“Once something is textualised…” - that’s true of course. But for me the greatest idea in West’s Making of the Iliad (and probably in the Odyssey book too, when we’ll have it) is to problematise the very process of textualisation without calling everything that’s out of place an interpolation.
And yes, probably the papyri reflect living tradition too - rhapsodic interpolation and all that.
Stop making me exciting for a book that’s far, far, away from release. It was bad enough with the Skafte-Jensen book which was difficult for me to get hold of. This is West!