Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones

Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones

by Daniel Mendelsohn
Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones

Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones

by Daniel Mendelsohn

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Overview

“The role of the critic,” Daniel Mendelsohn writes, “is to mediate intelligently and stylishly between a work and its audience; to educate and edify in an engaging and, preferably, entertaining way.” His latest collection exemplifies the range, depth, and erudition that have made him “required reading for anyone interested in dissecting culture” (The Daily Beast). In Ecstasy and Terror, Mendelsohn once again casts an eye at literature, film, television, and the personal essay, filtering his insights through his training as a scholar of classical antiquity in illuminating and sometimes surprising ways.

Many of these essays look with fresh eyes at our culture’s Greek and Roman models: some find an arresting modernity in canonical works (Bacchae, the Aeneid), while others detect a “Greek DNA” in our responses to national traumas such as the Boston Marathon bombings and the assassination of JFK. There are pieces on contemporary literature, from the “aesthetics of victimhood” in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life to the uncomfortable mixture of art and autobiography in novels by Henry Roth, Ingmar Bergman, and Karl Ove Knausgård. Mendelsohn considers pop culture, too, in essays on the feminism of Game of Thrones and on recent films about artificial intelligence—a subject, he reminds us, that was already of interest to Homer.

This collection also brings together for the first time a number of the award-winning memoirist’s personal essays, including his “critic’s manifesto” and a touching reminiscence of his boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, who inspired him to study the Classics.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781681374055
Publisher: New York Review Books
Publication date: 10/08/2019
Pages: 384
Sales rank: 537,165
Product dimensions: 5.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Daniel Mendelsohn teaches at Bard and is Editor-at-Large at The New York Review of Books. His books include An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017); The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (2006); How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken: Essays (2008), and, from New York Review Books, Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture (2012).

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

April 16, 1960

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

B.A., Classics, University of Virginia, 1982; M.A., Classics, Princeton University, 1989; Ph.D., 1994

Table of Contents

ECSTASY AND TERROR: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones
PROPOSED TABLE OF CONTENTS
 
 
 
I.               ANCIENTS
 
 
1.     “Lost Classics: Reflections on the Masterpieces We Don’t Have”
(An expanded version of this address to the 2008 Graduating Classics Majors at
Berkeley)
 
2.     “How Greek Drama Saved the City"
 
 
3.      “Deep Frieze: What Does the Parthenon Mean?” (“Critic at Large” essay on Joan Breton

Connelly’s The Parthenon Enigma)


 4.     “Bacchae: Ecstasy and Terror."
 
5.     "The Stand: Expert Witnesses and Ancient Mysteries in the Colorado Gay Rights Trial."
 
6.      “Unburied: Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Lessons of Greek Tragedy.”
 
7.     “J.F.K., Tragedy, Myth.”
 
8.     “Epic Fail?” (on Vergil’s Aeneid)
 
9.     “As Good As Great Poetry Gets.”  (Essay on the poetry of C. P. Cavafy.) 
 
10.  “Girl, Interrupted” (on Sappho).
 
 
 
 
 
II.             MODERNS
 
1.     “A Critic’s Manifesto"
 
2.     “Hail Augustus! But Who Was He?” (Review-essay on John Williams.)
 
3.     “Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Inspired Journey.” (Review-essay on the works of Patrick Leigh
Fermor.)
 
4.     “A Striptease Among Pals.” (Review of Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life)
 
5.     “I, Knausgaard” (Review-essay on My Struggle)
 
6.     "The Last Minstrel" (on the works of Henry Roth)
 
7.      “Boy Wonder.”  (Review of Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai.)                   
 
8.     “New Television: On Plot and Plottiness in Television.”
 
9.     “The Women and the Thrones.” (Review-essay on George R. R. Martin novels and the
HBO series.)
 
10.  “The Robots Are Winning!” (Essay on Recent Films About Artificial Intelligence).
 

 
III.  PERSONAL HISTORIES
 

 
1.     “Stolen Suffering.” (Op-Ed piece on falsified memoirs.)
 
2.     “The American Boy.” (Personal History essay on youthful correspondence with the historical novelist.)
 
3.     “The Countess and the Schoolboy.”
 
4.     “Stopping in Vilna.” (Adapted from an essay on encountering a trace of Stendhal while researching The Lost in Vilnius)
 

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