The pain Odysseus feels in the Underworld is incredibly palpable, she said. The passage about him trying to hug his mother who can’t be held was just heart-wrenching. I wondered how many of them could know grief well enough, so early in their lives, to appreciate the devastating aptness of the symbol Homer contrived for the gulf between the living and the dead: the armful of air, the impossible embrace. Why is it three times? Don Quixote Tom suddenly asked. I thought for a moment. Well, three is a kind of magic narrative number, right? Think of how jokes are organized around triplets—a rabbi,
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