An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic

by Daniel Mendelsohn

“Few sons are the equals of their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.”

In my case the opposite is true. My son far surpasses me, to my indescribable joy.

of its conventionality and eccentricity, its normalcy or pathology, is often impossible to establish until we are old enough to compare it intelligently with the families of others; something we start doing only when we begin to perceive, as happens at the end of childhood, that our family is not, in fact, the entire world.

Think, I said to them. Why do you think a perfect like-mindedness is the most important thing a couple can have between them, according to Odysseus in Book 6?

Our parents are mysterious to us in ways that we can never quite be mysteries to them.

I’m not afraid of being dead, he said. At that

point there’s no consciousness. You’re out of the woods.

But he was serious. It’s the lead-up to dying that I’m… His voice trailed off, and I realized he didn’t ...

That I’m concerned about, he finally said. Falling apart, being diminished. Not being all there. You remember wha...