Where Three Roads Meet (Canongate Myths) [Hardcover]

Salley Vickers (Author)

Book Description

Series: Canongate Myths | Publication Date: November 1, 2007

At the end of his life, an old man waits in his office for a stranger to arrive. Over the next few weeks, Teiresias will visit again, making his way across the heath to relate the story of his life. As these two men sit together in front of a roaring fire, a remarkable tale unfolds.The compelling story of Oedipus, who, unknowingly, kills his father and marries his mother, is probably the most influential of all the Greek myths, having furnished Freud's theory of psychoanalysis. Bestselling novelist Salley Vickers, herself a former psychoanalyst, takes the ancient story of patricide and incest and explores it through the vision of Teiresias, the blind seer, who alone 'sees' the truth about the protagonists' terrible past and their place in the cosmic order. Salley Vickers says, "I am interested in what human beings believe they know and in fact don't know, which for me is the true tragedy of Oedipus. It is an utterly contemporary drama about the ways we blind ourselves to reality and the price we pay for knowledge."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist and psychologist Vickers (The Other Side of You) brings Sigmund Freud together with a vivid, loquacious Tiresias for an intriguing retelling of the Oedipus myth. Trained as a priest at Delphi, but blinded after a run-in with a nude Goddess,Tiresias narrates his part in the world's mostfamous family tragedy to Freud, the myth's most ardent modern popularizer, as Freud recovers from oral surgery. Vickers's Freud is congenial and gregarious, eager to hear the stories told by his sporadic (and possible imagined) visitor, most importantly the story of the place where three roads came together, and Oedipus and his father had their fateful meeting. Vickers's spare chronicle draws suspense and even new meaning from a foundational Western myth. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Review

"Gentleness of perception and sharpness of intellect... sustains you long after the last page." Bel Mooney, The Times "I am speechless with admiration." John Julius Norwich "Moving, utterly engrossing." Elena Seymenliyska, Guardian "She's a presence worth cherishing in the ranks of modern novelists." Philip Pullman"

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd (November 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841959863
• ISBN-13: 978-1841959863
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,190,903 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The seer and the analyst, November 15, 2007

By 

Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Where Three Roads Meet (Canongate Myths) (Hardcover)

This book is another volume in that excellent undertaking by Canongate to have ancient myths retold in a contemporary re-imagining. (See my Amazon reviews of Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad and Jeanette Winterson's Weight.) Here we have Tiresias, the blind seer of Greek Antiquity, paying several visits to Sigmund Freud in London in 1938 when Freud was in the last stages of his distressing cancer.

Tiresias plays a part in the myth of Oedipus, and in their conversation the meaning of the Oedipus myth, to which Freud had given one particular interpretation, is re-examined.

However, it takes some time for Tiresias to work round to the story of Oedipus. The first half of the book is more concerned with the story of Tiresias himself; how he was apprenticed to the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, how occasionally he acted not so much as a translator for the obscure sounds made by the Pythia when the god spoke through her, but found himself a direct vehicle for those revelations; how he was stricken blind by Athene and then left Delphi to become a peripatetic seer. The dialogue in this part of the book is entertaining, though not particularly challenging. Freud is shown as an extreme rationalist, interpreting every myth about the gods as displacements of infantile desire or as the need to rationalize natural injustice, and as rejecting the objective significance of visions. Tiresias is here, I think, a somewhat Jungian figure, for Jung would certainly differ from Freud in taking the truths of myths to be more profound than that; but I do think that the historical Freud had a little more respect for myths than is implied in this dialogue.

