‘A Modern Veteran’s Illiad’
Mt. Lebanon author draws on combat experience to pen book
War is hell.
That’s an idea that’s been hammered home in classic novels like “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and in movies like “Paths of Glory” and “Saving Private Ryan.” But the notion that war is not a romp packed with valor and glory but a nightmare of bloodshed and sorrow stretches back much further than these 20th century classics.
Somewhere around 750 B.C., more than 2,000 years before William Shakespeare pondered warfare in “Henry V,” the Greek poet Homer was working on “The Iliad,” an epic tale of combat that pits the warrior Achilles against King Agamemnon as the Trojan War rages. It’s a staple of high school and college literature courses, and Homer’s “Iliad” companion, “The Odyssey,” has been adapted for the big screen and is due to arrive this summer, starring Matt Damon and Robert Pattinson.
Josh Cannon, a Mt. Lebanon resident who is the director of research for the University of Pittsburgh’s David C. Frederick Honors College, has joined the ranks of scholars who have pondered “The Iliad,” and he is doing so through the lens of his own experience in a war zone. His recently published book, “Fatal Second Helen: A Modern Veteran’s Iliad,” puts forward the argument that, rather than glorifying war, “The Iliad” highlights how brutally destructive it is, on both a personal and societal level.
“I thought about ‘The Iliad’ and I thought about combat and I brought those two perspectives together,” Cannon said.
The biggest thing that Homer got right, Cannon explained, is that “combat is really terrible. It’s destroyed people and made them really miserable.”
He also points out that the warrior Achilles may on the surface seem valiant and heroic in “The Iliad,” but is ultimately a pretty miserable person. The notion of the relentless fighter who is, at heart, angry and despairing can be found in war movies of more recent vintage, such as the five Sylvester Stallone “Rambo” movies.
“He’s a pretty unhappy dude,” Cannon said of the Rambo character. “You can find that in any war story. … War is so inherently destructive, so inherently awful…”
In “The Odyssey,” Achilles winds up in the underworld, and makes the following observation: “I would prefer to be a workman, hired by a poor man on a peasant farm, than rule as king of all the dead.”
Cannon himself can attest to the stresses and destructiveness of war. Born in the Greene County community of Jefferson in 1982, Cannon graduated from Upper St. Clair High School in 2000 and arrived in Iraq as a member of the Marines in 2003, bringing a copy of “The Iliad” with him. He served two tours of duty in Iraq, where he was an Arabic cryptologic linguist.
The experience of learning Arabic and translating it helped stoke an interest in languages, and Cannon enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh when he returned from Iraq, majoring in linguistics and anthropology.
After completing his undergraduate studies, Cannon made his way to the University of Chicago. When he was there, Cannon joined the near eastern languages and civilizations program and his doctoral dissertation focused on ceramics traditions in Turkey. He also was an assistant coach for the University of Chicago’s wrestling squad and remains a fan of the sport, along with boxing and mixed martial arts.
In addition to his duties as a research director, Cannon also teaches in Pitt’s classics department.
“I really fell in love with learning languages,” he said.
More information on “Fatal Second Helen: A Modern Veteran’s Iliad” is available at veteransiliad.com.