gods among men

I saw Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey this past opening weekend, which probably wouldn't surprise you if you know that I was once a classicist and recently read the new Daniel Mendelsohn's translation of The Odyssey. My alma mater organized a virtual book club with the Classics department to discuss the text this past spring semester, and even though I inevitably fell behind on the my readings by lecture days (ah, it was like being back in school again), I did manage to finish about a month ago before the movie came out. The only other time I read The Odyssey before this spring was in freshman year of high school, so this was my first time reading it in proem form. The Classics department chose Mendelsohn's translation for this book club because his version preserves the form and feel of the original Greek while still modernizing the language over the Lattimore or Fitzgerald renditions. However, it's Emily Wilson's translation from 2017, which simplifies the poetic form into shorter lines in order to make the language more accessible to modern readers, that primarily inspired Nolan's film adaptation.

Wilson's version opens with the line: "tell me about a complicated man." Complicated is unique to Wilson, with the original πολύτροπος more literally describes this to be a man of "many turns." A movie can be a challenging medium to faithfully render the complexity of a story with so many characters and side plots; between the time constraints and production budgets, I think it's possible to have an epic story or a complex character, but it's impossible to have both. Nolan's Odyssey prioritizes the former, featuring nearly all of the monsters and mystical creatures Odysseus and his men encounter in the first two thirds of the film. The scale of the film is undeniably impressive in its commitment to preserving the odyssey of it all. By my count, only Odysseus's final stop to the land of the Phaeacians was cut from this adaptation so that the lengthy exposition of his journey happens during Odysseus and Calypso's conversations on a deserted beach instead. We learn that Calypso has been feeding Odysseus lotuses to forget what happened to him until one day she finally tells him to stop; it's time to start remembering again. 

The setting where we meet our protagonist for the first time is an endless expanse of sea and sky. Odysseus is all alone save for Calypso—or is he? 

Athena, as played by Zendaya, is the only god presented as a character in Nolan's Odyssey, but even her depiction is made ambiguous. While other gods like Zeus and Poseidon are invoked and it's referenced in one scene that gods may disguise themselves as mortals, at no point are any of the other gods embodied or depicted as actual characters throughout the film. This is a significant departure from all the god-to-god interactions in the original text where Athena appeals to Zeus to help Odysseus or Zeus holds Poseidon back from killing Odysseus at sea, not to mention the god-to-man ones where Athena disguises herself as other characters to convince mortals like Telemachus or Penelope to take action or to grant Odysseus with unworldly abilities or powers. In contrast, Athena in Nolan's Odyssey functions as sort of an angel-on-your-shoulder who is seen by Odysseus only, and perhaps he's only imagining her as a projection of his own guilty conscience. In the final flashback to the sacking of Troy, we see Odysseus watch as his fellow Greeks forcibly take a priestess—portrayed by Zendaya, looking just like Athena as she appears to Odysseus's mind's eye—and behead her.

The omission of the gods fundamentally changes the framing of the story: to remove the gods is to remove the manipulators of fate. In a world where gods can do as they please, a man like Odysseus can be complicated in that morally grey way that comes with hypocrisy, savagery, adultery, and wrongdoing so long as the gods favor you, intervening and allowing you to get away with it. But if there are no gods here scheming in a world apart to shape mortal lives as they see fit, then that means men must face the consequences of their actions on their own. 

Nolan's depiction of Odysseus, a man who struggles with guilt over the destruction he helped bring upon Troy, is only possible in a world where Odysseus feels the weight of the war and the death of his men on his shoulders and struggles to bear it. I'm not sure that this is true of the original text. The movie gives purpose to why Odysseus is stuck on Calypso's island spiritually: Odysseus can't just go home as he is; he wants to return to Ithaca as a good man, one who deserves respect as a king and leader of men. (Whose judgment?) Perhaps he also seeks forgiveness as someone who failed to protect the innocent. (Whose forgiveness?) It's this moral conviction, coupled with a godsless framing of agency in the grand scheme of things, that suggests Nolan has imparted an implicitly Christian interpretation onto Odysseus's character.

Making Odysseus out to be a moral man necessitates sanding down his rougher edges in order to tell a more coherent narrative. He is certainly kinder, more merciful, and more trusting than how I read him in the poem. Can this version really be characterized as complicated though? The movie's Odysseus is stripped of his humor, his hubris, his deceptions, and his penchant for telling lies. Gone too was the penultimate recognition scene between Odysseus and Penelope, where she proves she can out-trick a trickster. On a practical level, Penelope needs to test him in case the man before her is actually a god in disguise; on a spiritual level, she proves that she is truly his equal in cunning intelligence and that the two deserve each other. It was one of the scenes I was looking forward to the most. 

