Gilgamesh Redux: a poetic cycle

by John David Ebert

Gilgamesh Redux is a retelling of the ancient Babylonian epic in modern contemporary poetic idiom. The tale of one man's quest to defeat mortality has been rendered in a surrealistic poetic style that is evocative of the literary styles of such contemporary writers as Jose Saramago, Cormac McCarthy or William Burroughs. It is a fantastic journey through the crumbling ancient land of an archaic Mesopotamia. The tales of the forebears of Gilgamesh--those of his father Lugalbanda and his grandfather Enmerkar--have also been included in order to tell the epic history of the rise and fall of the solar dynasty of the city of ancient Uruk.

Genres: Poetry

156 pages, Paperback

Published April 14, 2017

About the author

John David Ebert is a cultural critic and the author of 26 books. He has a series of videos and audio albums on various philosophers posted on YouTube, Google Play and two websites: cinemadiscourse.com and cultural-discourse.com.

Reviews

[Brian M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost Grimdark in writing style. Ebert’s prose is impressive and illuminating. His telling of this story adds so much in the way of prefacing context to the hero Gilgamesh and further pushes and retells the story for a new generation of readers and audience.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was scared to read this. I'm well aquatinted with Ebert and when I asked if he wrote a novel he directed me to this. I bought it. I told him. He wanted to know what I thought when I finished. That made me nervous. Knowing an artist of any medium can often suck, especially when they look to you for opinions. But this doesn't suck. In fact, I was relieved. Ebert can write. He's incredible at it.

Behold, Gilgamesh. The ancient Sumerian story re-written in some weird combination of poetry and prose with the core story untouched and unmolested completely. Ebert's. style takes a page or two to get used to and after that it reads like butter and is a huge joy. Taking McCarthy's style a step further he forsakes all symbols of grammar making a natural flow of text. One thing that really stuck out to me was his use of minerals and rocks as adjectives, creatively too. His knowledge of Sumerian life is so great I honestly felt like he was holding back from vomiting and diluting the story into a historical lesson but this never once happens in fact the story is kept pretty bare, all kill no filler save a few chapters of travel which are a joy to read.

The story itself is a joy and surprised me by how funny it was, relievingly so. Won't say much more than that, since I don't want to spoil it. I had a lot of fun reading it.

Ebert definitely deserves more recognition.