I hate to admit it, but my Great Western Literary Experiment has come to a standstill. I got as far as reading the beginning of the Oresteia, and after weeks of making little to no progress on the book, I began to reevaluate my literary goals. I realized I lacked the discipline and ability to concentrate needed to proceed with this endeavor; therefore, I put ancient writings aside in favor of the kind of literature I love and never tire of - 20th-Century Southern writers such as Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and William Faulkner.
That's not to say I didn't learn a great deal from my evenings spent with the ancients, Homer in particular. Who would have thought that Western Literature as we know it began with an action movie? I am referring to The Iliad - jam-packed full of gory battle scenes and rippling heroes who, in true action-movie fashion, never seem to get hurt while scores of extras bite the dust all around them, The Iliad demonstrates that people have always enjoyed this form of entertainment (even in epic-poem format). At what point, then, did the stuff of action movies become divorced from what we consider "literature" or "art?" I find it fascinating that in the ancient world, the battlefield and the poet are intimately entwined.
Maybe I'll pick up where I left off at some point. For now, I need simply to get back into the habit of reading, and I am turning to the familiar voices of the American South for some much-needed motivation.
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