No wonder the teenage Daniel flinched when he had to ask for help with math, and, worse, feared coming out as gay.
So we double back to learn that Jay is a man who refrains from hugging and has never told his five children that he loves them. In lesser hands, this sort of parallelism would seem gimmicky, but not here. Likewise, Daniel discovers that the classroom becomes a way to better understand his cantankerous father. The Odyssey’s initial focus is on Telemachus, now 20, searching for the father he has never known. Thus we are made to see parallels between Homer’s epic and the Mendelsohn family story. But Daniel the author makes things easier for us by breaking up the narrative in a way similar to Homer himself, with so-called “ring composition” that circles back and forth over time and allows for plentiful asides. So readers must be willing to follow these occasional deep dives. To guide his students through the poem, Daniel the professor requires close readings of the text.
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