Dwayne Betts on the Iliad

So, uh, this happened, this conversation, the genesis of it is that you heard, or I mentioned to you in an email that I was reading The Iliad for the first time, and that we were gonna do a, uh, book club on it, and you said you wanted to read it as well.

So you, like me, have just read this epic poem for the first time, and let's start with your general impressions.

I should say that I just wanted to experience reading a book that I was deeply familiar with, with somebody else, and I wanted to experience doing it.

Uh, when you said you hadn't read it, it felt like I was compelled to ask to read it with you 'cause I also hadn't read it.

But it was a bad decision from the start, Russ.

[laughs]

Why? Why?

Because this is-- I think we started talking at the beginning of June.

Yeah.

I had a documentary premiere at Tribeca on June 8th, and then I had my first solo art exhibit on June 19th.

I didn't start reading this actively until June 20th.

Over the past three days-

Three days ago.

Three days ago.

[laughs]

I, I was on, I was on chapter-- I was on book two.

I was on, I was on book nine when you asked me [chuckles] what my favorite passages were.

[laughs] But, but this what it felt like, and, and this is actually why I'm a- so glad it happened this way.

These days we've all experienced what it means to binge watch a television show and get so immersed in it that it becomes a part of our daily lives.

Yeah.

But actually, that, that used to be a familiar feeling that we got when we read back in the days when we were younger, and we could really get deeply immersed.

Now it's so difficult to do because even if you read a big book over six weeks, it's, it's six months, something about the book kinda...

it disperses itself.

It just sort of floats in your psyche.

But I was deeply engaged for, for like hours and hours every day.