The Odyssey is the story of someone who, in the course of diverse experiences, acquires a personality or affirms and recovers his personality.

Ulysses finds himself unchanged, aside from his experience, at the end of his odyssey.

Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.

One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey.

It doesn't seem to me that anyone has discovered much that's new since the Iliad or the Odyssey.

It seems to me that an author who has determined very new domains in literature is Gertrude Stein.