‘We recognise it in this very primal way’: Stephen Fry, Brie Larson, Chris Ofili and more on why we can’t get enough of Greek mythology; The Guardian, November 24, 2024

 Introduction by Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian; ‘We recognise it in this very primal way’: Stephen Fry, Brie Larson, Chris Ofili and more on why we can’t get enough of Greek mythology

"Greek myth is not a stable thing. There is no such thing as a canonical, “original” version of a Greek myth. The stories that remain to us – the material of classical plays and poetry, and of visual culture from pottery to pediments – are already elaborations and accretions. In the ancient Greek and Roman world, stories were adapted and remade to serve the needs of the moment. The Greek tragedians often took the germ of an idea from the Homeric epics, and built an entire plot from it. Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, for instance, is in dialogue with Homer’s Odyssey: both are stories of a warrior’s return from war, but with entirely different outcomes. Euripides’s subversive play Helen proposes that the entire Trojan war was fought not in the cause of a real woman, but of an illusory, fake version sent by the gods, while the “real” Helen of Troy sat out the siege in Egypt.

Seen in this light, as novelist Pat Barker points out below, the modern appetite for working with (and maybe sometimes against) Greek myth is a part of a long continuum, rather than an innovation...

Stephen Fry on Ithaka by CP Cavafy (1911), a poem inspired by The Odyssey

Author of Mythos, Heroes and Troy, a trilogy of books retelling the myths of ancient Greece

The Odyssey is the beginning of human modernity. Suddenly, the greatest qualities a warrior could have were cunning, intelligence and curiosity, but also a sense of home – Odysseus is constantly striving to get back to his wife and son. There was something new in that. This idea of “nostos” – of returning home to the hearth after your wanderings – has been very powerful in the Greek imagination ever since.

Early last century, there was a wonderful Greek poet living in Alexandria named Constantine Cavafy. I found out about him by reading EM Forster, who met Cavafy in Alexandria and recommended him to WH Auden and others. One of Cavafy’s greatest poems is about Ithaca, the island which Odysseus spends 10 years trying to get back to. The poem is about this journey, this yearning to find the place that we think of as home, but Cavafy tells us that it’s not worth anything. You must strive for it, he says, but you’ll find it isn’t the place itself that’s the destination, it’s the striving, it’s what you learn on the way. It’s the gorgeous things you find and the people you meet and the experiences you have. So you must aim for Ithaca and simultaneously know it’s not worth getting to, because it will have nothing to give you. That’s how the poem ends, in Edmund Keeley’s terrific translation: “Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey./ Without her you wouldn’t have set out./ She has nothing left to give you now.”

I think it’s a very brilliant and moving poem, even in translation (I’m sure if you were fluent in modern Greek it would be even more astonishing). It’s an example of what the Greek myths can give us in terms of retellings. All the JRR Tolkien books are nostos stories, stories of returns home – The Hobbit is subtitled There and Back Again. It is the most mythic, primal, elemental story that we have. As told to Killian Fox"

Fired Professor Shot 2 Men Outside Chappaqua Deli, Police Say; New York Times, 8/29/16

Jonah Engel Bromwich, New York Times; Fired Professor Shot 2 Men Outside Chappaqua Deli, Police Say:

"In October 2002, Mr. Chao joined Mount Sinai as a research assistant professor. He stayed at Mount Sinai until May 2009, when he received a letter of termination from Dr. Charney for “research misconduct,” according to a lawsuit that Mr. Chao filed against the hospital and Dr. Charney, among other parties, in 2010. He went through an appeals process, and was officially terminated in March 2010.

“In informing his colleagues of his termination, Mount Sinai/MSSM stated that Dr. Chao had been ‘fired for data fraud,’” the lawsuit said. The case was dismissed, and Mr. Chao lost on appeal."

Peter Thiel’s Self-Serving New York Times Column; The Atlantic, 8/16/16

Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic; Peter Thiel’s Self-Serving New York Times Column:

"Peter Thiel has no regrets about pouring millions of dollars of his own money into the legal fight that bankrupted Gawker Media. “I am proud to have contributed financial support,” Thiel wrote in The New York Times on Monday, “… and I would gladly support someone else in the same position.”...

“The press is too important to let its role be undermined by those who would search for clicks at the cost of the profession’s reputation,” Thiel wrote for the Times this week. What he seems not to understand is that freedom of the press means that editorial decisions are made in newsrooms, not by venture capitalists or presidential candidates hellbent on revenge. Thiel could have “fought speech with speech,” instead of with $10 million, Marcus Wohlsen wrote for Wired in June. “In seeking to destroy Gawker, Thiel showed that what matters to him isn’t freedom but the raw exercise of power.”

And in writing for the Times this week, Thiel showed that he’s not as concerned with protecting privacy as he is with serving up a narrative that he believes justifies his actions."

Bankrupting Gawker over a grudge isn't justice. It's censorship; Guardian, 6/10/16

Nicky Woolf, Guardian; Bankrupting Gawker over a grudge isn't justice. It's censorship:

"But Hogan’s is not the only lawsuit against Gawker that Thiel has been secretly backing.

He has a genuine grievance. But the fact that an unaccountable billionaire has been able to weaponize his wealth, in absolute secrecy, to game the American legal system using puppet claimants to turn thumbscrews on reporters and media companies – do so repeatedly, backing suit after suit: that is something which should terrify us all. Not just fans of Gawker. Not just journalists. All of us.

It is the media’s job to hold the powerful to account. Gawker and its other sites – Gizmodo, Jezebel and so on – are an important part of that landscape. Just last month, it was Gizmodo who spoke to newsfeed curators at Facebook – a company for which Thiel was the first outside investor – and revealed the human hands behind the supposedly algorithmic trending topics feed."