Gilgamesh

October 15, 2004
What are paparazzi, CAT scans, hyperspace, and jelly roll doing in the world's oldest literary story? Nothing good, some may feel, especially if they don't take seriously Hines' stated intent "to recapture for the modern reader some of the vigor and excitement the original audience must have felt" for the third-millennium B.C.E. tale of the giant Gilgamesh, his friend Enkidu, their exploits, Enkidu's death, and Gilgamesh's quest for immortality and subsequent resignation to human limitations. For Hines, giving the story renewed impact means a total rewrite in punchy free verse that incorporates dialect passages and the odd neologism as well as modern jargon. The results are racy, flippant, and sometimes perverse, as when Hines completely elides the old poem's thousand-years-before-Genesis account of a worldwide flood. Apparently the flood episode grants more power to the gods than Hines can stomach, at least if he shares the opinion he gives the dying Enkidu: that his and Gilgamesh's story proves, however imperfectly, "that we are the gods." This is " Gilgamesh" for the New Age. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)