Who Killed Homer?
The brilliant Dilbert cartoonist, Scott Adams, has been kind enough to put the general public’s superficial knowledge of ancient Greece into the mouth of his galling and dauntless character, Wally, without my even asking. Adams’ Web Site, Dilbert.com, describes Wally’s personality this way: “Dilbert’s colleague and fellow engineer is a thoroughly cynical employee who has no sense of company loyalty and feels no need to mask his poor performance or his total lack of respect.” You don’t want to be like Wally, do you? Okay then, enjoy this book and absorb what it has to tell you. Then, if you do work in an office, send memos to your subordinates, colleagues, and superiors that say simply, “I understand what the ancient Greeks were trying to tell us in their myths,” and see what kind of reaction you get.
Wally may be a loser, but I suppose a little superficial knowledge is better than abject ignorance. In her book, The Parthenon, Mary Beard reports this verbal exchange:
Reporter: “Did you visit the Parthenon during your trip to Greece?”
Shaquille O’Neal (US basketball star): “I can’t really
remember the names of the clubs we went to.”
Who is responsible for this widespread abysmal incomprehension of our cultural heritage? Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, authors of Who Killed Homer?, believe that the culprits are lazy, irresponsible academics. In their book, they “make no apologies for adapting a populist stance, for attacking the narcissism and self-congratulatory posture of these self-described ‘theorists’ who [offer] very little for a very few and nothing for everyone else.” I agree with Hanson and Heath.
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