The Road to Delphi: Scenes from the History of Oracles [Hardcover]

Michael Wood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 14, 2003

An erudite, eloquent, and wide-ranging examination of oracles by one of our most creative literary critics

For thousands of years, and in many different cultures, cities, and states, individuals have consulted oracles in time of need. In this fascinating exploration of the history and enduring popularity of oracles, Michael Wood examines how they are interpreted and why.
The inherent ambiguity of many oracular pronouncements and the ingenuity and tendentiousness of many readings of them form the basis for Wood’s analyses of oracles, both real and imagined. Using examples from actual oracles at Delphi, Dodona, and in pre-Hispanic America to fictional—but influential—oracles in literature from Oedipus to Macbeth, Wood combines storytelling and commentary to provide an entertaining and concise account of humanity’s persistent faith in signs. He also looks at later instances of oracles, arguing that consultations have evolved in many ways over the years, and that echoes and survivals of old practices in modern literature and popular culture—in the works of Kafka and in the film The Matrix, as well as in astrology columns—continue to exert an important influence over human civilization.

Lively, engaging, and remarkably revealing, The Road to Delphi shows an ancient art at work in many times and places, and invites us to think again about the ways in which we deal with our longing for the certainties we know we can’t have.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The oracular tradition is an immensely rich and provocative subject, and literary critic Wood's wide-ranging and penetrating scrutiny is cogently philosophical, keenly aesthetic, and gratifyingly entertaining. The allure of oracle stories resides in the fact that ambiguity and skepticism are intrinsic to the proceedings: the pronouncements of oracles tend to take the form of unsolvable riddles and puns. As Wood ponders the perverse inscrutability of prophecies, he wonders if fate is escapable, muses over "our need for stories of equivocation," and places "the labor of interpretation" high among humankind's most persistent habits of being. The story of Oedipus is Wood's touchstone, and he adeptly parses an array of interpretations from the classics to the work of Stravinsky. He traces the fate of oracles after Christ, analyzes the role of oracles in Shakespeare and Kafka, then delves into such lesser yet nonetheless effective vehicles as The Matrix. What emerges most poignantly from Wood's imaginative and learned inquiry is a renewed appreciation of our species' creativity and contrariness, and the universal and timeless power of stories. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Michael Wood’s The Road to Delphi is a refreshingly original and sometimes startling re-reading of oracles, from ancient ambiguities on through Shakespeare to our current perplexities of medicine and terrorism. For Wood, the gods keep returning, but only to confound us."
--Harold Bloom

"If not an oracular pronouncement, then a source of terrific and myriad pleasures. Michael Wood’s The Road to Delphi is all that and then some."
--James McManus, author of Positively Fifth Street

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (August 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374526109
• ISBN-13: 978-0374526108
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,574,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Starts fine; falls off, September 7, 2008

By 

John Nordin (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road to Delphi: The Life and Afterlife of Oracles (Paperback)

Has ever a book started so wonderfully and then died off so quickly? The first 30 or so pages are wonderful, full of striking insights ("Fears and hopes change as history changes, and so do the relations between fears and hopes. But the balancing of fears and hopes is a human constant.") and setting the stage for a mythic book about a mysterious subject.

And then it all dissolves into an incoherent muddle of random observations and overlong discussions. You first begin to wonder when he goes on and on and on about the Oedipus story and in particular the road junction that affected his fate. Eventually, you begin to realize that he is not going to discuss the afterlife of oracles at all, other than how a smattering of later literary figures used them.

The scope of the book is, therefore, a purely literary assessment of oracles. No real input from the realm of history, anthropology or sociology, to say nothing of theology. No discussion of Delphi's real history at all, actually. He does not try to assess the place of Delphi in ancient culture, nor why that changed over time. It is true that his literary references come from a wide range of cultures and periods, but, just because of that, it is not clear how they add up into anything.

Even more frustrating, at least to me, is that two striking things about Delphi that seem to us moderns to be real anomalies - the inaccuracy of some of the oracles and the occasional political corruption of the oracle - are not discussed in any depth. That Delphi urged Athens not to resist Persia, that Athens inverted the oracle to support its policy, and that Delphi was still venerated after Athens won would seem worth a look in, but is ignored.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elegant, startling and refreshingly original, September 6, 2008

By 

Susanna Duffy (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Road to Delphi: Scenes from the History of Oracles (Hardcover)

It's a delight to pick up a book of this calibre. As Wood explores the depth and breadth of the ten ancient oracles he tells a vivid tale encompassing Kafka, Oedipus Rex, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, The Matrix and Macbeth, as well as Delphi, Dionysus and popular horoscopes. The Road to Delphi : Scenes from the History of Oracles is elegant, startling and refreshingly original. I couldn't put it down.

13 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very very good, August 18, 2004

By 

K. Kehler (B.C., Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road to Delphi: Scenes from the History of Oracles (Hardcover)

This is an enjoyable book, one which can be read straight through or left at one end of the sofa and picked up and continued when the mood strikes one. Or when the omens are promising. The author is learned and writes gracefully, evoking an earlier age -- or many earlier ages -- when literary critics and scholars wrote lucid, elegant, and insightful prose for their peers as well as for the educated -- or simply the interested -- general reader.

I won't say much about the topic, oracles, except to say that we homo sapiens seem to have a rather persistent propensity to be afflicted by oracle-ism: a kind of prophetic wisdom, at odds with commonsensical or empirical knowledge, and therefore acquired on the cheap. And convincing because it implies a flattering interest in us by significant powers.