Literary Picks "The Greek Generals Talk" and "The Trojan Generals Talk" by Phillip Paritoff

Author: Edward Pickering

Phillip Parotti's "The Trojan Generals Talk" and "The Greeks Generals Talk" brim with imagination and narrative power. In these two complementary books, Parotti imagines conversations with the various generals, now elderly men, who fought in the Trojan War. In each chapter a different general speaks. They recount their exploits in battle, recall their impressions of people and place, and discuss the causes of the war and the strategies adopted by the combatants.
The voices of the generals project from the written page so convincingly that readers will forget they are reading and begin to believe that the generals are speaking to them. Parotti endues the voices of these men with a nobility of sentiment and expression that is enthralling. In their epic scope and masterful execution, these books resemble Robert Fagles' acclaimed translations of Homer. Admirers of Fagles, of Homer in the original or of antiquity in general will relish these little-known books.
The generals themselves are aged, some on the brink of death. Their situations in life differ according to their fortunes in war. Enslaved by the Greeks, one ex-Trojan general speaks to his interlocutor from the depths of a gold mine in Argos in which he has toiled for 60 years. Consider the opening lines of another chapter:
"The Plain -- I have never gone back. I saw it last in flames, over my left shoulder, on the black night some fifty years ago when Abas, my strong-armed squire, half-dragged me up through Ida's passes to escape destruction."
Parotti fashions the mythic heroes of the Trojan War -- Hector, Odysseus and Paris -- through the recollections of the aged generals who knew them to varying degrees. Thus, readers see the principal figures of the Trojan War from a variety of viewpoints. The opinions and perceptions of the generals, who have had decades to ponder the past, diverge from and contradict each other in fascinating and startling ways.
Like many-faceted diamonds, the Homeric heroes are composed of angled viewpoints. Elusive and imposing entities, these heroes reflect the perceptions of their comrades and foes. The reader, thrilled and dazzled, skirts around these men, approaching and receding from them as the narrators change. Parotti's achievement is a remarkable one in that he captures the relentless power and command of Homer. He evokes the men and events of that mythic age with consummate ease and integrity.