Scott Huler Shares His Book, No-Man’s Lands
On UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, January 2, at 9:30 PM

When NPR contributor Scott Huler made one more attempt to get through James Joyce’s Ulysses, he had no idea it would launch an obsession with the book’s inspiration: the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey and the lonely homebound journey of its Everyman hero, Odysseus.

No-Man’s Lands is Huler’s funny and touching exploration of the life lessons embedded within The Odyssey, a legendary tale of wandering and longing that could be read as a veritable guidebook for middle-aged men everywhere. At age forty-four, with his first child on the way, Huler felt an instant bond with Odysseus, who fought for some twenty years against formidable difficulties to return home to his beloved wife and son. In reading The Odyssey, Huler saw the chance to experience a great vicarious adventure as well as the opportunity to assess the man he had become and embrace the imminent arrival of both middle age and parenthood.

But Huler realized that it wasn’t enough to simply read the words on the page—he needed to live Odysseus’s odyssey, to visit the exotic destinations that make Homer’s story so timeless. And so an ambitious pilgrimage was born . . . traveling the entire length of Odysseus’s two-decade journey. In six months.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Friday, January 2, at 9:30 PM, Huler shares his new book—part travelogue, part memoir, and part critical reading of the greatest adventure epic ever written—and explores its extraordinary description of two journeys—one ancient, one contemporary— revealing what The Odyssey can teach us about being better bosses, better teachers, better parents, and better people.

Huler doggedly retraced Odysseus’s every step, from the ancient ruins of Troy to his ultimate destination in Ithaca. On the way, he discovers the Cyclops’s Sicilian cave, visits the land of the dead in Italy, ponders the lotus from a Tunisian resort, and paddles a rented kayak between Scylla and Charybdis and lives to tell the tale. He writes of how and why the lessons of The Odyssey—the perils of ambition, the emptiness of glory, the value of love and family—continue to resonate so deeply with readers thousands of years later. And as he finally closes in on Odysseus’s final destination, he learns to fully appreciate what Homer has been saying all along: the greatest adventures of all are the ones that bring us home to those we love.

Don’t miss D.G. Martin’s engaging interview with Scott Huler on North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, January 2, at 9:30 PM, with an encore Sunday, January 4, at 5 PM.

During the 26-week season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests also include: Frances Mayes (A Year in the World), Rob Christensen (The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics), Robert Morgan (Boone), Eleanora Tate (Celeste’s Harlem Renaissance), Eric Wilson (Against Happiness), Wayne Caldwell (Cataloochee), Theda Perdue (The Cherokee Nation and The Trail of Tears), Bernie Harberts (Too Proud to Ride a Cow), Therese Fowler (Souvenir), Joe Glatthaar (General Lee’s Army), Nortin Hadler (Worried Sick), Anna Hayes (Without Precedent), Jean Anderson (A Love Affair with Southern Cooking), J.D. Rhoades (Breaking Cover), Nancy Peacock (A Broom of One’s Own), Louise Hawes (Black Pearls), Tony Earley (The Blue Star), Anna Rubino (Queen of the Oil Club) , Clyde Edgerton (The Bible Salesman), Sheila Moses (The Baptism), Martin Clark (The Legal Limit), William Link (Righteous Warrior), Nina De Gramont (Gossip of the Starlings), Roy Underhill (The Woodwright’s Guide) and Cindy H. Ramsey (Boys of the Battleship North Carolina).

For additional information about series guests and airdates, plus links to the Bookwatch blog and online book club, please visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other original productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.