Madeline Miller: Guest Interview by Judith Starkston

Guest Interview of Madeline Miller by Judith Starkston

Our guest interviewer today is Judith Starkston, who writes historical fiction and mysteries set in the period of the Trojan War. Judith is currently seeking representation for her manuscript Hand Full of Fire. "In the midst of the mythic Trojan War, Briseis, healing priestess and strong-willed princess, driven by unspeakable grief, raises a sword against Achilles, mightiest of Greek warriors, igniting a passion that seals his fate and changes her destiny."

This interview of Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles, was first posted on Judith's website www.judithstarkston.com. Judith also reviews for Historical Novel Review.

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller's debut novel, is one of the most engaging and worthwhile reads of the year, especially for those of you interested in Troy and Homer (My review). Her book, which has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize, will bring you inside that most iconic of heroes. Since the Iliad is my favorite topic of discussion, I asked Madeline for an interview. Her answers are thought provoking and fascinating.

Madeline Miller was born in Boston and grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. She attended Brown University, where she earned her BA and MA in Classics. For the last 10 years she has been teaching and tutoring Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to high school students. She has also studied at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, and in the Dramaturgy department at Yale School of Drama, where she focused on the adaptation of classical texts to modern forms. She currently lives in Cambridge, MA, where she teaches and writes.

Judith: Talk about your understanding of Achilles, perhaps the most famous hero in the Western tradition. I'm guessing his character as portrayed in your novel evolved over time for you. What aspects of his personality arose directly from the Iliad and which filtered in through the magic of the imaginative process?

Madeline Miller

Madeline: I have always been struck by Achilles' youth. I think it is easy to forget that he is the youngest of all the heroes who go to Troy, and also carries the heaviest burden of fate: he knows he will never return home again. This adds a bit of recklessness to his behavior, I think, the brashness of someone who has gambled everything on a single throw of the dice. I also drew from Homer Achilles' extraordinary, bone-deep honesty. As he says in the Iliad, "I hate like the gates of Hades a man who says one thing and hides another in his heart." That is a powerful statement—all the more so when you compare it to the constant half-truths and manipulations of someone like Odysseus.

I was also fascinated by Achilles' complexity. Here is a character who is the fiercest killing machine the Greeks have. But he is also a beautiful singer, an artist of the highest order. I wanted to capture that depth in his personality: if he had not been Achilles, he might have been another Orpheus.


Perhaps as an extension of that, I discovered as I wrote that there is a real innocence to Achilles. At least in my novel, he has a native generosity. This is set against his divine, self-absorbed nature, and it doesn't always win out. But it does exist; he is never purposely cruel, and the cruelty of others often shocks him.

Judith: We're both classicists writing about the Homeric world. I don't know about you, but I discovered early on that I needed to know much more about the material culture I was depicting than I had ever learned through my classics degrees. What were some of your favorite research discoveries, maybe even some details of Mycenaean life that didn't make it into the book?

Madeline: One of my favorite things to learn about and research was Minoan culture. The excavations on Crete have yielded such fascinating discoveries, signs of a culture that was incredibly advanced and artistically creative—from the possibility that they had running water, to the gorgeous ceramics to the tantalizing hints of the bull-jumping. I managed to sneak a few mentions of Crete in here and there (mostly around the Cretan prince, Idomeneus), but almost all of it had to be left on the cutting room floor. Maybe they will make it into the next one!

Judith: Achilles's mother, Thetis, completely discounts the value of mortal love until the very end. I found this a fascinating choice as a way of portraying her. Talk about how you see Thetis and how that understanding grew for you.

Madeline: I have always been very moved by Thetis' story. She is a lesser goddess who is born with extraordinary potential: a prophecy that says that her son will be greater than his father. Initially Zeus has designs on her, but as soon as he hears that, he becomes afraid of losing his place (after all, he came to power through overthrowing his own father), and determines to marry her to a mortal in order to limit her child's power. She is given away to Peleus without her consent, and then has the further grief of learning that her son—extraordinary as he is—will die young. She will be left with nothing.

