The two great novelties of Wilson's Odyssey are the way she represents a group of characters that we might term 'underdogs' – notably the Cyclops, and the suitors and their allies – in a sympathetic light,6 while representing Odysseus as, on balance, reprehensible. The big problem, however, with Wilson's heterodox approach to the characters of the Odyssey is that she can sustain it only by distorting and misrepresenting what the Greek text says.
For Wilson, the Odyssey 'to some extent7 glorifies its protagonist', but far more importantly Odysseus is, for her, not heroic,8 but 'this liar, pirate, colonizer, deceiver, and thief' within whose sphere 'other people – those he owns, those he leads – suffer and die, and who directly kills so many people' (p. 66).9 And she loses no opportunity to translate in such a way as to reinforce this. One example: Odysseus' possible culpability for the death of some of his comrades is a persistent underlying issue in the epic,10 but Wilson wants to make him directly, criminally responsible for the demise of all his men, and so she forces the text of the Odyssey to mean what she wants it to mean. Consider her version of Od. 1.5–911 when the poet's authorial voice, which should carry some authority, speaks on...