The Universe, the Gods, and Men : Ancient Greek Myths Told by Jean-Pierre Vernant

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Summary: Poetic account of the myths
Review: I almost didn't buy this book because of the low customer reviews, but then I used the "look inside" feature and liked what I saw. I did order the book and I'm very glad I did. I teach creative writing at the college level and will recommend this book to my students. I find the tellings to be very clear and also very poetic. As a writer, I turn to myths to help me find my own stories--this book, I know, will pull many stories out of my unconscious, where they now are hidden "in the depths of the Earth; the void." I also find the author's introduction informative and useful in explaining why myths are important. I love this book.

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Summary: Greek mythology stripped of all its drama and excitement
Review: This slim book reduces Greek mythology to its barest essentials. Vernant starts with the creation stories; skims through the "clash of the titans," Prometheus and Pandora, the Trojan War, Odysseus, Dionysus, Oedipus; and ends quite abruptly with Perseus and Medusa--all in 180 sparse pages. Along the way, the author strips these stories of all their depth, drama, and momentum. Entire battle scenes and plot twists are reduced to single sentences. His effort to make Greek mythology simple is unforgivably simplistic; all the excitement is thoroughly excised. Vernant has managed to achieve something I would have thought impossible: he has made Greek mythology dreadfully boring.

It's never really quite clear for whom this book was written. Much of the writing (or at least its translation) reads like excerpts from an elementary school primer. Instead of proper transitional devices, sentences repeatedly begin with "So." "So now the war of the gods is over." "And so they sail on, the fleet much reduced." "So then: Athena and Hermes help the boy with the feat he must accomplish." One-dimensional answers follow condescending questions: "How does Prometheus do it? The way it is routinely done in Greek sacrifice." "Who is Helen? She is herself the fruit of the gods' intrusions into the human world." "What does the ingenious captain do? He has got himself some beeswax." Why does Vernant write like this? I haven't a clue.

Although Vernant came up with the idea for this book when he told Greek myths as bedtime stories to his grandson, this book can't possibly be intended for children or even adolescents: these skeletal stories would enchant no one, and there isn't enough background for those unfamiliar with Greek myths to make any sense of what remains. Furthermore, I can't imagine that children would understand his reference to "a 1968-style rebellion on Olympus" or that they would care how Professor Louis Gernet sees Dionysus as "the figure of the other" or how Marcel Detienne views him as "an epidemic god." At the same time, older readers looking for new insights into Greek mythology will surely be disappointed; Vernant's analysis never dips below the surface. On Pandora: "Woman combines the vileness of human life together with its divine aspect." On Achilles: "In the full flesh of combat, of youth, the manly strengths of bravura and energy and youthful grace intact will thus never know the decrepitude of old age." On Oedipus: "In any city where there are women and men, there is a necessary opposition and a necessary entanglement of combat and marriage." (As opposed to those many cities where there are only women or only men?)

The final insult to the reader is the book's 20-page appendix, which lists a motley assortment of Greek gods and heroes. The entries nearly always omit the importance of each character to the mythical tradition and focus overwhelmingly on family relations (which would more clearly and succintly served by a genealogical chart). Thus, Echion is "one of the five Spartoi; husband of Agave, father of Pentheus." Agave is "daughter of Cadmus and mother of Pentheus." Pentheus is "grandson of Cadmus on his mother's, Agave's side, and son of Echion." Are you dizzy yet?

In sum, readers interested in an introduction to Greek mythology would profit far more from Thomas Bulfinch's "The Age of Fable," Edith Hamilton's "Mythology," or, as a reference work, Robert Graves's "The Greek Myths."

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Summary: The only book of its kind for children and Greek mythology
Review: What the previous reviewer seems to have misunderstood is Vernant's point: that this is a book of stories to be told to one's children. Thus, a dialogue naturally begins when the child asks a question like "who is that?" Vernant presupposes only one thing: that the adult who is reading the story will fill in the details regarding the Greek myths as he or she wishes, or is asked questions about. He presupposes that the adult is already familiar with the myths, and is introducing them for the first time to his or her child. A parent obviously cannot read Bulfinch's Mythology to a child, it would be ludicrous, and so Vernant has produced a book that can be read to children for the first time, and one which relies on the parent's knowledge to fill in whatever elements that he or she desires to, or is asked to say more about. In short, it is a book for children that presupposes that the adult knows his or her Greek mythology. There is quite simply no other book for children that introduces them to the world of Greek mythology. That it presumes that the parent reading it knows more than the child does and also more than what is in the book should not come as a shock. What Vernant accomplishes here for the first time is to give children their first access to what are otherwise very complicated stories, and to let us fill in the gaps as they come up.