It was a beautiful spring day, and I had the opportunity to enjoy one of favorite pastimes, sitting in Lola’s Café sipping a cappuccino and reading. This morning I had just cracked open The Odyssey, Homer’s second epic poem, having just recently finished The Iliad. When subtly a movement was detected at the small table next to me and as I looked up a young lady had sat down and as soon as our eyes met she gleefully inquired, “Are you enjoying The Odyssey as much as I did?” Didn’t expect that. Over the next 30 minutes I was treated to hear this college student share her love for this epic poem and a seemingly sincere desire that I would find the same joy in it she had.
That encounter would have just settled in my mind as an odd conversation considering such a discrepancy in our ages and stage of life, if not for one additionally odd encounter. A few days later, a few tables over, as the young waitress brought me my coffee to my table she pauses and says, “I loved that book!”, while in my hand was The Odyssey opened to about Book 5 of this journey. What was so exceptional about these two encounters, in the same café, just a few days apart? The coffee? Well, there was that, but what caught my attention and has not left … the age of these two young ladies. But that wasn’t the end of this generational observation.
Are you aware there is a reading crisis in our culture? Mark Twain is credited with saying, “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read”. The world is more literate today than it has ever been in human history. Approximately 87% of the global population is literate, compared to only 12% in 1820. However, considering just the USA, Americans reading for pleasure on any given day fell from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023, roughly a 40% decline. And from all reports it’s still on a decline. Yet, there is one surprising fact, one ancient Greek poem is bucking that trend. Flying of the bookshelf is… The Odyssey, Homer’s epic poem.
Let’s look over our shoulder back to June 2019. A University of Notre Dame student from Dorado in northern Puerto Rico starts working on his senior thesis project. He began posting “pieces” on TikTok in January 2021 and documented the entire creation process publicly, an unprecedented approach. The final of nine “sagas” dropped on December 25, 2024, completing a 40-song, sung-through adaptation of the entire Odyssey. As I listened, I could not help but pause a moment and consider if this was a similar inflection point as Hamilton was for the history of Alexander Hamilton. Then something phenomenal began.
Fans have stitched together EPIC’s animatics into several feature-length “full movie” cuts on YouTube. A couple of these edits have millions of views, one 1080p version alone has passed 13 million, effectively turning a TikTok-born musical into an anime-style movie experience for a global audience. It is suggested this may be primarily a phenomenon with Gen Z, 14–29 year-olds. That’s those 2 young ladies I met.
Why all this attention to The Odyssey though?
There are surveys that report that 80% of Gen Z report feeling lonely in the past 12 months vs. 45% of Baby Boomers. Odysseus, isolated, far from home, longing for connection… that may just be what is resonating with the most digitally connected but emotionally loneliest generation in recorded survey history. A blogger at Lorri Dudley asked a question in her blog: “Why would Odysseus become a hero to a generation who was told they couldn’t wait at the bus stop alone, who missed out on proms and graduations due to Covid?” That question may be the rhetorical answer itself.
With The Odyssey being fundamentally a story of perseverance through forces beyond our control, maybe this is exactly what young people navigating today’s world feel… a “perseverance” that more than ever is part of their “transformation” from children to adult. A professor of classics, Dr. Joel Christensen of CUNY, told a college newspaper: EPIC “doesn’t just act as a gateway; it’s an invitation to engage”.
How much more may this grow? Thanks for the question, let me slide my cup out of the way.
July 17, 2026 … write that date down. Christopher Nolan, yes that Christopher Nolan the one who produced Oppenheimer most recently, is releasing The Odyssey this summer in theatres. And this just may be the spark across generational lines this phenomenon is waiting for. Nolan drew inspiration from Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation, the first-ever English translation of the Odyssey by a woman. Wilson’s translation is praised for its modern, accessible English while preserving Homer’s meter. The film has already broken records: IMAX 70mm pre-sale tickets sold out in under an hour, generating over $1.5M in pre-sales nearly a year before release, with scalpers listing tickets above $200. Northeastern University film professor Tomas Elliott admitted: “This film being so popular so far out, in my opinion, really came out of nowhere”. I think we all may agree with that.
Unlike most films today, Nolan has explicitly chosen a “realistic interpretation of Greek mythology”, apparently there is not going to be any use of CGI fantasy, but grounded human suffering. Which may mirror exactly why the ancient text resonates with Gen Z who are skeptical of illusion.
Recall our opening discussion about the two young ladies at the café and me observing the fact that wasn’t the end of this generational observation? A few days later I was at another coffee shop where I see a lot of my friends, my age, and during the span of about an hour so, two friends approached me and asked what I was reading. Upon raising The Odyssey up from the table they almost word expressed the same sentiment that they HAD to read that in high school and are so glad they will never have to read it again! What a different response that was. You might say but Jim you’re reading it. And my answer to that is, ‘yea, and I suspect I know part of why this is all landing the way it is …’
Reading the classics as Prior commends forms moral character by training our moral imagination through slow, attentive inhabiting of virtue-ordered stories in which richly drawn lives, consequential choices, and the interplay of virtues and vices teach us to discern good from evil, sympathize with the truly good, and so gradually reshape our habits of perception, judgment, and desire. And here I am. At a moment when the black ships may sail yet again across generations…
Homer would be proud.
The Curious Table 