Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate English major, I took a course titled “The Epic Tradition.” We read, in this order, “The Iliad,” “The Odyssey,” “The Aeneid,” “The Inferno,” and “Beowulf.” Self-evidently, this was back in the days when you could claim you were teaching “The Epic Tradition” when what you were really teaching was “The Western European Epic Tradition.” That said, it was a cool course, with a good teacher and fun lectures and discussions. It’s one of the courses I remember best from my college days.Of the poems we read, my favorite by far was “The Odyssey,” Homer’s magnificent story of homecoming, longing, and loss. It has everything: heart, humor, a complex hero, domestic scenes alternating with (and sometimes turning into) battle sequences, embedded myths and legends, women who matter, and, of course, monsters. I teach the poem to this day (the Emily Wilson translation, which I find more student-friendly than the quite good Robert Fagles translation I used before hers was published), and I get more out of it every time I dive back in.Regarding the rest of the texts: I found “The Aeneid” as boring as all Roman rip-offs of Greek originals are, “The Inferno” amusing for Dante’s habit of putting his political enemies in hell but far too theologically oriented for my taste, and “Beowulf” basically a shorter, Anglo-Saxon version of “The Odyssey.” I teach it too (the Seamus Heaney translation), and it continues to grow on me.I absolutely hated “The Iliad.” I drew a few pictures based on scenes in the story, but that was only because drawing scenes from stories was what I did in those days as I prepared for my dream career as a professional comic-book artist. (Never happened, thanks for asking.) I can’t recall why I modeled Athena on the Statue of Liberty. There must have been a reason.Artwork aside, I found the text not only tedious but inane. Endless gory battles cataloguing the thousands of ways one human being can kill another; equally endless catalogues of armies and leaders and soldiers who don’t matter one bit because they all get slaughtered anyway; two equally annoying and cartoonish main characters, Achilles and Agamemnon, the former a pampered, pissy frat boy and the latter an egotistical fathead who likes to demean his subordinates while they’re out there getting killed for his sake; women who matter as little as a male writer can make them not matter; and nary a decent monster anywhere to be found. When the class was over, I couldn’t sell the book back fast enough.But what the hell, I decided to re-read it this year. There were two reasons I did so: a.) Emily Wilson came out with a new translation of it, and b.) I wondered if I missed something when I was eighteen. Here’s what I discovered.I missed nothing. It’s 600+ pages of drivel. The vaunted “wrath of Achilles” stuff is no better than Victorian melodrama, while the immortals (even Athena, who’s so marvelous in “The Odyssey”) are insufferable blowhards, braggarts, and buffoons. There’s no tension, no center, no character who’s remotely worth caring about. Today the Trojans are winning, tomorrow the Greeks are, but who gives a damn? Instead of being a master storyteller as he is in his own poem, Odysseus is a two-bit bum, a sleazy sidekick who skulks around scheming and insulting everyone. The extended similes for which Homer is justly renowned—my favorite being the one in “The Odyssey” where he likens Odysseus stringing his bow to a muse plucking his lyre—are so pervasive and overblown in “The Iliad” they start to seem like self-parodies, with hundreds of examples along the lines of: “Just as [Natural Phenomenon X] does [whatever Natural Phenomenon X does], so did [Greek or Trojan Warrior Y] do [whatever Greek or Trojan Warrior Y does].” Oh, so armies marching are like waves? Or storm clouds? Or maybe sheep? Or was it lions eating sheep? Thank you, I did not know that. Neither of the two artists involved, Homer or Wilson, can salvage this mess. They couldn’t sustain my interest for 100 pages, much less six times that length.The lesson? Even great writers can write bad books. Homer was no hack, but he should have left “The Iliad” in his sock drawer. He’s not around to read my review, so no harm done. But the rest of you: unless you can’t wait to fall asleep every night for three straight weeks during the act of reading, leave this stinker for the Classicists and sadists. Who, it seems, are one and the same.