I'm not a purist: I don't think an adaptation is successful only if it remains faithful to the source material. I'm glad Nolan made the story into something of his own, breathing new life in ancient characters and sparking a curiosity among moviegoers to watch this strange and marvelous tale unfold, even if there are elements I wish I saw in this blockbuster rendition. Everyone inevitably brings their own biases and interpretations into the movie theater, so even if the adaptation didn't capture everything I wanted, his version gives me more material to react to when I discuss the film with others and ultimately revisit the joys I once found in studying classics all those years ago. 

xoxo, vivian 

secret gardens in my mind

I was testing out the fresh battery I loaded into my Olympus camera when the lens door broke off the night before my flight to LA. I've been shooting this camera for over a decade now, and even though it had a lens flare problem since we first met, this camera was something of a constant companion through dozens of moves and travels both near and far. George thought I seemed weirdly unbothered when I told him my camera broke until he noticed I have two other Olympus point-and-shoots (thanks Amanda for rescuing these from your parents' house and gifting them to me). One of them came to OC with me for a wedding that weekend, and I'm thinking about loading my black and white roll (my second ever) into the other. The cameras come and go but at least I'll still have the records they create.

Spring in New York bloomed in fits and starts this year. I went back to DC for a weekend trip last week when there were still bare branches and unfurled magnolia buds on trees only to return to tender greens and sidewalks littered with fallen petals. Back in February, I booked my Amtrak tickets to visit some friends in April thinking we'd wander through the wisteria at Dumbarton Oaks, one of the few DC bucket list items left unchecked after living there for five years. Winter was cold—I thought for sure the bloom would be later than usual, but unfortunately I didn't account for there to be a few unseasonably warm spells in March and early April accelerating peak wisteria after all so they were nearly all gone by the time I arrived. 

A week before I left I asked George to teach me how to shoot manual on his mom's DSLR. I wish someone had handed me a camera like this eleven years ago when I first felt the desire to shoot; back then I was so broke I couldn't afford anything more than that first Olympus point-and-shoot I bought for $33.70 off of eBay and a $13 pack of 3 Fujifilm Superia Xtra 400s from Amazon. I've loved my decade of film (and much-improved iPhone cameras), but lately I've been wanting more autonomy over the images I create to experiment with light and depth and color in post. The Dumbarton photos turned out better than expected, but I also still have a lot left to learn with shooting digital and closing the gap between what I want to create and how I actually make it happen. Maybe this is the push I need to finally try shooting in manual on film too.

The photos I originally had in mind were framed by pale purples diluted with white sunshine and shadows that faded into nothing. I thought I wanted a look that was overexposed and dreamy, but when the skies turned grey and the greens got even deeper I couldn't stop thinking about that line from the bridge of Florence + The Machine's "South London Forever" that goes: and I don't know anything / except that green is so green / there's a special kind of sadness that seems to come with spring. 

I hope it's beautiful too from wherever you're reading this.

xoxo, vivian

on reading better

My resolution for 2026 is to read less.

I've spent the past three years reading at least 75 books a year. It's a neat conversational shortcut when I explain to people why I deleted my Instagram and what I've been doing with my time instead. For what it's worth, there has been a direct correlation between me not using Instagram and reading more books. I replaced countless hours of idle time I would have spent doomscrolling reading whatever book du jour I have on hand and I'm probably overall better off for it. But now three years on, simply reading a lot is getting old. 

What am I trying to prove anyway? I can read 100 books a year. Even if you think my triple-digit reading year was a pandemic and/or grad school fluke (7 of the books I read cover to cover that year were for one Michaelmas term class alone), I read 91 books in a year where I was working a job that does not require me to read books. I know some people are able to hit some impressive book counts by going deep in one or two genres, but that's never been me. I want you to know that I read this much even though I read inefficiently by eschewing genre fluency: while the majority of books I read can be categorized as contemporary fiction, I try to read some sci-fi, fantasy, historical fiction, mystery, and romance in any given year, and at least 20% of my reading is nonfiction, essays, and memoirs. I read foreign books in translation and do my best to pick at least a few books from older decades or even centuries, and I am proud—arrogant, even—about the fact that I push myself to read with more diversity and at a greater volume and faster pace than the vast majority of people would desire to do. 

So it should probably come as no surprise that I have not been reading happily.

I have liked a majority of the books I finish, and I've gotten better over the years at not falling for the sunk cost fallacy and quitting books I actively dislike. But every time I finish a book I didn't really like but forced myself through anyway so I can count it toward my annual book goal, I start questioning why I'm doing this to myself. Am I really out here completing books just to feel a sense of achievement? In my attempt to escape the panopticon of performing for one social media platform, I have somehow managed to turn yet another hobby into a source of self-consciousness; this is why we (or rather I) can't have nice things.

The incident that really set me off a couple weeks ago on this crisis over my reading habits was actually more about books I liked but didn't love: there have been so many books over the years that were just fine but have left no impression on me whatsoever after the fact, to the point where my Kindle loan syncs or I check my Goodreads and it hits me that I have already read that book two years ago. Not every book is worth remembering, but I think I've gone too far in the opposite direction where I'm not really processing the books I really loved in ways that they deserved, and I want to do a better job of sitting with the books I read more at the cost of reading fewer books overall. 

