Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who Is America's Homer?

plough.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 261 posts

Re: Who Is America's Homer?

#131

Post by jdw64 »

oliculipolicula wrote: post #117
jdw64 wrote: post #86

I think of Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick' as representing America.

How so? Serious question, hoping to see you make a point that will get downvoted because it's right :) Aside: I have been somewhat busy and maybe even too emotionally preoccupied with other stuff to help people here listen to their anger The teaching-by-jesting is a difficult calling and I don't practise enough! At least not in fields outside my main interests :) If you don't mind me asking, what are the topics that…

Homer's stories are essentially mythological. 'Huckleberry Finn,' on the other hand, feels more like satire than myth. But 'Moby-Dick' carries that mythic quality. Ahab is a whaling captain, but at the same time, he appears as a tragic king confronting a world he cannot understand or accept. And Moby Dick seems to symbolize both an animal and nature itself.

Homer's epics feature human heroes who converse with divine beings. 'Moby-Dick' doesn't have that, but the overall atmosphere is mystical enough that I see it that way.

The Pequod is both a commercial vessel and a representation of the American national system. The sea is described as a geographical space, yet also as a universe beyond human comprehension.

There's no question that Mark Twain is a great author representing America. But if I had to choose one mythic work in American literature that corresponds to Homer, I would choose Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick'.

Re: Who Is America's Homer?

#132

Post by wwind123 »

A side note: the article starts with "If England has Shakespeare, Spain has Cervantes, Italy has Dante, and Russia has Pushkin, then who do we have?" but does not mention China: usually Li Bai (李白) and Du Fu (杜甫) from Tang Dynasty (1300 years ago) are regarded the best poets in the history of China. Li Bai is nicknamed Immortal of Poetry (诗仙), while Du Fu is nicknamed the Saint of Poetry (诗圣). Most scholars like Du Fu better because his poems' use of all the connotative overtones, but most regular people like Li Bai better because his poems are easier to understand.

Re: Who Is America's Homer?

#133

Post by assimpleaspossi »

cgyvbunji wrote: post #125
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #8

I think it is somewhat weird that nobody put Twain in. I could also see someone suggesting Hemingway, although I don't buy it. Hart Crane at this point in time seems somewhat secondary, so that was surprising. The Tracy Chapman thing seemed seriously like a troll, I could definitely agree to a black Homer, but then I guess it would be Langston Hughes or James Baldwin as my choices. To suggest someone though who has t…

> I think it is somewhat weird that nobody put Twain in Edit: Lots of hate here. The question was why people didn't suggest Twain to be "America's Homer", and I answered the question: Twain is controversial, at least for some schools, and for someone such as CK, which should tell you something. Let's try not to shoot the messenger. If you didn't balk when you reached this line the first time you read the book, there…

And you're going to quote a guy accused of sexual misconduct? CK will never be a Homer. But bringing that quote up from a piece of literature, not just something he said, is being ridiculous.

Re: Who Is America's Homer?

#134

Post by danans »

mellosouls wrote: post #119

An odd question. America's "founding myths" are the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. These are the Holy Scriptures, and - like the Homeric ones - have multiple authors but lack the obscurity of ancient history to allow that latter fact to be subsumed into the story as a single, blind bard.

> the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.

> These are the Holy Scriptures, and - like the Homeric ones - have multiple authors but lack the obscurity of ancient history to allow that latter fact to be subsumed into the story as a single, blind bard.

Nonetheless that hasn't stopped us from almost deifying the founding fathers. If not for the fact that many of them were slaveowners, they'd be deified already. Clearly, US society hasn't advanced beyond deification of its leaders, whether past or present.

Also, although they involve Gods, the Iliad and Odyssey are not religious texts in the sense of the Bible. They were epic legendary poems, not scriptures.

Re: Who Is America's Homer?

#135

Post by morkalork »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #16

isn't it obviously steinbeck? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_of_Eden_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath (one of the best books i've ever read)

Steinbeck by far. The Grapes of Wrath is frighteningly relevant now even almost 100 years later..

Re: Who Is America's Homer?

