The Celestial Hunter

February 24, 2020
This thought-provoking eighth entry into an ongoing work on myth and history by publisher Calasso (The Marriage of Cadmon and Harmony) leisurely explores the idea of hunting as the key activity in the emergence of civilization. Moving from prehistory to the classical world, Calasso looks for the roots of modernity in ancient literature and myth and discusses the human relationship with animals and the divine. While some chapters retell memorable stories, such as Zeus’s last night on Earth, or analyze works including Plato’s Laws, most are loosely organized collections of digressions on themes of metamorphosis, imitation, sacrifice, and divinity. The text is laced with aphorisms and bold declarations, but its real strength lies in Calasso’s great facility with languages, especially ancient Greek, which aids his ability to do original research, and his ability to make connections over vast territory, for instance noting that people in Australia, China, Greece, India, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Surinam all saw “the exploits of a Celestial Hunter” in “the same segment of sky.” Though less thematically cohesive than other series entries, this philosophical tome will provide historians with much entertaining speculation on the story of humankind. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

Starred review from April 15, 2020
Calasso's latest epic journey into humanity's mythological substrate considers the hunter. In particular, Calasso is interested in the moment when humans changed from prey to predator, transforming our self-image and our relationship with nature while forging an enduring link between emancipatory progress and blood sacrifice. But Calasso is famously serpentine in his style, approaching his subject through oblique digressions, obscure anecdotes, and constant locomotion. And so his narrative of how humans imitated predatory animals and internalized the symbolism of the hunt covers familiar archetypes?Orion in the night sky, Artemis the pure and ruthless?but also roams beyond Olympus into Egyptian, Vedic, and Persian sources. Rare forays into the modern era include an invocation of Henry James and the suggestions that twenty-first-century massacres have come to replace ritual sacrifices. His tone is authoritative, so confident in the veracity of his intellectual synthesis that he verges on audacity; one may even detect the ghost of Nietzsche. It may be best to engage with this book almost like a novel, allowing its impressions and profundities to flow without worrying about verifiability.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)