The Iliad: Will it Join My Home Library?

       

        In my Film and Literature course, where we read books and then compare them to movies, we just finished reading Homer’s the Iliad. I was excited when I originally saw it on the books list for the course, because I knew it would eventually show up on the adult classics list that I work through in my spare time. Therefore, when it appears on my list, I will have already read it and can move onto the next one. Plus I enjoy it when my free-time reading and my required readings overlap.

After I read a book from my list, I take the time to review it to see if it fits my criteria for books that I want to eventually add to my future home library. There are only two criteria for a book to fit into my home library:

1.     Does the work make an insightful (philosophical) point?

2.     Is the book a good story?

Clearly, these are very subjective and not universal definitions for great books. However, I am not asking everyone to agree with me, but merely trying to find what books should belong in my home library.

Since I read all the time, I have arrived at the point where it doesn’t make sense for me to purchase books, unless I actually enjoy them, because I go through them so quickly. So I use these criteria to judge the books and find out if they will make it into my future home library. Naturally, if the work is something like Kant or Copernicus or Aristotle, then there won’t be a story. That’s not the point. Therefore, nonfiction works that fall under those categories need only meet criteria 1. However, the bar is then raised for what constitutes an insightful (philosophical) point. Contrastively, if the work is nonfiction and story based or fiction, then the emphasis is on criteria 2.

If your food looks pretty nice, but tastes terrible, then you still haven’t made good food. Same with a book it has to have at least a good storyline before it can try to do anything superfluously philosophical, otherwise it’s failed at the original crucial purpose. Obviously, books can have great deep meanings, but if the fiction book fails to have at least a good storyline behind it, then I don’t care how many people love it, it wont’ make it into my library.

Until now, I was thinking that the Iliad wouldn’t necessarily make it. Many pages could be boiled down to this guy killed this dude son of somebody by stabbing him in the chest with his bronze tipped spear in the (body part).  Additionally, there were swaths of the book where 10-20 men in a row would be killed in the same place. The longest trend was about five pages of warriors being stabbed in the right nipple. I’m not kidding. However, what changed my mind was the realization that the “Rage” that Homer mentioned on the first page wasn’t just referring to Achilles’s rage at Agamemnon for loosing Briseis. Instead it was also his rage at Patroclus’ death. That demonstrates great narrative planning on Homers point, and clearly the storyline of the Iliad is interesting enough to meet the second criteria. Therefore, the Iliad will eventually become part of my future home library. Is this process somewhat arbitrary? Yes, but unlike lesson plans where I will have to justify my reasoning much more thoroughly, I only have to justify my home library enough to please myself.


Image credit: Public Domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AmbrosianIliadPict20and21BattleScenes.jpg