Pun Salad

Don't quite remember what caused me to put this book on my get-at-library list. Probably a general regret that I didn't pay more attention to Greek mythology back in … shoot, I don't even remember when. I do remember that Edith Hamilton's Mythology was the text. Maybe I was embarrassed when the category came up on Jeopardy!?

The book-flap bio of the author, Stephen Fry, describes him as "an award-winning writer, comedian, actor, and director." Too modest! This book reveals him to be somewhat of a scholar, because it's an impressive journey (oops, almost typed "odyssey") through the nooks and crannies of the stories the Greeks told about their gods and their interactions with them over the centuries.

I see on Amazon that this is just the first in a four-book series. Tempting!

Note the "comedian" bit above. Fry is not above injecting these yarns with his occasional dry British wit. Samples:

Page 25: "Next Gaia visited her daughter, Mnemosyne, who was busy being unpronounceable."

Page 134: "Intercourse of the personal, social, and sexual kind with the gods was as normal to men and women of the Silver Age as intercourse with machines and AI assistants is to us today. And, I dare say, a great deal more fun."

Page 205: "Priapus became the god of male genitalia and phalluses; he was especially prized by the Romans as the minor deity of the major boner."

The main recurring theme is the utter petty assholishness of the gods, expressed both toward their fellow immortals and mortals. Minor slights cause murderous vengeance! Vague past prophesies cause serial cannibalism!

Certainly, our God wouldn't… oh, right, let's not forget about Job.

Fry winds up with some pretty serious thoughts on the relationship between legend, myth, and religion. You have to wonder: did the Greeks really believe all these tall tales? Well, Fry reminds us, they took them seriously enough to convict Socrates for "worshipping false gods and failing to worship the gods of Athens."