{"product_id":"hearing-homer-s-song-the-brief-life-and-big-idea-of-milman-parry-isbn-9780525520948","title":"Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry","description":"“[Kanigel's] biography (the first) of Milman Parry, set in California, Paris, Yugoslavia, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, would translate well to the big screen (or Netflix). Although an ideal beach read for the classics scholar, the book is aimed at the layperson; Kanigel eschews jargon and in-depth technical discussion while still attempting to convey the magnitude of Parry’s theory.” —\u003cb\u003eA. E. Stallings, \u003ci\u003eThe American Scholar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In his elegant biography . . . Kanigel tells this complicated story to the general reader with inspired calm . . . Parry’s life story has enough quotidian quirks, and such a crashing, inexplicable finale, that he looms above his own work like a ghost . . . [His] is the story of an idea, the Western Idea writ (or sung) large, and Kanigel traces how a devoted, obscure scholar who died in a hotel room at 33 managed to transform our understanding of written and oral traditions.” —\u003cb\u003eTim Riley, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One man’s inspired effort to recover Homeric song, not through books and research but lived experience . . . Kanigel, a biographer of intellectual pioneers, has captured [its] excitement.” \u003cb\u003e—James Romm, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mr. Kanigel has made a career of writing books about eccentric geniuses, such as the urbanist Jane Jacobs and the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan . . . [He] proves the ideal synthesizer of Parry’s ‘brief life and big idea' . . .  This compelling book gives us the argument and the enigma of [an] unfinished life.” —\u003cb\u003eDavid Mason, \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Milman Parry’s thesis was simple but momentous . . . When he published his landmark papers, Parry was just thirty years old, [but] as Robert Kanigel shows in the new biography, Parry, as an undergraduate at Berkeley, had been seized by Homer, in much the same way that the deities in the Iliad seize their favorite humans . . . It is Parry’s consuming idea that is the real subject of \u003ci\u003eHearing Homer’s Song\u003c\/i\u003e.” \u003cb\u003e–Adam Kirsch,\u003ci\u003e The New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In the story of the tangled-up gun [that killed Parry in a Los Angeles hotel room] . . . Kanigel gives us Parry’s brief career in miniature:  It doesn’t make sense, and yet it happened, and it changed the humanities forever.” —\u003cb\u003eJo Livingstone, \u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“Biographer Robert Kanigel offers the first full-scale account of Milman Parry’s short life, mysterious demise and long-lived influence . . . [He shows] that Parry’s work has had wide-ranging ramifications, ushering in an emphasis on orality that has become increasingly central to modern literary culture—from professional storytellers and TED talks to podcasts and audiobooks.\" —\u003cb\u003eRobert Cioffi, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Perhaps only a complete outsider to the field like Robert Kanigel, free of the passionate intensity that has long characterized Homeric studies, could have understood Parry’s discovery so well and explained it with such clarity for the benefit of both scholars and the wider public . . . Kanigel has uncovered and deftly deployed remarkably rich sources about his subject.” \u003cb\u003e—Richard Janko, \u003ci\u003eBryn Mawr Classical Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Challenges our disciplinary approach to the history of Classics . . . A fascinating read, written in an engaging and accessible style.” \u003cb\u003e—Blaž Zabel, \u003ci\u003eThe Classical Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Gripping . . . Kanigel offers a sterling portrait of American poetry scholar Milman Parry (1902–1935) and his ‘big idea’ that the \u003ci\u003eIliad\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/i\u003e were the products of generations of pre-literate ‘singers’ . . . On the personal front, Kanigel delivers a fascinating account of Parry’s marriage and the mysterious circumstances around his death by gunshot . . . Expertly weaving the personal and the academic, Kanigel movingly notes that Parry’s fixation on his theory and his inexorable work ethic drove a wedge between him and his wife. Meticulously researched and full of fascinating detail, this is a remarkable account.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Readers join the young Parry as he ventures into Balkan mountains traversed by barely passable roads, sustained by the unquenchable conviction that the songs of unlettered Balkan lyricists called guslar that he is collecting with rudimentary equipment will validate his revolutionary theory about how the ancient Greek bard forged \u003ci\u003eThe Iliad\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Odyssey\u003c\/i\u003e . . . With penetrating insight and humanizing empathy, Kanigel recounts the labors of Parry’s traveling companion, Albert Lord, as he preserves, extends, and promulgates the epoch-making discovery of his now-departed mentor. Readers see how, through Lord, Parry’s breakthrough ultimately reorients not only classical studies, but also other fields studying works shaped by oral creativity . . . Scholars will appreciate the technical aspects of Parry and Lord’s accomplishment as 'literary archaeologists,' but readers of all sorts will value the personal drama.” —\u003cb\u003eBryce Christensen, \u003ci\u003eBooklist \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An engaging, thoroughly researched biography of a fascinating figure . . . [with] an underlying quiver of suspense . . . Kanigel has given readers a thoughtful look at a man whose theories have helped us to better understand the ancient world.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A vivid chronicle of intellectual passion . . . Drawing on considerable archival sources, Kanigel recounts in thorough, engaging detail the life of Milman Parry (1902-","brand":"Penguin Random House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305509802213,"sku":"NP9780525520948","price":28.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780525520948.jpg?v=1767728833","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/hearing-homer-s-song-the-brief-life-and-big-idea-of-milman-parry-isbn-9780525520948","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}