THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE: STUDENTS' CLASSICS PARODY GETS SERIOUS ATTENTION

A new tongue-in-cheek book written by two Maryland graduate students offers advice on how aspiring heroes from ancient Greece can win fame, glory and immortality among the stars.

By Stacy Jones, Between the Columns
Published Wednesday, March 10, 2010

It’s not easy for the average Greek warrior to get a constellation named after him.

But a new tongue-in-cheek book written by two Maryland graduate students offers advice on how aspiring heroes from ancient Greece can win fame, glory and immortality among the stars.

Heather Day ’09 M.A. and Erika Carlson ’10 M.A. claim they merely unearthed and translated the teachings of Chiron the Centaur in “The Mythical Warrior’s Handbook: Outsmart Athena, Slay Medusa, Impress Zeus, and Claim Your Place in the Pantheon of the Gods.”

“The dirty little secret of the book is that it’s terrible to be a Greek hero,” Carlson says. “Their life peaks when they slay a Minotaur and then they don’t have anything else to do.”

The book was released last month, after the authors signed a contract with a publishing company that had seen the women’s first collaboration: the “Facebook Aeneid,” an inside joke among classics majors that went viral.

Carlson and Day were teaching assistants a year ago who were having a hard time getting their students as excited about ”The Aeneid” and “The Odyssey.”

The pair saw a Facebook news feed adaptation of “Hamlet,” and realized that all the drama in “The Aeneid” would be pair well with Facebook status updates like, “Cassandra has a bad feeling about this” and “Odysseus gave the Trojans a horse.”

Their March 2009 parody caught on fast in the small world of classics students and teachers, with Day getting compliments from a fan in Russia, a blog post in the Rutgers University classics department calling the creation “genius” And Gawker.com describing it as “brilliant.”

Adams Media, a Cincinnati publishing company, agreed and sought out the pair to execute its idea for the book.

“Heather and Erika really knew all the ins and outs and twists and turns of Greek mythology, allowing them to have fun presenting it to the reader in a humorous way—which is exactly what I was hoping the content to be, entertaining yet informative,” says their editor, Brendan O’Neill.

The book reads like a beginners’ guide for would-be heroes, touching on topics like beating the Gorgon, getting in good with Apollo and what to do after all the excitement is over.

“We did it with magic, no sleep and lots of soda,” Day says. “We divided up the work. Once I officially left Maryland and I was starting teaching, for every meeting I was at, I had a notebook with me and I was jotting down ideas.”

She teaches high school Latin in Milton, Pa. Carlson, who will finish her degree in May, is looking for a job as a Latin teacher. Neither expected to write a book so early in their careers.

Carlson says she’d like to keep writing, perhaps novels or poems. Even if she doesn’t publish again, Day says, the book has brought her some welcome attention.

“My students have been really excited, asking me if they’ll get extra credit if they buy it,” she says, “and it’s been a great talking point at the bar.”

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