Duck and Cover

AnneGwish wrote:Meh, wasn't mentioning it in a derisive manner, just establishing some sort of chronology to the literature, but it's honestly neither here nor there. Besides, I don't mind the thought of Achilles nailing another guy *laugh*

Virgil's story is good, I'm not trying to down it in the least I just preferred the other two. I've read far more torturous classics (like Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress") to try and say anything bad about the old epics.

My favorite epic by far though has got to be Beowulf.

SuperH wrote:I don't like epic poems because of the total implausability - I mean, couldn't oddysseus have sent an email or text or at least rang his wife up on the tele to say "hey hon, I'll be a bite late, don't wait up?"

PsychoSniper wrote:Poetry sucks.

johnnygothisgun wrote:haris

vendetta wrote:I have some book written by Xenophon waiting to be read sometime. I'm not sure if it counts for Classic litt though, but it certainly got my attention for not being written in verse-form. That's what I hate most about Classical litterature; its complete archaic poem structure.

johnnygothisgun wrote:the only work ive read by xenophon is the anabasis, or persian expedition, or expedition of cyrus (different titles, same book). it was cool read, and a wonderful adventure. as a young man xenophon helped command a group of 10,000 greek mercenaries hired by a persian prince in an attempt to battle his brother, the king, for the persian throne. the prince was killed and all his forces save the greeks were defeated, and the greeks were forced to battle their way from babylon north to the black sea then west, back towards their homes and freedom. the book is his memoirs of the expedition, and its pretty neato

In Tim O'Brien's novel Going After Cacciato the theater of war becomes the theater of the absurd as a private deserts his post in Vietnam, intent on walking 8,000 miles to Paris for the peace talks. The remaining members of his squad are sent after him, but what happens then is anybody's guess: "The facts were simple: They went after Cacciato, they chased him into the mountains, they tried hard. They cornered him on a small grassy hill. They surrounded the hill. They waited through the night. And at dawn they shot the sky full of flares and then they moved in.... That was the end of it. The last known fact. What remained were possibilities."

It is these possibilities that make O'Brien's National Book Award-winning novel so extraordinary. Told from the perspective of squad member Paul Berlin, the search for Cacciato soon enters the realm of the surreal as the men find themselves following an elusive trail of chocolate M&M's through the jungles of Indochina, across India, Iran, Greece, and Yugoslavia to the streets of Paris. The details of this hallucinatory journey alternate with feverish memories of the war--men maimed by landmines, killed in tunnels, engaged in casual acts of brutality that would be unthinkable anywhere else. Reminiscent of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Going After Cacciato dishes up a brilliant mix of ferocious comedy and bleak horror that serves to illuminate both the complex psychology of men in battle and the overarching insanity of war.