Oates Defends Nolan Against Emily Wilson's Odyssey Critique
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- Joyce Carol Oates defended Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' on social media against Emily Wilson's London Review of Books piece, in which Wilson wrote she "would be ashamed to have written any part of this script."
- Oates compared Wilson's tone to "MAGA folks attacking someone" and called it "dismissal & haughty superiority," arguing that all translations are subjective and a translator should be "more thoughtful & respectful."
- Oates quoted Book 9 of Daniel Mendelsohn's translation — Homer's Odysseus bragging about killing Kikones men and enslaving their wives — to argue the hero was never truly "noble," validating Nolan's decision to give him conscience rather than pride.
- Oates called Mendelsohn's translation "the most elegant" and argued critics would have found fault with whichever translation Nolan had chosen.
- Oates described such criticism as "chilling, dampening for any creative artist" and "alarming," while conceding Nolan's film "will not be considered a great classic."
- Oates recommended both Nolan's film and the 1997 miniseries co-produced by Francis Ford Coppola, contrasting Matt Damon's "brooding middle-aged-boy-hero" with Armand Assante's "Mediterranean" Odysseus.
Why it matters: Oates — a National Book Award winner and four-time Pulitzer finalist — publicly counters a leading Homer translator's critique, shifting the conversation from Nolan's box office to whether artists have standing to reimagine classical texts. Her argument that Odysseus was never truly noble in Homer's original text supports Nolan's conscience-driven reinterpretation as a defensible literary act.