At the same time, I was very aware that gods are not like humans, nor are they meant to be. Pain and heartache and grief are not feelings that the gods tolerate for very long, because they are feelings of powerlessness, and therefore inherently undivine. Gods turn their hurts into hatred, rage and vendetta; they obliterate shades of grey. But nothing Thetis does can take away her son's imminent doom. She is trapped in grief and cannot find a way to escape it.

Judith: In my review I expressed some concern that Thetis's vehement hatred for Patroclus and Achilles's love relationship was anachronistic and historically unwarranted although I saw how integral her hatred was to your plot and theme. Can you discuss why you chose to show the source for Thetis's dislike as the physical love between Achilles and Patroclus? Odysseus also disparages their relationship, saying that such love is fine for boys but they're not really boys anymore and implying they should be done with it. What are the historical sources for these views of homosexuality?

Madeline: For me, Thetis' hatred of Patroclus isn't really linked to the fact that he is Achilles' lover, but to who he is as a person: disgraced, human and (in her eyes) weak. Her only hope for her mortal son is to exalt him, to literally make him a god. Patroclus' mediocrity seems to her an impediment, the embodiment of all the worst of mortal failure, holding Achilles down to earth. Patroclus is also a rival for Achilles' attention, and gods are notoriously jealous.

As for views on homosexuality in the ancient world, there is no such thing as a definitive answer or source—things are constantly shifting depending on the time period, the geographic location and the social status of the men involved. But it is generally true that having a lover was acceptable (or, more acceptable) as long as you went on to marry and produce an heir. The really deviant and strange thing was the idea that men might be together—just the two of them—past young adulthood, as Odysseus notes. Alexander the Great was devoted to his lover Hephaistion, but still had a wife.

Unfortunately, we don't know what the attitudes were like during Mycenaean times, the era of the Trojan War—our only real source is Homer himself, who was composing nearly five hundred years later without the help of a modern research library. I had to make my best guess on the norms of the time based on the scholarship that was available.

Judith: The Song of Achilles offers a new definition of the ancient Greek concept of the hero, in Homer represented by the phrase aristos Achaion, best of the Achaians, which you also use in your novel. Can you talk about your conception of the hero and to what extent you see your definition as part of the Homeric tradition?

Madeline: There are so many types of heroes—flashy or quiet, physical or spiritual—but Homer's world highlights a few kinds in particular: the strong-men, the clever diplomats, the unbending leaders, the devoted sons. I wanted to find ways in which other kinds of heroism might exist alongside those types. I also wanted to explore what it would mean to try to be an ethical person in such a cruel, and violent place. Is it even possible?

Judith: The Song of Achilles is your debut novel. What have you enjoyed about the process of bringing this book through the process all the way to market and what challenged you? What writing project is next for you?

Madeline: I have absolutely loved the opportunity to connect with fellow book-lovers and mythology readers. Writing the book was so solitary, it is an amazing experience now to get to see it make its way in the world. As for challenging, it has been an interesting learning experience trying my hand at social media—Twitter in particular. By nature I'm a lurker, the type of person that would rather listen to others than speak. But I've been working on it!

As for what's next, I would very much like to stay in Homer's world for one more book. One of the characters I most enjoyed writing in this novel was Odysseus, and I wanted to get to tell a bit more of his story. In particular, I am interested in some of the women of the Odyssey—Circe, first and foremost, and Penelope as well.

Judith: You’ve been quoted saying, "It was very important to me to stay faithful to the events of Homer's narrative." I have written a manuscript focusing on the relationship between Achilles and Briseis with much the same goal. I think you achieved that determination to stay faithful, and yet, to my intense interest, you and I have imagined very different narratives within the same world, and so have other writers recently such as David Malouf with his book Ransom. I'm charmed by the spaciousness of the Homeric poems that they provide so much imaginative room for generations of writers. Any thoughts on why this is so true of Homer?

Madeline: I agree with you completely on your use of the word "spaciousness"—there is something in Homer that is so expansive and inherently generous. It takes a rare artist to create a world as full as his that still allows so much room for others to set up camp. Some of this, I think, has to do with the fact that his stories were originally oral poetry, and the flexibility that that medium allows to add and subtract as necessary, depending on the interest of the performer and audience. By comparison that Roman poet Vergil is every bit as brilliant as Homer, but his lines fit so deliberately and snugly together it would be harder to find a space to write back to them.

