Book Review - If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi

Primo Levi started his writing career before his incarceration in Auschwitz although it would seem only two short stories, which later appeared in The Periodic Table, survive. His ouvre consists mainly of memoirs and poetry. It wasn't until 1984 when  "If Not Now, When?" was written that Levi as a writer emerged. In this towering book we finally hear his proper authorial voice.

His sentences are beautiful and his paragraphs so well balanced that reading this work is almost effortless and at the same time almost endlessly satisfying and while the book ostensibly chronicles the wanderings and adventures of a group of mainly Jewish partisans in the rubble of the rout of Third Reich forces in Europe at the end of WWII there are other ways to read it. It is only when Levi finally turned to the novel form that he grudgingly gave the reader a valid role in his writing.

Although Levi was lionised for his memoirs and essays the justification for such heavy praise was, in this writer's opinion, chiefly based in the guilt that the non-Jewish readership felt after WWII and a fellow feeling among literary critics but this late work shows Levi in a more reflective and less polemical mind.   

Where his previous work concentrated on memorialising the horrors of the German project to annihilate Jewry "If Not Now, When?" examines the nature of resistance and integrity in the face of overwhelming circumstances and emphasises the humanity of its characters - the rich, the generous, the flawed, and sometimes hateful humanity of them.    

I was left wondering as I read this superb work whether Levi had finally come to terms with the reality that the holocaust had been something other than the unique, singularly evil, historically anomalous event that he had always portrayed. By 1984 Vietnam and the Cambodian genocide were already historically attested. By 1984 the disgraceful treatment of the Palestinians  was into its third decade and the first Lebanon War was over. The Sabra and Shatila Masacre was history by 1984.

For this reader the regular references throughout  "If Not Now, When?" to Palestine as the ultimate escape destination for his brave partisans are signifiers. His partisans talk of Palestine but never the Palestinians. Palestine is theirs by right. In Palestine the horrors of the holocaust can finally be laid to their proper historical resting place - burnt into the racial memory of mankind, never to be repeated and in this light the title and its context is oddly, macabrely ironic.

Book Review - Vanishing Point by Aristoteles Nikolaidis

Three pages into this fascinating book I found that it was taking me a very long time to read each page. Published in 1975 it won Greece's very first National Book Award for a novel and documents the supposed disappearance of an individual during the times of the Greek civil war and general unrest after world war 2. So why was it taking so long? It wasn't until I came upon myself late at night mentally rephrasing sections of text painstakingly into a modern voice that  I worked out what was wrong. I could almost hear the author's text struggling to get out of a frighteningly wooden translation and have its say.

Let me say straightway that I thought of giving up there and then. But what I had already read piqued my interest so much that I persevered. The underlying book rolls gracefully along examining the nature of identity and reality, starting with, but not limiting itself to, the identity of the narrator while the juggernaut of the translation chugs on above it. The final section covers the very personal nature of paranoia and leaves the reader wondering about the possibility of any coherent reality in the 20th century.

I would love to read a sympathetic translation of this book - I think it is an important book of modern Greek literature - an important novel of 20th century European literature. I would not recommend it though, to any but the brave in its current form.

Black Olive 2

Establishing shot : a large, well maintained villa surrounded by extensive gardens (think Chateau Gilly). Swimming pool - a surreal blue to one side - two male figures are visible. One end of the house has a turret or tower. Coral is shown, back to camera wearing a blindingly white bath robe and shabby red espadrilles, walking into the front door, a large pair of arched  doors surrounded by stone lintels. Zoom into the archway - shot darkens as she travels down a dark corridor. Pull back and pan left to a stone in the arch - vague shape visible - zoom in to roughly carved figure of a bee on a lavender blossom. Cut to Coral at exactly the same place in the corridor as when we left her. Her right hand reaches out and across to the door handle to her left and lightning cuts the shot - she disappears into the room - fade to black.

Interior shot of study - a triple aspected room but only one shutter is ajar. A dark green room with gold paintwork and ceiling. The walls are lined with bookshelves - mainly empty. Zoom in on  a small stand of books - pan the spines - one female author only. Cut to Coral sitting at her desk staring into a computer screen. Zoom over her shoulder - during the zoom she becomes flatter almost two dimensional. On the screen is a Facebook page populated by crude cartoon characters. From here on the film looks like a cross between real life and classic comic strip (think Scott McCloud  - meets Edward Tufte). Sound of a skype call coming in - focus as skype notification window pops open and is clicked to accept. Two windows side by side open - Coral right and a shadowy woman sitting in part darkness left. Cut back and forth in talking heads style - panning and zooming during the following dialogue.

C: Hi Jane, how are things with you?
J: Everything is good here Coral - how is the new book coming? Don't forget we're due first draft by the start of August. Is that doable?

C puts her hands to her face - the old hands and as she takes them away we have a smiling young C.

