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From Phyllida's Desk

Even Achilles Ate Ketchup

I arrived at this silly title after reading Daniel Mendelsohn's review of Madeline Miller's debut novel, "The Song of Achilles," in Sunday's NY Times book review and filtering it through a recent conversation with a friend about Mary Renault's novels.

Let's start with that conversation. My friend, a gay man in his early thirties,  Read More 
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Wrath of Achilles

“Sing, muse, the wrath of Achilles…”

I still remember the first words of the Iliad this way, from the Richmond Lattimore translation. I read it years ago, when I became aware of the part of the story that interests me (no surprise to friends and fans of my fiction): the love between Achilles and Patroclus, and the tragic arc that led from Achilles’ loss of his battle prize, the (literal) trophy wife, Briseis; through Patroclus’ death; to Achilles’ inevitable choice of the short life with glory over the long, uneventful life.  Read More 
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Pride and Prejudice and Myrmidons

My second novel, Pride/Prejudice, as the / in the title indicates, is a kind of "slash" fiction, a version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with same-sex relationships between the characters. Of course, by describing the story this way, I seem to be implying that the original novel is "heterosexual," and that by "slashing" it I've changed the characters or the story--that I've "homosexualized" it. Even the publishing contract describes the book as one in which Austen's characters are "turned" bisexual.  Read More 
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