Word: mason
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Smith, who has headed five presidential libraries, is a scholar-in-residence at George Mason University...
...exploring the source material’s hidden uncertainties, and exploiting their destabilizing potential, Mason both enlivens and enriches the original text. As a collection of stories, “The Lost Books of the Odyssey,” is an entertaining and enthralling read. Placed in dialogue with Homer’s original, it is a nimbly crafted testament to the power of storytelling...
...mostly the book circles around the craft of truth itself. Mason is a computer scientist by training, and codes and mazes pattern his stories. In one tale, Theseus, famed conqueror of the Minotaur, slays the beast only to wander forever in a labyrinth. In another, sirens seduce Odysseus not through their beautiful tunes, but through the promise of wisdom. “As their songs crescendoed I had the sudden conviction that... behind everything... was a subtle pattern, an order of the most compelling lucidity, but hidden from me, a code I could never crack,” the wily...
Critics have aptly compared Mason to the experimental novelist Italo Calvino; the looping path of “The Lost Books of The Odyssey” calls to mind the continual beginnings of Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler,” and the distorted views of Venice in “Invisible Cities” find their match in Mason’s ever-refracted portrait of Odysseus. Both authors leave the reader with the task of sorting through their sketches. Like Calvino, Mason trades in shadows...
Also like Calvino, Mason prefers puzzles to set truths. For that reason, his novel goes beyond a simple adaptation of a classic text. In his essay “Why Read the Classics?” Calvino once wrote, “A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much a sense of discovery as the first reading.” Mason’s reimagining takes such discovery to heart. He himself may be aware of the similarities between his and the Italian author’s work. Many of his plot twists recall Calvino?...