Author Q & A: Scott Huler

Q: As the topic of No-Man's Lands you chose just about the oldest story we have: the Odyssey of Homer. How did that come about?

A: I've always loved the Odyssey, and I've always thought Odysseus was one of the greatest of Greek heroes - everything turns out okay for him, unlike formost of the others, whose stories end in tragedy, so I thought he was well worth emulating. And I kept noticing, say, Steely Dan's "Home at Last" or the Coen brothers' "O Brother, Where Are Thou?" and any other modern take on the Odyssey I came across. But only when I swore on NPR's "All Things Considered" that I would never read Ulysses, James Joyce's famously unreadable take on the Odyssey, did I really get close enough to Homer's version to know why I liked it at all.

 Because of that NPR essay on Ulysses, I got involved in a reading group that was dedicated to plowing through the tome. That experience led me in turn back to the Odyssey, the original epic poem, which, embarrassingly enough, I realized I had never actually read. So I read it, and I just fell in love with it - at the time of the action of the book, Odysseus is in his mid-forties. I'm in my mid-forties, and it just seemed like the book was reaching out to me, giving me all the things a person needs at midlife, considering all the questions about work and family and love and death we all face, so I was just absorbed. And from that it was only a short hop to say, "Hey, those Joyce guys go to Dublin every year to retrace the steps of the people in Ulysses, and nobody even understands that book. Why not retrace the steps of Odysseus, and bring alive the places of a book that really spoke to me?" And then all of a sudden I was spooking around the geography and classics shelves in libraries and making plane reservations.

Q: You point out that the Odyssey has been around for millennia, and that people regularly retell its story. Why do you think that is - what keeps it in our minds?

A: For me, it's because the Odyssey is the complete human story in one narrative. Odysseus goes through a lot to find a wife he loves and start a family, then gets dragged off to a war he doesn't want to fight, so he misses his son's childhood. Then he has a terrible time making his way home, and even at home he has a lot of trouble to get through before he's done. Isn't that your life, and mine? You go through dating hell and you finally find a partner or spouse. Then all of a sudden your life is defined by your work, and commonly work that's not quite what you imagined it would be like, and for a boss you have trouble respecting. You never get as much time with your kids as you want, and then you have an awful time getting home, and when you get there home is not quite the haven you imagined it would be. Sounds like the average day of almost everyone I know. Or you're at home, and you spend all your time facing the crises with kids and household troubles that that entails, and your spouse is out somewhere else and you have to do it all alone. Or you're growing up, and your parents are lost in their own concerns about work and home, and you need guidance and you find that you're on your own. And meanwhile, the Odyssey is set when Odysseus is about 45 - he's been fighting, traveling, facing down one thing and another, and at this point the guy is just plain tired. Who in midlife doesn't relate to that?

 Homer has told the ur-human story, the fundamental tale of facing the demons we all face, only he's turned the demons into real creatures. Odysseus doesn't just wonder what his ancestors and old friends would tell him if they were still alive - he actually goes to the land of the dead and discusses things with them. That makes the universal questions more real, and it makes the thoughts Homer is sharing more vital as well.

Q: Is that universality why you decided to retrace Odysseus's journey yourself?

A: Exactly. By going to the places I thought he might have gone, I made those issues even more real for myself. Homer has Odysseus face the terrible choice between the dragon Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, in which he has to risk the lives of his crew in one way or another. That brings the realities of the choices we all face as adults into focus, but actually going to the straits of Messina in Italy, which for millennia has been associated with Scylla and Charybdis, brought the concept of choice to life even more.

Q: It seems like we're seeing a lot of material based on classical sources right now. When there are so many choices for entertainment and media, you might expect the opposite. What do you think is going on?

A: I think the more options we have the more the old stories prove their value. I mention Found Magazine to people a lot. That's a great magazine, filled with weird stuff people have found and sent in. The thing is, once someone's lost grocery list is worth your attention, what in this world could possibly NOT be worth your attention? How do you decide what to spend your time on? Ever spent an hour on YouTube? Do you remember what you saw? There's so much stuff out there, and so much of it is so incredibly evanescent, that I think almost out of self-defense we turn back to things that have lasted and lasted and lasted. Anyhow I know that was part of what made me feel so glad to be getting lost (literally) in the Odyssey. There was so much else competing for my attention that it was nice to be thinking about something that I knew people would still be thinking about ten years from now.

Q: You bring up getting lost. You describe in your book often being unsure of where to go, of having trouble finding places while you were out traveling. Were there ever times you felt unsafe? Did you ever find yourself alone in the Mediterranean saying, "What have I gotten myself into?"

A: I can't say I ever felt unsafe. The only place I felt uncertain about traveling alone was Tunisia, because it's a Muslim nation and we're going through a period where there are people in Muslim nations who don't necessarily welcome people from the West. So in Tunisia I did do some planning ahead and organizing of places to stay before I arrived and so forth. And here and there I did find myself beset by the usual scammers and unwholesome types the solo traveler always encounters. But in a way, that's what I was out there for - I was out there on my own, traveling without help, without reservations, without a clear sense of what would come next. That was the whole point. So I kept one hand on my passport case and tried to be smart. Like Odysseus, I guess.

Q: What did you miss most while you traveled?

A: Well, obviously I missed my wife, and since she was pregnant, I missed seeing her progress in her pregnancy. But what I missed most really was quiet conversation with English speakers about this and that. For months at a time I would be talking almost exclusively in languages I could barely understand - or in English with people who weren't quite fluent. And talking constantly about the Odyssey - where was the Cyclops' cave? Where the island of Aeolus? Or else pure travel stuff: how do I get from here to Sardinia? Where can I find a hotel when I get there? Can I eat that? How much does that cost? What does that mean in a currency I'm familiar with? So I missed being relaxed, I guess. I'd have loved to just sit and talk about the ball game or something. But again - if I had wanted to stay relaxed, I'd have stayed home. Not being relaxed was the point.

Q: This book about the Odyssey follows your last book, about Sir Francis Beaufort, a nineteenth-century hydrographer, and the Beaufort Scale, the wind scale named after him. You've also written books about racing, football, and Continental Airlines. How do you choose your topics?

A: I'm definitely a generalist - I write about something that gets me excited enough to want to stop random people in the street and discuss it with them. There are people who write about things that infuriate them - investigative writers, political writers. Thank goodness for them. I'm the opposite: I write about things I fall in love with. This was a sort of love letter to the Odyssey, to its history and all the wonderfully ridiculous things people have said, thought, believed, and done about it over the last three thousand years or so, and to how just wonderfully applicable it is to our own lives right now. My last book was a love letter to the Beaufort Scale. I've previously written love letters to NASCAR and to the Cleveland Browns. That's the best part about being a writer and reporter - you're always finding out about things, and once in a while you hear about something that gets you so enthralled that you write a book about it. And you'd better be enthralled, too - writing a book is hard, so in the tough months you'd better be able to remember back to those heady early days when you were smitten with your subject.

Q: Do you know what you're going to write your next book about?

A: Depends on what I fall in love with.