It’s an obsession that’s stayed with me into adult life. I’ve always been interested in Greek and Latin literature. I’m excited by the ways those traditions show how old our concerns are. If you read Livy, for instance, you find that almost everything that’s said in American politics had probably said by the Romans, too: everything from concerns about men not being manly enough anymore to debates about the kinds of things the founding fathers cared about. With the Odyssey, it’s possible to see how many of the stories we still tell exist in ancient texts—they’re archetypal. There are things that human beings like to talk about, and always have, and a quest is one of them.

For me, the Odyssey is more appealing than the Iliad and other war narratives. Compared to the Iliad, which may be more widely read, I think of the Odyssey as a book that’s much more feminist. There are almost no women in the Iliad at all, because it’s about a war in which basically no women were allowed to fight. The Odyssey, by contrast, has female characters, and they’re much more interesting. They’re ancient Greek, so they’re not generally in positions of power, and yet some of them are very powerful. They are witches. They can turn you into a pig—things like that. There’s lots of interesting thinking, too, on the ways in which Odysseus himself might be feminine or embody feminine qualities. As a character, his whole thing is less about his prowess and battle and more about his wits. The first line talks about how he’s a man of twists and turns, which is one of his epithets—and though it’s stereotypical to say that a woman couldn’t be good at war, and would only be good at twists and turns, it does feel like he has a gender-bending aspect as a character.

Obviously, the Odyssey is a hero-quest story, and that’s one reason I became so fixated on it. I’m really interested in how someone becomes a hero or an icon. In what ways do you have to give up part of your humanity, your human life, when you’re a hero? Odysseus obviously gives up a huge chunk of his life—time with his family, his ability to do normal things. But, by contrast, what does he gain? What are the ways that you become larger than life when you’re a hero? In what ways can you become superhuman?

For a long time, I’ve been obsessed with this particular part of the Odyssey where Tiresias, the seer, explains to Odysseus what he has to do before he can really go home for good. The whole drama of the book has been Odysseus’ getting home to Penelope and all her suitors. You’d think he’d be done after he returns, kills all those men, and reclaims his family. Instead, Tiresias tells him that he has to do one more thing:

But after you have dealt out death—in open

combat or by stealth—to all the suitors,

go overland on foot, and take an oar,

until one day you come where men have lived

with meat unsalted, never known the sea

nor seen seagoing ships, with crimson bows

and oars that fledge light hulls for dipping flight.

The spot will soon be plain to you, and I

can tell you how: some passerby will say,

'What winnowing fan is that upon your shoulder?'

Halt, and implant your smooth oar in the turf

and make fair sacrifice to Lord Poseidon:

a ram, a bull, a great buck boar: turn back,

and carry out pure hekatombs at home

to all wide heaven's lords, the undying gods,

to each in order. Then a seaborne death

soft as this hand of mist will come upon you

when you are wearied out with rich old age,

your country folk in blessed peace around you.

And all this shall be just as I foretell.

Tiresias instructs Odysseus that, before he can go home, he must take his oar and walk inland until someone mistakes it for a winnowing fan—a tool for winnowing grain—and asks him what it is. In other words, as soon as he’s gone to a place where people don’t know what an oar is, then he’s gone far enough. If he plants the oar in the earth, and makes an offering there, then he can go home. But he has to make this symbolic gesture of going so far away that his oar—the thing he’s based his life on—becomes unrecognizable. Only then can he return home safely.