Joyce Carol Oates Defends Nolan After Translator’s Review

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey was partly inspired by translator and classical studies professor Emily Wilson’s version of the millennia-old poem.

But writing in the London Review of Books, Wilson, while flattered, didn’t seem as keen on his interpretation.

She said that while she was “humbled” the director had cited her version of the first line of the poem, “Tell me about a complicated man,” she added she’d “be ashamed to have written any part of this script”.

According to Wilson, the film had “nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior’s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbours”.

So, despite calling the blockbuster an “event to celebrate” and lauding its director for “doing his best to get the general public reading again”, it’s safe to say most people have read Wilson’s review as pretty scathing.

Author Joyce Carol Oates seems to have been one of them – but she had harsh words for the translator herself on X.

The writer, known for her sometimes-controversial social media posts, wrote: “[Wilson’s] tone of dismissal [and] haughty superiority strike a sour note. rather than disagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner, this person, who has benefited enormously from Nolan’s film, speaks in the crude language of MAGA folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers.

“Within the world of translators this seems all the more surprising since all translations are, presumably, subjective [and] not equivalent to the original text. One would expect a translator, of all people, beholden to a text, in service to a text, to be just a wee bit more thoughtful [and] respectful of others who are acting in good faith just as (she would claim) she is.”

In her London Review of Books entry, Wilson had also written: “The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has a convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”

Speaking to Empire previously, Nolan had listed Wilson’s translation among his sources of inspiration for the record-breaking film.