And, by the way, I look forward to reading your book!

Book Review of Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles

The Song of Achilles
by Madeline Miller

Our guest reviewer today is Judith Starkston, who writes historical fiction and mysteries set in the period of the Trojan War. Judith is currently seeking representation for her manuscript Hand Full of Fire. "In the midst of the mythic Trojan War, Briseis, healing priestess and strong-willed princess, driven by unspeakable grief, raises a sword against Achilles, mightiest of Greek warriors, igniting a passion that seals his fate and changes her destiny."

This review of The Song of Achilles was first posted on Judith's website www.judithstarkston.com. Judith also reviews for Historical Novel Review.

Madeline Miller says the idea for her novel The Song of Achilles arose from wondering about the extremity of grief Achilles suffers when his closest friend Patroclus dies in the ancient Homeric poem the Iliad. What kind of relationship did they have that Achilles loved Patroclus that much? She answers that question with depth and sensitivity. The novel focuses primarily on the theme of the human capacity to love. In Miller's interpretation, the gods, and most especially Thetis, Achilles's mother, don’t understand love, and thus being half-god as Achilles is, sets him up for some complicated trouble in matters of the heart. Told from the point of view of Patroclus, The Song of Achilles is a graceful new exploration of the ancient tale, taking you inside these two heroes in a compelling way.

As in the Iliad, from which Miller has drawn the beginnings of her characters, Achilles loves his friend Patroclus with profound intensity, but in Miller’s take, this love blocks out everyone else in Achilles's view. The half-divine hero seems to have no capacity to love anyone else, not even other friends. Gone are the loyalties and bonds with his fellow warriors that Homer portrays. He doesn’t understand how Patroclus knows and holds in affection many of the men and women they live with and fight for each day, including, interestingly enough, Briseis, the woman over whom Achilles will quarrel with Agamemnon. Achilles notes he doesn't even recognize most of these people. Even as a boy in his father's court in Phthia, Achilles does not connect with the other boys with whom he eats and plays each day. "But in all those years, Achilles showed no interest in any of the boys, though he was polite to them all, as befitted his upbringing. And now he had bestowed the long-awaited honor upon the most unlikely of us, small and ungrateful and probably cursed." And why does he bestow his singular affection on Patroclus? Because, Achilles says, "He is surprising."

No one else finds Patroclus the least bit lovable, at least not until several years into the Trojan War, by which time Patroclus has won many friends through his work in the tent where the wounded are brought and through his kindness to Achilles's women captives. Since he doesn't want sex from the women, nor does Achilles, being kind to them is greatly simplified. One of Miller's conscious choices has been to make the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus entirely exclusive. No captive women appear in the beds of Achilles and Patroclus, as they do in the Iliad.

The novel starts with Patroclus's early childhood. His father is disappointed in him almost from the beginning, and his mother is a simpleton, as far an opposite of Achilles's mother as Miller can portray. When Patroclus accidently kills another boy, his father's biggest disappointment is that he doesn't have the sense to lie about it, and his father doesn't seem overly upset by the need to permanently exile his son. This early emotional deprivation forms Patroclus into a man who will accept Achilles's odd friendship that grows eventually into love—anything to be accepted, especially by someone so extraordinary.

Although Peleus, Achilles's father, shows warm affection and tolerance for his son, Achilles's mother, the goddess Thetis, is clearly the source of the "deficient at love" trait in her son. Miller's Thetis is hard and cold and frightening. Later she will understand that discounting love deprives life, even immortal life, of meaning, but that's much later when it can do no human good. We learn early on that she hates her mortal husband Peleus. Her single ability to love is directed at her son and even that is never intimate or sweetly maternal.

