ROBERT KANIGEL is the author of eight previous books, most recently Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs. He has received many awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship and an NEH "Public Scholar" grant. His book The Man Who Knew Infinity was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; it has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and was the basis for the film of the same name starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel. Kanigel, Professor Emeritus of Science Writing at MIT, lives in Baltimore with his wife, the poet S.B. Merrow.
“[Kanigel's] biography (the first) of Milman Parry, set in
California, Paris, Yugoslavia, and Cambridge,
Massachusetts, would translate well to the big screen (or
Netflix). Although an ideal beach read for the classics scholar,
the book is aimed at the layperson; Kanigel eschews jargon and
in-depth technical discussion while still attempting to convey the
magnitude of Parry’s theory.” —A. E. Stallings, The American
Scholar
“In his elegant biography . . . Kanigel tells this complicated
story to the general reader with inspired calm . . . Parry’s life
story has enough quotidian quirks, and such a crashing,
inexplicable finale, that he looms above his own work like a ghost
. . . [His] is the story of an idea, the Western Idea writ (or
sung) large, and Kanigel traces how a devoted, obscure scholar who
died in a hotel room at 33 managed to transform our understanding
of written and oral traditions.” —Tim Riley, Los Angeles Review of
Books
“One man’s inspired effort to recover Homeric song, not through
books and research but lived experience . . . Kanigel, a biographer
of intellectual pioneers, has captured [its] excitement.” —James
Romm, The New York Review of Books
“Mr. Kanigel has made a career of writing books about eccentric
geniuses, such as the urbanist Jane Jacobs and the mathematician
Srinivasa Ramanujan . . . [He] proves the ideal synthesizer of
Parry’s ‘brief life and big idea' . . . This compelling book
gives us the argument and the enigma of [an] unfinished life.”
—David Mason, Wall Street Journal
“Milman Parry’s thesis was simple but momentous . . . When he
published his landmark papers, Parry was just thirty years old,
[but] as Robert Kanigel shows in the new biography, Parry, as an
undergraduate at Berkeley, had been seized by Homer, in much the
same way that the deities in the Iliad seize their favorite humans
. . . It is Parry’s consuming idea that is the real subject of
Hearing Homer’s Song.” –Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker
“In the story of the tangled-up gun [that killed Parry in a Los
Angeles hotel room] . . . Kanigel gives us Parry’s brief career in
miniature: It doesn’t make sense, and yet it happened, and it
changed the humanities forever.” —Jo Livingstone, The New
Republic
“Biographer Robert Kanigel offers the first full-scale account of
Milman Parry’s short life, mysterious demise and long-lived
influence . . . [He shows] that Parry’s work has had wide-ranging
ramifications, ushering in an emphasis on orality that has become
increasingly central to modern literary culture—from professional
storytellers and TED talks to podcasts and
audiobooks." —Robert Cioffi, The New York Times Book
Review
“Perhaps only a complete outsider to the field like Robert Kanigel,
free of the passionate intensity that has long characterized
Homeric studies, could have understood Parry’s discovery so well
and explained it with such clarity for the benefit of both scholars
and the wider public . . . Kanigel has uncovered and deftly
deployed remarkably rich sources about his subject.” —Richard
Janko, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
“Challenges our disciplinary approach to the history of Classics .
. . A fascinating read, written in an engaging and accessible
style.” —Blaž Zabel, The Classical Review
“Gripping . . . Kanigel offers a sterling portrait of American
poetry scholar Milman Parry (1902–1935) and his ‘big idea’ that the
Iliad and Odyssey were the products of generations of pre-literate
‘singers’ . . . On the personal front, Kanigel delivers a
fascinating account of Parry’s marriage and the mysterious
circumstances around his death by gunshot . . . Expertly weaving
the personal and the academic, Kanigel movingly notes that Parry’s
fixation on his theory and his inexorable work ethic drove a wedge
between him and his wife. Meticulously researched and full of
fascinating detail, this is a remarkable account.” —Publishers
Weekly (starred review)
“Readers join the young Parry as he ventures into Balkan mountains
traversed by barely passable roads, sustained by the unquenchable
conviction that the songs of unlettered Balkan lyricists called
guslar that he is collecting with rudimentary equipment will
validate his revolutionary theory about how the ancient Greek bard
forged The Iliad and The Odyssey . . . With penetrating insight and
humanizing empathy, Kanigel recounts the labors of Parry’s
traveling companion, Albert Lord, as he preserves, extends, and
promulgates the epoch-making discovery of his now-departed mentor.
Readers see how, through Lord, Parry’s breakthrough ultimately
reorients not only classical studies, but also other fields
studying works shaped by oral creativity . . . Scholars will
appreciate the technical aspects of Parry and Lord’s accomplishment
as 'literary archaeologists,' but readers of all sorts will value
the personal drama.” —Bryce Christensen, Booklist (starred
review)
“An engaging, thoroughly researched biography of a fascinating
figure . . . [with] an underlying quiver of suspense . . . Kanigel
has given readers a thoughtful look at a man whose theories have
helped us to better understand the ancient world.” —Library
Journal
“A vivid chronicle of intellectual passion . . . Drawing on
considerable archival sources, Kanigel recounts in thorough,
engaging detail the life of Milman Parry (1902-1935), a Harvard
classics professor whose investigation of Homer’s works proved
groundbreaking . . . As in previous books, Kanigel’s skill as a
biographer is on full display.” —Kirkus Reviews
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