The Odyssey – Homer 1026 BC – Christopher Noland – 2026 AD

 We all know the blind poet Homer’s story of the Odyssey.  It is a story about going home, like; “Oh Brother, Oh Brother”, “The Wizard of Oz”, “The Martian”, “Garden State”, and almost every other story ever told.  But we have been told that ‘you can never go home’, just like ‘you can never step in the same river twice.’  That’s because you are always changing and the river and home are always different and besides that, the road is long and home is far.  Therefore, there are tremendous trials and tribulations in these stories preventing us from actually going home. 

When Homer wrote this epic story 3000 years ago, about Odysseus (nick-maned Nobody) going home to Greece from his success in the Turkish Trojan Wars (outlined in his earlier best seller The Iliad), he threw in everything but the kitchen sink.  There are savage storms and hairy seas, Cyclops monsters and man-eating giants, sexy Sirens and ugly witches, generous gods and gorgeous goddesses with navigationally insane trips to Africa, France and Italy.  Meanwhile every stud rich guy in Odysseus’s Greek hometown of Ithaca, (near Corfu and Albania) is chasing his wife so they could be king, much to the chagrin of his son who would like the job, if his mom would just give up on Odysseus.  ‘Out of sight, out of mind’, said Homer.

This begs for this epic tale to be re-sung, as Christopher Noland sings in his latest cinematic rendition of the tale, since ‘songs are the poetry of our history and if this history is forgotten, it is repeated’.    While sticking to the original poem and ‘feeling free to add some good stuff’ with modern affections, historical humor and gratuitous F-bombs, Noland has created a masterpiece of the much maligned and misused, modern day multi-media.  Every scene has a zinger line or two to sum up all the heroism and hubris, but most adventures ultimately wind up in a comic, Pythonesque ‘Run Away’ resolution.

Odysseus laments shooting the Cyclops in the eye and angering both Cyclops and the god Poseidon, for which he suffers 20 years of ruthless weather and ferocious seas.  When asked by a soldier why Cyclops did not talk to him, he haughtily asks, ‘Do you talk to ants?’  When the sexy Sirens told him he sacrificed his ability to go home for ‘all the promises he failed to keep’ he finally admits that the ‘clearest view of man is from below’.

In the end it is a film about upholding god Zeus’s law, even before Hammurabi’s ‘eye for an eye’ or Jesus’s ‘turn the other cheek’.  Zeus said you should treat others as they should treat yourself, because they might be gods.  That means kindness to strangers and hospitality for guests and don’t look a gifted Trojan Horse in the mouth.  Odysseus felt bad for giving the Trojans a trick gift horse and then jumping out of it and destroying their entire civilization, ‘breaking Zeus’s law forever’.  Like fellow Noland hero Oppenheimer, he has become death.  He questioned the wisdom and usefulness of ego, greed and war, and for that he was banished for 20 years.  When told that the gods dictate that all his troops will be lost and only he can go home, he says that ‘I will defy the gods’.  It is almost like Negro Jim said in Mark Twain’s great American novel ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ that if he did the right thing he would go to hell and he famously replied, ‘then I will go to hell’.

This movie will be on TV forever but go see it now, while you can, on the big screen, or better yet in the IMAX format it was painstakingly filmed on.  Go for the big picture but stay for the details.  The story is as old as civilization but nonetheless, resonates today.

River Deep by Bryan Gruley

 

It’s curious that good writers often are drawn to the Mystery format to tell their stories, while great writers can just tell great stories, no-holds-barred.  I suppose the structure is reassuring and can be written backwards or forwards with twists and tangents from premeditated outlines or divinely inspired stream of consciousness.  It is no surprise that Bryan Gruley employs this structure to tell his latest scintillating story of murder and mystery, sprinkled with hockey and high jinx.  I put down several books of literature to read this Mystery story and could not put it down.  Ther-in lies the rub.

I have read all Gruley’s novels and short stories and know him to be a fine writer and stand-up guy, if not a sensitive new age family man of the 1970’s.  He hides that well with his gruff, beat-reporter and crude hockey room persona.   We all write what we know and it is apparent that he loves the fun and diversion of this genre after being an award-winning journalist for years. 

He sometimes distracts us from our manly fixations by writing from the point of view of women.  Jack Nicolson famously said that this is done by ‘writing as a man and then removing any semblance of reason or logic’.  But that is just a movie punch line since Jack’s favorite writer, Jim Harrison, excelled at this craft.  Tana French can also write the opposite sex merely by including episodes of burping, scratching and fraternal inebriation. 

Brian also employs hockey references and metaphors to make his point, humorously at first but effectively in the end.  It is a tool he is committed to and he makes it work.  Like the ‘prosecutor sizing up the defense, like a forward going to the corner deciding whether to hit or out skate his opponent’.  It is as Springsteen often dismisses his own profound or sensitive comments when saying something like ‘God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of’.

Gruley’s characters are attractive and likable, to a point, and human in the end.  Attorney Devyn is a swarmy babe and a hockey stud with needs and desires like the rest of us.  Ex-cop Willie Hooper has a pirate eye patch and a dilapidated minivan but checks himself into jail for a few days of R&R.  Bryan writes about real people with real dialogue, motivations and insecurities, because he knows people.  Things are tied up in a nice bow by the end, leaving enough ragged edges for a sequel or two.  We never find out how deep the river actually is, but sense things often aren’t as they appear or as we wish they would be.

I will spare you the details but in summary; Gruley’s story is about revenge and redemption, community and team, nice small towns and big bad cities, family, fraternity and friendship.  Bryan shines with his experience in journalism and the process, police work and its limitations, court proceedings and their distance from truth, justice and the American way.  It’s all part of the cloak and dagger muse to tell his own story of hockey obsession, journalistic excellence, self-doubt, and finally; the acceptance of self with what we really are and really want.

Good stories go viral and great ones become universal.  My only hope is that this unique Gruley Hockey Mystery genre catches on to the masses and becomes part of our culture like so few varieties do.  Bryan can then keep pumping these stories out, make piles of money and ride off into the sunset, secure in the fact that he had something to say and someone who wanted to read it.