As soon as the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus develops into one of physical love, Thetis appears and makes it clear she despises Patroclus and her son's love for him. At one point Thetis will trap her son into lying with a woman "because of you," Achilles says to Patroclus. Thetis's hatred for Patroclus carries Miller's plot forward in some essential ways and contrasts effectively with the redeeming nature of their relationship, and that may be why she has developed this divine distaste for the love between two men. But it strikes me as an anachronism, and it's an ugly one I'd prefer didn’t leak backwards into time where it didn't exist. Since the main point seems to be, I think, that Thetis doesn't understand love, why play up so strongly her distaste for male love in particular? Greek mythology is full of male unions (Zeus and Ganymede, Heracles and Jason, Poseidon and Pelops, Dionysus and Adonis to name a few) and Thetis's virulent hatred arising directly from the physical relationship seems unnecessary and historically unwarranted. It's true that in the Iliad Thetis reminds her son after Patroclus's death that "It is a good thing to lie with a woman in love." But she also reminds him it's a good thing to eat and drink. She means, it's a good thing to enjoy life while you can and besides, in the Iliad, Achilles often sleeps with women, so her suggestion is not tinged with criticism as the same statement would be in Miller's novel. (If anyone’s interested in a scholarly discussion of this issue in the Mycenaean context, read the first chapter of Eva Cantarella’s Bisexuality in the Ancient World).

The early indication of Patroclus's innate honesty (when he fails to lie about the death he's caused), while a disappointment to his father, is essential to the novel. Patroclus's virtues don't coincide with his father's or Thetis's ideas of heroic attributes—or even his own at first—but he turns out to be the best of the Greeks in Miller's rendering because of his moral sensibilities and his capacity to love. Being best at slaughtering Trojans does not define Miller's Aristos Achaion, "Best of the Greeks," although that is how the phrase is understood among Achilles's fellow warriors. Achilles, for all the intensity of his love for Patroclus, is deficient in these gentler virtues because he cannot connect to anyone but Patroclus. The direness of Achilles's sorrow when Patroclus dies appears to spring from this failing. There can be nothing or no one to replace the hole left by this loss.

Miller has a unique solution, arising from this crippled nature of Achilles in the area of love, to two questions the Iliad asks: why Achilles allows Agamemnon to take Briseis away without a fight and why he chooses to stay out of the fight, even while so many of his fellow Greeks die as a result. Her answers provide a surprising moment. I won't spoil the shock by revealing it, but it will grab you whether the Iliad's an old friend or you've never read it. Suffice to say, Patroclus does not share this crippling, narrowed focus of love, and this lifts him into Miller's new definition of the best hero.

Miller has made a superb offering in the tradition of redefining the Homeric hero. It's an old project dating back to the Iliad itself. Achilles says in Book Nine (here in Lombardo's translation), "It doesn’t matter if you stay in camp or fight—In the end, everybody comes out the same. Coward and hero get the same reward: You die whether you slack off or work. And what do I have for all my suffering?" His comrades on the field beg to differ. They are quite sure fighting for loot and glory is well worth the suffering—the Mycenaean definition of a hero. I am fascinated by Miller's reinterpretation of Achilles and Patroclus and the Homeric tradition. She tells an engaging, emotionally gripping tale.

Miller, who is clearly knowledgeable about Greek history and archaeology, has chosen to float the tale in a mythological world much as the Homeric tradition did, with heroic details of armor and ship, but not much detail of daily life as it occurred in that place and time as we have recently reconstructed it. The Song of Achilles has vivid descriptions. Chiron's cave, for instance: "In front of us was a cave. But to call it that is to demean it, for it was not made of dark stone, but pale rose quartz." This is a magical place, and we enter it, as the two young men do, with wonder and awe. And of course Miller builds Troy for her readers. "Back in the main camp, we stood on the hill that marked the boundary between sand and grass, and regarded the thing we had come for. Troy. It was separated from us by a flat expanse of grass and framed by two wide, lazy rivers. Even so far away, its stone walls caught the sharp sun and gleamed. We fancied we could see the metallic glint of the famous Scaean gate, its brazen hinges said to be tall as a man. Later, I would see those walls up close, their sharp squared stones perfectly cut and fitted against each other, the work of the god Apollo, it was said. And I would wonder at them—at how, ever, the city could be taken." These descriptions paint brilliant images—Miller's especially good at her descriptions of nature—but they are more mythological than archaeological. The Song of Achilles takes the reader on a thoroughly enjoyable voyage into the legendary world of these heroes.