Hearing Homer's Song

February 15, 2021
The story of a classics scholar who decisively changed views of Homer's artistry. Drawing on considerable archival sources, Kanigel recounts in thorough, engaging detail the life of Milman Parry (1902-1935), a Harvard classics professor whose investigation of Homer's works proved groundbreaking. Because Parry was hard to know--colleagues recall the "impermeable steadfastness" of a man who shared little with anyone--Kanigel portrays him largely through the work that consumed him. Analyzing Homer's epic poems for patterns of words and phrases, Parry argued that they were "born in song and speech," not written but handed down orally. Rather than taking up the question of authorship--whether the Iliad and Odyssey were created by one person or several--Parry believed that they were part of a tradition that "placed scant premiums on invention or originality." Often performed by illiterate singers, they were "forever altered in performance," responding to listeners' expectations about style and language. Kanigel chronicles Parry's youth in Oakland, California; education at Berkeley, where he was influenced by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, among others; and completion of doctoral studies at the Sorbonne, where his thesis, published in 1928, "built a new intellectual edifice" and, through the efforts of his student Albert Lord, created the new discipline of oral studies. Beginning in 1933, Parry undertook extensive visits to Yugoslavia to find and record modern-day epic singers, returning with more than 1,000 recorded discs. While still an undergraduate, Parry married a fellow student after she became pregnant, but she was hardly a soul mate, and Kanigel uncovers evidence of her volatile personality and rage about her husband's alleged infidelities. The quality of their marriage looms over the circumstances of Parry's death: While he and his wife were in a Los Angeles hotel, he died of a gunshot wound. Ruled an accident, some family members--their daughter, for one--suspected that his wife killed him. As in previous books, Kanigel's skill as a biographer is on full display, though general readers may get lost in some of the technical analysis. A vivid chronicle of intellectual passion.

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March 1, 2021

Who was Homer? This centuries-old question may be best answered by asking, Who was Milman Parry? Kanigel (Eyes on the Street) takes a deep dive into the life of the classical scholar, who was the first to officially posit that Homer was not a single individual but many people who passed down great epics from generation to generation. Parry, born to working-class parents in Oakland in 1902, became enamored with the works of Homer as an undergraduate at Berkeley. Throughout the narrative, Kanigel doesn't neglect the struggles and frustrations of Parry's wife Marian, who tends to their two small children while her husband pursues his scholarly passions. The author makes it clear that the marriage was strained, mirroring the disconnect between Odysseus and Penelope in the best-known of the Homeric tales. This friction hovers like a dark shadow throughout, and Kanigel's revelation that Marian has been considered a suspect in her husband's mysterious death in 1935 creates an underlying quiver of suspense. VERDICT An engaging, thoroughly researched biography of a fascinating figure. Though some of the details surrounding Parry's documentation techniques can feel a bit tedious at times, Kanigel has given readers a thoughtful look at a man whose theories have helped us to better understand the ancient world.--Megan Duffy, Glen Ridge P.L., NJ

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2021
More than 2,500 years after the mystery named Homer passed from the earth, the American classicist Milman Parry found Homer's reincarnation in Avdo Međedovic, an illiterate Yugoslavian singer. Readers join the young Parry as he ventures into Balkan mountains traversed by barely passable roads, sustained by the unquenchable conviction that the songs of unlettered Balkan lyricists called guslari that he is collecting with rudimentary equipment will validate his revolutionary theory about how the ancient Greek bard forged The Iliad and The Odyssey. In the oral narratives Međedovic spins out as song, Parry finds compelling evidence for that theory. Unfortunately, before Parry could deliver his hard-won evidence to the academic world, he died, victim of a tragic gun accident. With penetrating insight and humanizing empathy, Kanigel recounts the labors of Parry's traveling companion, Albert Lord, as he preserves, extends, and promulgates the epoch-making discovery of his now-departed mentor. Readers see how, through Lord, Parry's breakthrough ultimately reorients not only classical studies, but also other fields that study works shaped by oral creativity--including Old English poems, medieval Spanish epics, and modern African American folk sermons. Scholars will appreciate the technical aspects of Parry and Lord's accomplishment as "literary archaeologists," but readers of all sorts will value the personal drama.

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Starred review from April 19, 2021
In this gripping biography, Kanigel (On an Irish Island) offers a sterling portrait of American poetry scholar Milman Parry (1902–1935) and his “big idea” that the Iliad and Odyssey were the products of generations of pre-literate “singers.” This idea drove Parry to pursue a doctorate at the Sorbonne, and while in Paris, he was advised by a fellow scholar to do field work in the Balkans. Parry did, seeking in the performances of Serbian epic singers clues about the Homeric tradition. Kanigel traces the influence of Parry’s work, which caused a fundamental change in how epic poetry was understood once Parry proved Homer’s works and written epics were “different animals altogether.” On the personal front, Kanigel delivers a fascinating account of Parry’s marriage and the mysterious circumstances around his death by gunshot shortly after his return from Yugoslavia (a handgun in his bag accidentally fired, though Kanigel also considers theories that it was suicide or that his wife shot him). Expertly weaving the personal and the academic, Kanigel movingly notes that Parry’s fixation on his theory and his inexorable work ethic drove a wedge between him and his wife. Meticulously researched and full of fascinating detail, this is a remarkable account.