Our Achilles' heel

The recent killing of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas — allegedly at the hands of Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — has had pundits reaching back to Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" for the appropriate metaphors in understanding the warrior's psyche and post-traumatic stress disorder. They are not off-base. The brilliant psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, who has devoted his life to treating Vietnam War and Persian Gulf War veterans with PTSD, has used the Homerian epics in his practice and in two books, "Achilles in Vietnam" and "Odysseus in America."

It helps, of course, that Homer has been in the news of late, with Caroline Alexander's new book, "The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's 'Iliad' and The Trojan War" (Viking). Still, I find it rather rich. Ours is the same society that has sneered at dead white male poets like Homer since the 1960s. They're all part of European colonial imperialism, the thinking goes. So it follows that their works are no good, in the same way that if you have a hangnail, you should amputate the whole hand.

Now, however, we're in trouble. So we look to the arts and history for comfort. Except that being undereducated, we understand history and the arts imperfectly. Thus, the lessons we draw are not necessarily the best.

Even Caroline Alexander — whose "The Endurance," about Ernest Shackleton's heroic Antarctic voyage, is one of the most moving books I've read — misses the point. To say that "The Iliad" is about the futility of war is like saying "Hamlet" is a tragedy of indecision. "The Iliad" — the only surviving work of a much larger cycle about the Trojan War — is about the rage of Achilles, the Greeks' best warrior, who's been dissed by his nincompoop commander, Agamemnon. (For a great modern interpretation, check out the novel and the movie "From Here To Eternity," with go-it-alone Pvt. Prewitt as Achilles, go-along-to-get-along Sgt. Warden as Odysseus and trophy-obsessed Capt. Holmes as Agamemnon.)

Given its real subject, "The Iliad" has more in common with today's layoffs than with Fort Hood, unless, of course, we discover — and I suspect we will — that Hasan felt disrespected.

How did we get to the point, however, where we trot out history and the arts only in times of tragedy? That is the real question. The answer is that we are a meritocracy of mediocrity — a nation of strivers for the middle. (Hence the success of Sarah "Just Folks" Palin.) We always have been. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's enlightening "American Stories" show quotes 18th-century portrait painter John Singleton Copley grumbling about artists being considered nothing more than utilitarian craftsmen.

We like the useful and the practical, because we believe they lead to prosperity. The aspirational, not so much.

Nonetheless, up through the Kennedy Administration, we acknowledged that there was a place for so-called classical culture in pop culture. Then came the late '60s. Homer was out. Working women were in. And the arts lost many of those volunteers who served on the committees and raised the funds. (I'm sorry, but men have never been the backbone in the grassroots effort to promote culture.)

The '70s saw the beginning of cuts in arts education, which was dealt a coup de grace by the Reaganauts, who equated the arts with louche elitism. In the '90s, the rise of digital technology meant anyone could be a filmmaker, singer, artist or writer. No need for professionals. We now have an army of citizen celebrities at long last able to exploit their bottomless talent for exhibitionism.

So the arts — as well as history, which is wrongly considered the past, rather than the story of the past — are misjudged and underestimated. Like Achilles.

Let's hope they have a better outcome.