The book becomes deeper, I think, from around page 96. It begins, perhaps, with Salley Vickers' closer knowledge of Greek than Freud may have had. (Freud is quoted on p.23 as saying that his Greek `could be better'.) So the club-footed and boastful Oedipus, now the husband of his mother Jocasta, ignored the literal meaning of his name - `swollen [oidi] feet' (duly said by Freud to stand for the tumescent member) for `knowing [oida] foot', because he had been able to solve the feet-related riddle of the Sphinx. Tiresias interprets: `He has to know ... to avert a direr knowledge': the direr knowledge Oedipus had himself had from the oracle, that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother (who, he thought, were the king and queen of Corinth, who had adopted him when the queen had found him abandoned). The high drama of the scene where Oedipus discovers the truth is admirably conveyed in Teresias' telling; and the way Freud matches parts of his theories to the tale Tiresias has to tell is also very well done.

And then Salley Vickers introduces, through Tiresias, something of her own take into the story: Tiresias wonders why Freud had paid so little attention to Jocasta's side of the story: that Jocasta was glad that her husband had been killed since he had been, she thought, the only person who knew of their joint guilt in having tried to kill their son - yet at the same time that she must have known that the man who was now sharing her bed was actually her son. And Tiresias points out to Freud that Oedipus, at least, had not been subject to the Oedipus Complex: he had NOT wanted to kill his father and marry his mother. What drove him was, in the end, his insistence on knowing the terrible truth, which he wrested by threats from Tiresias and others. In the end, he no longer evaded the `direr knowledge' but insisted on learning that also, whatever the cost. Oedipus at the end was a stoic; and so too was Freud in his final suffering: the book portrays him as gentle, friendly, and ever curious. At the very end the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, called Oedipus, and (so Tiresias has it) the blind and crippled king became holy, the original meaning of that word being hale, healthy, whole. Freud would have agreed that that ought to be the ultimate result of self-knowledge.

This is a fine re-telling of the story, and the hard-back edition of the book is beautifully printed and a pleasure to handle.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing premise, well executed, February 20, 2009

By 

J. A Magill (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Where Three Roads Meet: The Myth of Oedipus (Myths, The) (Hardcover)

I am a sucker for the revisitation of old myths in new ways. Whether "God's Behaving Badly" which put the Greek Gods in a London flat, "The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break" where we find the monster is still alive and working as a short order cook, or Atwood's retelling of the Iliad and Odyssey from the perspective of Odysseus's wife in the wonderful "Penelopiad," I love reading authors riffs on these stories of my youth. With that disclosure, I cannot help but recommend "Where Three Roads Meet," Sally Vicker's creative and thought provoking work on Oedipus, the myth the complex, and the play.

At first glance, the premise appears both odd and in certain ways obvious. As Freud lays dying of mouth cancer, he is visited again and again by the blind prophet Tiresias. As the father of psychoanalysis slowly and painfully succumbs to his illness, the Greek ghost tell his life story, with a particular focus on the story of Oedipus. Critiquing Freud's theory, Tiresias examines the myth from different perspectives, wondering over various characters motivations and possible willful blindness, even as the dying genius must face his own morality.

One should note, that this novel is not for everyone. Composed entirely of dialogue between these two characters, it at times reads almost like a play, and a rather "talky" one at that. Readers unfamiliar or uninterested in the original Greek story and plays and/or uninterested in the history of psychoanalysis may feel the urge to put it down. In my reading, however, Vicker's has done a wonderful job, both in showing a remarkable depth of knowledge in her subject matter and offering it for consideration in an entirely fresh way. If you are inclined to choose to stand where three roads meet, you are sure to enjoy the view.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modern Myths, June 18, 2008

By 

Beverley Strong (Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Where Three Roads Meet (Canongate Myths) (Hardcover)

The previous reviewer has encapsulated the actual story so perfectly that there is absolutely no point in going over it. Salley Vickers is a very erudite writer with very obvious connections to the world of psychiatry and her prose in this book is brief and to the point, but I cannot say that I ENJOYED this book as it would take someone with a much deeper understanding of the subject than I have..I'm simply not up to it! I acknowledge her cleverness and writing skills so gave it five stars but was rather glad to finish the book.