C: It's going very well Jane - it'll be ready - don't worry about it - would I let you down? ... have I ever? I'm putting a chapter down every couple of weeks.
J: You aren't letting the facebook thing get in the way are you? You seem to be on there a lot.  I'm looking after that end of the operation.
C: I like the feedback - they all love me over there - it's good for my ego ... but ... it doesn't get in the way ... promise
J: I've got you another book fair gig ...
C interrupts: they are known as literary festivals not book fairs Jane ...
C smiles broadly and her face lights up
C; you got me Hay? Tell me you got me Hay and I'll love you forever.

J leans into the screen and points a finger threateningly
J: you aren't ready for Hay ... when you're ready I'll let you know but that isn't now ... get me? I got you Appledore ---------- now say thank you

Shot of Coral, the older Coral looking away abashed ... suddenly she becomes animated.

C: Hold on Jane there is someone requesting membership - I'll just have a look ...

We come out of the screen and look over C's shoulder again
C minimizes J's window and brings up FB again - an FB profile picture (the Costa Gavras image but in Scott McCloud fashion). 

C mumbling to herself: guy ... lavender ... olives ... Crete ....

We see her click on the accept button and then she reopens Jane's window.

J: Coral stop messing around with facebook and get your head into this conversation - I'll decide who we admit
C: ... but this was a guy Jane ... we don't have enough guys ... I don't want to be known as a girly writer ... anyway, I accepted him ... he's got olives and a lavender farm and he's in Crete ... he's our new demographic
J: All right ... he sounds OK ... not a stalker ... now about Appledore ... it's in Devon somewhere ... that's the west country right?
C: I DO know where Appledore is Jane ... even if you don't ... but I've never heard of their literary festival ... when is it?
J: September ... October
C: OK OK I'll do it but when do I get Hay?
J leans into the screen again - menacingly -
J: damn right you'll do it ... I booked you so you'll do it miss ............. and ..... you still haven't said thank you
J: I'm waiting ...
C sheepishly: Thank you Jane ........... who else is doing Appledore?
J: Oh Coral I don't know ... a pair of has been politicians ... the guy in the white suit and some ex-commie ... oh yeah and the guy who used to be Children's Laureate - what's his name? Oh never mind ... It's not bad ... B list stuff but you'll be fine.
J rushes on
J: Anyway darling I have to go I'm due at the office so I'll love you and leave you and you just get your nose back down to the olive stone OK.
Her window goes blank and the call hang up.
Shot over Cs shoulder looking at her own window forlornly on screen.

C: Shit , shit,  shit.

Fade out. 

Black Olive - first scenes

Tracking shot - deep blue mediterranean sea - the bay of Cannes - heading toward the beach - think The Big Blue opening - thru the beach at a slower pace - lots of topless women and muscle bound bronzed men - cameos for RdeN and Beatrice Dalle and anyone else we can rustle up (possibly Christopher Timothy? nice ironical tone there) - across the croissete - a red Citroen DS with a pink paint stain on the bonnet that has a hood ornament crosses the lens left to right with Jean Reno driving (wearing the Enzo specs from TBB) - camera passes into an upward sweep through varied appropriate landscape and into a dense olive grove ( lots of drupes)  where the blinding light of Southern France dims. Camera at this point is maybe 3 feet from the ground - a lizard scuttles across right to left - we detect a figure at the left of screen - back shot surrounded by bougainevillea as we close in and finally stop 4 feet away. 

Hold for 5 seconds as Coral slowly turns to camera. Set up is identical to Alice's Olive goddess. Zoom to gnarled, stained hands - long nails - perfect French manicure - pan to right hand ring finger - ring in the shape of a treble clef - delicate against the finger - pan up - past cleavage to face - smiling Mona Lisa like - no make up - close in. Very close. Lightning cuts the frame behind Coral top to bottom - fade to the young Coral - and back - dissolve to Alice's Olive goddess and back again - and again - her mouth opens and with a slight delay - as in a badly synched movie we hear "Michel, Michel, is the pool clean?".

Cut to Michel by the pool - he is supervising Quasimodo who is wearing an odd, incongruous hat and who is scooping dead bees from the water - zoom to dead bees as the scoop approaches - a dead bee fills the entire screen. Hold for 3 seconds - focus on the wet hairs on the body - switch to B/W. Cut to Michel's face. His mouth opens - same time lag. Close shot of moustache. "Nearly - perhaps 5 more minutes" - he says this in French - volume is up 3 settings- subtitles slide in from the right. Quasimodo continues to scoop bees. The pool is very very blue. Camera  zooms in on and then into the pool between the bee bodies.

Cut to camera reversing out of the water. A lithe body splashes past. Michel and Quasimodo are watching the young Coral doing lengths of breast stroke from side on - as are we. Her hair billows out behind her - only the ends are wet. Shot from Coral's viewpoint -  a strange looking woman stands at the end of the pool - hair long, grey and very much awry. The young Coral turns at the end of the pool ignoring the psychic. Cut to psychic's POV - she shouts something incomprehensible as Coral reaches the opposite end. A bee crosses the camera right to left. Coral turns and it is the current Coral who comes back toward the camera. She pulls herself out of the pool - psychic POV - C is so close that the image blurs - she shakes her hair.
Talking heads shot.

