Daniel Mendelsohn is a classics scholar, a translator, a memoirist and a quick-witted literary and television critic. The idea of reading his account of being trapped on a theme cruise — the theme is Homer’s “Odyssey” — is an attractive one.

Along on the cruise is Jay, the author’s 81-year-old father. Jay lives on Long Island. He can be vinegary. He’s close at times to the sort of character Philip Roth has described as a “letter-to-the-editor madman.”

There’s an early scene in Mendelsohn’s new book, “An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic,” in which Daniel, a natty gay man, looks on in horror as Jay buttons himself into a shiny brown shirt.

“I said, Daddy, we’re on a Mediterranean cruise, you can’t wear brown polyester, and I took the shirt and walked to the balcony and threw it into the sea. Whaaat!?! he cried, that was an expensive shirt! He strode across the stateroom to the balcony and looked forlornly down as the shirt, which on contact with the water had taken on a dense animal gleam, like the skin of a seal, briefly bobbed along until it finally sank under its own weight.”