“This consideration takes us very close to what it is that makes Greek tragedy “tragic.” A play about an unambiguously heroic young woman, someone’s mother or sister or daughter, squaring off against an unambiguously villainous general or king, a man… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share
I was interested in all kinds of things, whether it be Avatar, Mad Men, Troy, 300, Battlestar Gallactica, or the poems of Horace and Sappho. I always joke about this to my students, who can't quite wrap their mind around the fact that you can have a Ph.D in classics, but not do that full time. I never wanted to… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share
“An epic without a focus - without a single action, a coherent plot, a single terrible point to make - was just a very… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share Image
Life is not bad, and it doesn't look more real if it's ugly or it's gritty. Think of your own life. Most of what's… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share Image
“As ingenious as this explanation is, it seems to me to miss entirely the emotional significance of the text- its beautiful and beautifully economical evocation of certain difficult feelings that most ordinary people, at least, are all too familiar with: searing regret for the past we must abandon, tragic longing for what must be left behind. (...) Still, perhaps that's… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share
“To be alive today is to have a story to tell. To be alive is precisely to be the hero, the center of a… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share Image
We are living in an era of such interesting new forms, and certainly narrative non-fiction has emerged as a major form. People who are… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share Image
“This consideration takes us very close to what it is that makes Greek tragedy “tragic.” A play about an unambiguously heroic young woman, someone’s mother or sister or daughter, squaring off against an unambiguously villainous general or king, a man greedy for military renown or for power, would not be morally interesting. What gives Antigone and Agamemnon and other plays… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share
In the pre-Internet age you had to find gay things - or things that were slightly radioactive with erotic interest. You had to go to the library, you had to find the books; you had to find the coded things. When everything's available and everything's okay, what does it become? It becomes shopping. We're shopping all the time, basically, whether… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share
“real tragedy is never a straightforward confrontation between Good and Evil, but is, rather, much more exquisitely and much more agonizingly, a conflict between… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share Image
Shopping as lifestyle is really a sub-cultural problem. When the strictures that set you apart or oppressed you, disappear, is there a way, legitimately, to maintain your sense of specialness and difference? And how do you express that? Does it just become a kind of kitsch? You can say this of gay people, but it's true for Jewish people, Italian… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share
You come out of the gate, you've got something new, you're subversive, nobody's ever done it before. But by your fifth novel and your… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share Image
Closeness can lead to emotions other than love. It's the ones who have been too intimate with you, lived in too close quarters, seen… — Daniel Mendelsohn Copy Share Image
