebulous and hard to achieve: a Personality.” Personality is where Wilson, too, finds great success. She not only imparts the wisdom of a well-read scholar but shows readers how easy it is to bask in these texts’ storied histories and revel in their slippery wordplay. She welcomes the unique visions of a swath of other translators and gracefully finds value in both their successes and misfires. The collection closes with a long essay about her own translations of Homer and the challenge of “shedding new light on a supposedly familiar original,” exemplified by her maligned use of the word “complicated” to describe Odysseus and his meandering adventures. “[J]ust as there are many ways to play a single score of music, many ways to paint the same landscape, and many ways to direct a play or deliver a speech,” Wilson reveals the multifaceted artistry of translation, rendered in an amalgam of both language and history.
A lively exploration of ancient literature.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781324099406
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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