Ultimately “the endless tug-of-war between fathers and sons” dissipates through their shared experiences. When the seminar ends, the two decide to embark on a cruise titled “Retracing the Odyssey,” and Dan begins to see his father as others do - charming, knowledgeable - instead of contemptuous, argumentative, and emotionally walled-off. When Jay, an eighty-two-year-old man with tremendous intellectual curiosity, asks to sit in on Dan’s freshman seminar at Bard College, father and son both garner insights into their own relationship, which was always distant and difficult. Offering a trip through Homer’s epic text, Classics professor Daniel Mendelsohn interweaves the story of a son, Telemachus, and a father, Odysseus, with another son/father pair - Daniel and his father, Jay. If you loved The Odyssey in school - and even if you didn’t - this book is a winner.
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