Wonderfully spirited ... An expert in the ancient world, she nevertheless draws constantly (and productively) from contemporary culture ... Wilson elegantly braids together close, line-by-line readings with larger arguments about how much is often at stake ... You don’t even have to be particularly interested in ancient literature to enjoy this book, though by the time you finish it you probably will be. Wilson’s excitement for her subject is irrepressibly moving.
Wilson describes herself, half-jokingly, as a pedant, and when translators don’t come up to scratch or critics miss the point she’s tough-minded, not to say scathing ... Gatekeeping isn’t Wilson’s style ... Fascinating.
Wilson is reliably alert to cultural nuance and complexity – not least our own – and does an impressive job of transfusing a classical scholar’s knowledge into the liveliness and uncondescending intelligence of good critical writing.
...a wide-ranging and compulsively readable book ... if you enjoy Wilson’s shade, you’re in for a treat, because that reviewer voice is the one that you hear in Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea ... You’ll learn a great deal about ancient literature from this book, and even more about the complexity of translation. But you’ll also learn a whole lot about what academics sound like when the (polite, erudite) knives come out with surgical precision ... As always, Wilson is pushing us to be better readers of Homer—and of her.
Erudite and lively ... Anyone who's been exposed to Wilson's work will learn much from the insights of these essays and will hope her journey as a trusted guide through this distant world continues.
Wilson is driven in her work by the awareness that antiquity is deeply alien, and yet resonates in surprising ways with the present. Activities like translation, central to the study of classics, enrich that awareness by raising new questions ... In the book’s final essay about translating The Odyssey, Wilson provides an illuminating breakdown of not only her choices in translating Homer but also the choices of those translators who came before and after. That one itself is worth the price of admission ... But the diversity of essays offers a crash course in thinking critically about classics in the same way author and fellow professor George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain analyzes some of the great Russian writers to generate ways of thinking about writing.
