”A Little Iliad” by Daniel Mendelsohn

This episode is a reading of Daniel Mendelsohn’s essay,“A Little Iliad,” a review of the film Troy, an adaptation of the Iliad, from the Review’s June 24, 2004, issue. It is read by the countertenor and opera director Anthony Roth Costanzo. Among many other roles, Costanzohas performed as Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus and Akhnaten in Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, both at the Met Opera, and he won a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording in 2022 for the cast recording of Akhnaten. He is currently the director and president of Opera Philadelphia.  

Daniel Mendelsohn is the Editor-at-Large of The New York Review of Books and the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard. The paperback edition of his translation of Homer’s Odyssey was released in April by the University of Chicago Press.   

Last week’s episode was an interview with Mendelsohn on Homer’s Odyssey, both the film adaptation and his translation. You can read “A Little Iliad” and other essays by Mendelsohn with a subscription to The New York Review of Books, which, in addition to twenty print issues a year, gives you access to our full archive since 1963. 

Creators and Guests

Host

Jarrett Earnest

Jarrett Earnest has contributed essays to the New York Review of Books on artists ranging from Tom of Finland to Jack Whitten. He is the author of What it Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics (2018) and Valid Until Sunset (2023) and has edited several collections of criticism, including volumes of Dave Hickey and Peter Schjeldahl as well as artist's writings by Nayland Blake and Jesse Murry. His curatorial projects include the acclaimed 2019 exhibition "The Young and Evil" at David Zwirner gallery, New York.

What is Private Life: A New York Review Podcast?

Private Life is a podcast from The New York Review, hosted by contributor Jarrett Earnest. Each episode offers intimate, in-depth conversations with distinguished voices from across the literary landscape—about their lives, their work, and the ideas that shape both. Along the way, they revisit pieces from the The New York Review of Books's robust sixty-year archive (some episodes of the podcast will feature newly recorded readings of these classic essays) to situate arguments within contemporary culture. The show also includes discussions of titles from our book publishing arm, New York Review Books, featuring talks with translator Mark Polizzotti on Andre Breton's surrealist masterpiece Nadja and musician Richard Hell on the re-issue of his novel Godlike. Other early episodes find Joyce Carol Oates ruminating on true crime, while Darryl Pinckney opens up about the perils of memoir and his formative friendship with essayist Elizabeth Hardwick. 

Private Life is a personable, expansive invitation for longtime subscribers and a new generation of readers alike to connect with the past, present and future of The New York Review. 

You can access this text at https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/06/24/a-little-iliad/