Head Above Water

Upon encountering a cabbage floating in the River Thames, the main character in Russell Hoban’s The Medusa Frequency hallucinates: the cabbage becomes the severed head of Orpheus, drifting in the current, murmuring stories. An image that borders on the absurd, almost comical. According to myth, after the Maenads, raving female followers of Dionysos, tear Orpheus […]