Blocked

I read Robert Fagles's thundering translation of The Iliad some three or four years ago with massive appreciation and an actual nightmare provoked by the almost incessant violence of the middle books of the epic. (The nightmare was one of those in which you actually 'die', or rather get 'killed' and then, I think, wake up. Most disturbing.) And at the time I bought The Iliad I also shelled out on the sister translation of The Odyssey. (Beautifully designed paperbacks in the Penguin editions.) So why is that, several years down the line, I still haven't read the sequel to end all sequels? And why was it that, despite lugging it all the way to KL with me over the recent break, I got nowhere - well, a little way into Book 3, line 353, to be precise?

The answer, it seems to me, is twofold. First, and most obvious, the opening stuff about Telemachus is mind-bogglingly dull. Let's get to the man himself, you keep thinking, but you know he's not going to arrive for quite a while. (By the way, in contrast the opening 'Stephen' chapters of Joyce's mock-heroic version grip like steel might grip if it could write.) Second, and more personal, I have a long-established habit of not being able to get going on a book for years, despite odd attempts here and there, and then finding it impossible to stop reading and getting through the thing at double-quick speed. There was a twenty-year hiatus between me buying Kilmartin's translation of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu and getting to the final page. It was well worth waiting.

But I'm hoping not to have to wait so long to find out what happens to that dratted Telemachus. (Of course, part of the problem here is that I already know the outcome so the suspense isn't killing me.)