"Oh, so many startlements...": History, Race, and Myth in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

[...]tired of dusting, my grandfather moved into commercial flying. [...]for me at least, and I suspect for many people of my post-World War II generation in the American South, O Brother, Where Art Thou? speaks in a particular way, as if some of its scenes linger on the verge of memory, as if it is family history, or might have been, as if Ulysses Everett McGill is the paterfamilias of us all. [...]the plot of The Odyssey, with its tall-tale-telling hero and his fantastic exploits, is so ingrained in the cultural consciousness that even if one didn't 6 Reviews of O Brother recalled the 1941 film Sullivan's Travels, in which a film director famous for his comedies decides to make a more serious film—to be entitled O Brother, Where Art Thou? [...]he is sent to a labor camp much like, we might imagine, the one in O Brother (though it is even more reminiscent of the camp in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang).