HOMEWARD TO ITHAKA

Though it's very loosely lashed together and no one's idea of rigorous, this latest Wibberley whimsy is that unusual thing, a literary replica--and, even more unusual, it's good fun. Bored by his classes, a Columbia professor of Comp. Lit. hanky-pankies with a young coed he calls Circe; before he knows it, he's been be-spelled into reveries of battles, knights, and chariots in pre-Christian Ireland. Superimposing The Odyssey upon the Celtic saga, The Tain, Wibberley makes the prof into Ulysses who, on his long journey home, has made a stop in Bronze Age Ireland and gotten involved in the bloody war in ancient Ulster. Guess who, then, ends up slaying the fearsomely strong boy of Irish myth, Cúchulainn. And then wakes up from his dream like Dorothy in Kansas. Only a craftsman as polished as Wibberley would exercise his whims so freely and unselfconsciously. Wanting ""a fantasy based on myths from two widely separated cultures,"" as he says in the Introduction, he's blithely gone ahead and made one, getting a chance in the bargain to write a spirited, horny, dithyrambic prose--adding up to the sort of romp that's easy to share.