I want to read with more intention this year, so here's what that means to me:

1. Read books I've been putting off

I am mostly thinking of Middlemarch, a book I have owned for six years now and barely made a dent in because I am always prioritizing library loans and because the size and scope of it intimidates me. Other books in this category tend to be classics I haven't gotten around to yet for one reason or another: Jane Austen (Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey), Crime and Punishment, The Remains of the Day, Madame Bovary, maybe even 《红楼梦》—I read the last one in college in translation, so the original Chinese would be new to me and also a real challenge. 

2. Read books that interest me

This seems like it should be a no-brainer criteria, but I need to be more judicious in selecting books in the first place based on what I actually like or am intrigued by, rather than what other people think. I give too many books a shot because I read relatively quickly but this actually hurts me in the long run: I'm more likely to enter a reading slump after reading a book I don't like, while the ones I do motivate me to want to chase the same high of finding more books that do it for me. I want to be relentlessly discerning in what I'm spending my time on, even—especially—if it means I read slower and abandon even more books.

3. Reread books

I rarely reread books, so the ones I do deign to reread are ones that were important to me the first time around. Rereading old favorites feels like I'm revisiting past versions of myself. One of my favorite reads of 2025 was also my favorite read of 2014—I loved The Secret History as much as I did the first time, and it was such a different experience having read it over a decade later on the other side of university and studying classics. I've been thinking about my classics education more lately, maybe because I'm also rereading The Odyssey with Berkeley's Arts & Humanities department book club. I first read The Odyssey in freshman year of high school half my life ago, and the story itself is older than anything else I've ever read. I'm interested in discovering new ways of interacting with the same texts to better understand how my favorite books have changed for me even when the words remain the same.

4. Build discipline in reflecting on what I read

I was pretty consistent about taking notes on what I read in 2022 but abandoned this effort in 2023 around the time my reading pace really started picking up.  I check out nearly all of the books I read from the library as ebooks, so not having easy access to the books I've read makes it that much harder to revisit books in the first place. I wish I kept it up these past few years because it helps me process my thoughts on what I'm reading so I can react properly to what I'm reading and have something to look back on someday in the future.

5. Read less, and do something new

It's great that I converted some phone screen time into reading. Maybe it's time to convert reading time into doing other things now too.

So here's to reading less than 75 books this year. 

xoxo, vivian

la vie en ambre

Here are some photos from my week in Paris at the start of this month. It was fun to revisit the city on what was functionally a solo trip; George was there for work so I didn't see him for most of the week, but I took the time off to wander on my own. Early November was a surprisingly beautiful time of year to be there: the fall foliage was at its prime, and there were no crowds or lines at almost all of the places I wanted to go. 

Some quick highlights from my week:

• French food for lunch and Asian food for dinner: I wasn't meant to eat butter three meals a day. This felt like the right balance for me to enjoy French food (and often at better prices at lunchtime) on a daily basis, plus I found solo dining at Asian restaurants to be less daunting for dinner. Thanks to Mary for the Asian recs: Abri Soba; Mam from Hanoi; Sanukiya
• Photo tour with Tory, who captured all of the snaps of me, including on my SLR, throughout picturesque spots across the city in one day. I wish I had a Tory in every city I traveled to!
• Coffee roasting experience at a studio inside the Passage de Panoramas: I've been trying to prioritize doing more "making" activities this year instead of just constantly consuming, but didn't want to do a baking class and end up with too many sweets or baked goods than I could reasonably eat before they went bad. Learning how to roast my own coffee beans was a nice way to make something that I could savor at home later, and the setting made it fun to learn more about the history and architecture of Paris
• Sketching, reading, writing in cafes and parks around town; The Likeness by Tana French was my constant companion for the week, and I savored every minute of that book
• While the other museums I went to were new to me (Jeu de Paume, Musée Carnavalet), I loved revisiting the Musée d'Orsay with a guided tour. Orsay is among my top five favorite museums I've ever been to, full stop, and everything about it—the old train station building, the views of Paris from gallery floors, and of course the collection itself of my favorite period of art history—made it worth going back to
• I'll never tire of the thrill of catching up with old friends in new places 

We also stopped by London for a few days before coming back, and I found that I don't miss it the way I used to when I first left. Maybe it was the misery of getting sick again at the end of the trip or maybe it was something more intangible: the opportunity cost, that life I could have had if I toughed it out and stayed four years ago, doesn't seem so sweet anymore—either way, I found myself glad to be coming home and grateful to live in New York, despite everything. 

xoxo, vivian

do you think I have forgotten

Some photos from our wedding in Bordeaux. Endlessly grateful.

xoxo, vivian