Review of the Full Disclosure Iliad

Looking darkly upon Hector, Swift footed Achilles answered, “I cannot forgive you.  As there are no trustworthy oaths between men and lions, there can be no love between you and me.”

“I am done with this bullshit war.”

Both of the lines above are paraphrasing parts of the Iliad, and while I understand that the second is more in keeping with a modern retelling, using modern language and syntax, to me, it feels wrong.

The full disclosure Iliad is a bold undertaking, to rewrite the Iliad in such a way that you could make sense of all its various foibles, to explain the bits that defy common conceptions, and to point out the behind the scenes parts that are on the page but not clear.  The problem, again, for me, is that stories like this were never supposed to make sense, the siege of Troy lasted ten years.

Ten years.

Sat on a beach, hundred thousand men with a boats worth of food each, what did they do, send half their number out to fish each day and hope they didn’t all die of scurvy?

Of course they didn’t, and neither did the gods come down to lend a hand, but if you take one at face value, you have to take the other at the same, the gods provided the food of course, the gods did this, did that, all of it entertainment for the gods as they played their petty all too human squabbles behind the curtain of godhood.

This book is presented as a reimagined chapter of the Iliad (sometimes two merged into one) and then the writers notes regarding what had been written, particularly the bits that didn’t make sense, such as Helen of Troy hatching from an Egg.

I did like the explanations between the reimagined parts, I liked the way in which wry humour was inserted there, but when you read “I am done with this bullshit war”, it removed you from the heroic narrative somewhat.

And maybe that’s what was intended, but bringing something that was confusing when it was written and trying to have it make sense in modern terminology using modern language, seems to defeat the point of it.

It’s clear the author knows the material and has great affection for it, and reading from the preface, it’s also clear that he has frustrations about the parts that don’t make sense and the parts that he feels are missing, which he has then written in so that there’s a connection for the modern reader, but for me, it didn’t need the modernisation.