Waiting for the barbarians : essays on the classics and pop culture / by Daniel Mendelsohn.

Spectacles. The wizard (James Cameron's Avatar) ; Truth force at the Met (Philip Glass's Satyagraha) ; Why she fell (Julie Taymor's Spider-man) ; The dream director (Aleksandr Sokurov's The sun) ; The mad men account (Man men) ; Unsinkable (why we can't let go of the Titanic) -- Classica. Battle lines (Stephen Mitchell's Iliad) ; In search of Sappho (Anne Carson's If not, winter) ; Arms and the man (the Landmark Herodotus) ; The strange music of Horace (J.D. McClatchy's Horace, the odes) ; Oscar Wilde, classics scholar ; Epic endeavors (three novels on the classics) -- Creative writing. After Waterloo (Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma) ; Heroine addict (the novels of Theodor Fontane) ; Rebel rebel (the poems of Arthur Rimbaud) ; The Spanish tragedy (Antonio MunÌoz Molina's Sepharad) ; In gay and crumbling England (Alan Hollinghurst's The stranger's child) ; Transgression (Jonathan Littell's The kindly ones) -- Private lives. But enough about me (the memoir craze) ; His design for living (NoeÌl Coward's Letters) ; On the town (Leo Lerman's diaries) ; Zoned out (Jonathan Franzen's The discomfort zone) ; Boys will be boys (Edmund White's City boy) ; The collector (Susan Sontag's Reborn).