#136

Post by oliculipolicula »

jdw64 wrote: post #131
oliculipolicula wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Serious question, hoping to see you make a point that will get downvoted because it's right :) Aside: I have been somewhat busy and maybe even too emotionally preoccupied with other stuff to help people here listen to their anger The teaching-by-jesting is a difficult calling and I don't practise enough! At least not in fields outside my main interests :) If you don't mind me asking, what are the topics that…

Homer's stories are essentially mythological. 'Huckleberry Finn,' on the other hand, feels more like satire than myth. But 'Moby-Dick' carries that mythic quality. Ahab is a whaling captain, but at the same time, he appears as a tragic king confronting a world he cannot understand or accept. And Moby Dick seems to symbolize both an animal and nature itself. Homer's epics feature human heroes who converse with divine…

Ah good points, in fact some points that deepen our understanding of Homer.

Main one you might have thought about is that the gods of Homer are also deeply flawed (habitually full of hubris themselves!).. I think it was Nietzsche who said that the gods wish they could be Achilles or Odysseus?

Now.. who are the conflicting partys in every Homeric arc? Often at least 2 gods..

(I have not thought about Moby Dick this way either, or the "Greek system" in those days.. palace economy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_economy

In The World of Odysseus he noted that most distribution was internal:[5]

  All the production work, the seeding and harvesting and milling and weaving, even the hunting and raiding, though carried on by individuals, was performed on behalf of the household as a whole ... and from the centre they were redistributed ...

)

Re: Who Is America's Homer?

#137

Post by wang_li »

George Gershwin for his musicals. George Lucas and/or Spielberg for Indiana Jones. I considered loughead for publishing Paul Bunyan or Jack London for the likes of Call of the Wild. Poe is a strong contender as is Dashiell Hammett.

Re: Who Is America's Homer?

#138

Post by [deleted] »

assimpleaspossi wrote: post #133
cgyvbunji wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it is somewhat weird that nobody put Twain in Edit: Lots of hate here. The question was why people didn't suggest Twain to be "America's Homer", and I answered the question: Twain is controversial, at least for some schools, and for someone such as CK, which should tell you something. Let's try not to shoot the messenger. If you didn't balk when you reached this line the first time you read the book, there…

And you're going to quote a guy accused of sexual misconduct? CK will never be a Homer. But bringing that quote up from a piece of literature, not just something he said, is being ridiculous.

[deleted]

Re: Who Is America's Homer?

#139

Post by bryanrasmussen »

cgyvbunji wrote: post #125
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #8

I think it is somewhat weird that nobody put Twain in. I could also see someone suggesting Hemingway, although I don't buy it. Hart Crane at this point in time seems somewhat secondary, so that was surprising. The Tracy Chapman thing seemed seriously like a troll, I could definitely agree to a black Homer, but then I guess it would be Langston Hughes or James Baldwin as my choices. To suggest someone though who has t…

> I think it is somewhat weird that nobody put Twain in Edit: Lots of hate here. The question was why people didn't suggest Twain to be "America's Homer", and I answered the question: Twain is controversial, at least for some schools, and for someone such as CK, which should tell you something. Let's try not to shoot the messenger. If you didn't balk when you reached this line the first time you read the book, there…

https://medium.com/luminasticity/huck-finn-one-of-the-greate...

"In the world of the book Huck Finn is not respected, although he comes close at times to it, contravening all the values of a society that should be considered corrupt by ours.

And in our world Huck Finn is not respectable and must be continually defended to keep from being totally thrown out of the literary society, because contravening the deep values of his corrupt society, he does have some of the surface mannerisms."

Re: Who Is America's Homer?

#140

Post by somenameforme »

assimpleaspossi wrote: post #133
cgyvbunji wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it is somewhat weird that nobody put Twain in Edit: Lots of hate here. The question was why people didn't suggest Twain to be "America's Homer", and I answered the question: Twain is controversial, at least for some schools, and for someone such as CK, which should tell you something. Let's try not to shoot the messenger. If you didn't balk when you reached this line the first time you read the book, there…

And you're going to quote a guy accused of sexual misconduct? CK will never be a Homer. But bringing that quote up from a piece of literature, not just something he said, is being ridiculous.

It's also amazingly ignorant. The entire point of Jim in Huck Finn is the extreme irony between superficiality and reality. Everybody in Huck Finn is horrible, including Huck himself, yet they mostly all paint themselves as the most honorable and just of people - and in most cases probably believe it.

The one exception is Jim who everybody just casually dismisses, yet he's the one truly good hearted and upstanding character in the entire book. It's a lesson about the difference between what people pretend to be like, and what they are really like. Which makes the critiques of the book, often focusing on pejoratives towards Jim, just so unbelievably ironic. It's the deterioration of thinking in society.

Post reply on HN