"What is it?"
"Mrs D you must be very careful ... trouble is coming your way ... I dreamt of you last night ... there is a man ... he will turn your life upside down ... a man with blonde hair ... but he is not of this world ... you have not met him yet ..."
Coral cuts her off - holding her hand up
"Slow down ... explain ... what are you saying ... who is this man that I should be ... what is it I must be careful about ... ?" She runs her hand through her hair, shaking droplets off.
"He is fair but he is dangerous ... he also lives with olives ... be very careful ... he has powers ... he can bring the nearly dead back to life ..."
Enter left Michel looking distressed
Corall, what is it? You have gone so pale ... so wan ... what is it ... what has this woman ... this witch,  said?"
The psychic turns to Michel. Switch between M and Psychic shots,  to C reaction shots

"I dreamt of her .. there is danger monsieur ... there is a man coming to her ... he will turn her life upside down ... he will loose the spirits ... chaos will be hers"
"You had a dream ... had you been drinking again? ... the pastis? ... you should stay away from it .. you know it gives you wild dreams ... " his voice rises "Quasimodo! Take this lady back to her house ... she needs to rest ... she is .... not herself"

Enter left Quasimodo, his hat is pushed back, he is mopping his brow and squinting. He puts his arm around the psychic's shoulder and leads her off left
"Come on ma'm'selle ... you need to rest Monsieur Michel says so."

Camera follows them.

The Mediterranean Diet revisited

Back in 2005 I wrote an article for a British magazine about the diet and longevity of the Cretan population. On hearing recently that Greece is set to top next years European obsesity tables I thought to check out what I had written all those years ago so I dug it out this morning and oddly prescient it proves to have been.

Given that the original work that gave rise to the notion of "The Mediterranean Diet" as being a healthy lifestyle choice was undertaken on Crete some 40 years ago perhaps this reprint might prompt some further thought on diet in general.

Rather than update the piece as a whole let me just note a few developments since the original publication:
Starbucks and McDonalds have opened here;
food shops carry much more processed and convenience food than heretofore;
internet gaming cafes have become prevalent;
many of the traditional eating patterns have been disrupted;
Pavlos died peacefully last year of heart failure;
Jiannis still cycles to and from the village most days.

Here is the original article:

THE CRETAN DIET AND LONG LIFE

The grapes are in. The proto raki is ready. The olives are clearly visible on the trees, their leaves showing silver in the autumn breezes. Georgi Nikolarakis leans back on his chair and smiles, his eyes light up. Here is a man about to mount a hobby horse. The Cretans like little better than holding forth: unless it is eating. Of course this inevitably means that they have learned to combine the two. Given that the topic here is food then we have a pretty perfect discourse coming.
Georgi, an avuncular man with a full beard and a weather beaten complexion, opened his taverna back before Georgioupolis was a tourist destination, when only independent travellers and beleagured hippies turned up at this end of the 11 mile beach that is the Gulf of Almyros.

"Why," I have asked him "do Cretans live so long?"

"Maybe they do and maybe they don't. The last generation lived longer than my generation and as for the kids today --- who knows: they eat so much rubbish! When I was a child my mother would give me stakka for my breakfast: spread on a slice of black bread. Only rich people had white bread. (Stakka is the solidified cream from sheeps milk and is something like condensed milk but stronger in flavour. All brown breads in Crete are called black.). If I was lucky I'd have honey spread on top. My aunty used to live in Xania (the nearest city) and sometimes she would bring white bread for us, it was a special treat but Mikhaili's mother, Mikhaili from Creta Corner, used to bake a bread from rye that had lots of hard bits in it and all the kids would smell it from far away and come and beg for it. Bread is at the centre of every Cretan meal. Bread and olives. And salad. Fresh salad from the garden."

The garden in a Cretan village home is always given over to herbs, vegetables, fruits. and salad crops. The flowers are grown in tubs, pots, old tins. The soil is reserved for things you can eat: and that includes chickens and maybe even a pig. The flowers are extraordinarily well cared for, dazzlingly beautiful, and ingeniously grown but the garden is strictly reserved for edibles.

"The workers in the villages," Georgi continues, "often started the day with no more than a hunk of bread, some olives and a glass of malotiras (mountain tea). And then they would go off to work with maybe a piece of cheese and another hunk of bread in their pockets. You remember Pavlos? Pavlos the drinker. He was a big drinker. He was always in Tito's: always drinking wine but he always had bread and some cheese in his pocket that he would eat while he was drinking. When he was eighty some he was knocked down by a car; they said he was drunk but when wasn't he? When he died they cut him up and the doctors said he had the liver of an eighteen year old. Even my granny who was 106 and a teetotaller had a glass of wine with her breakfast: fresh juices and a glass of wine. She married my grandfather when he was 82 and she was 28 and they had 5 children - all healthy. The stakka, is good for the potency. So are artichokes; you just pull off the spiky leaves and eat the artichoke raw with lemon and salt. They turn your lips and tongue brown and they make you windy but they are good for the heart and the potency."

What about meat? Does meat play a big part in Cretan diet? Lamb is eaten everywhere in tavernas but what of the village people? Do they eat much meat?

"Mountain people have always eaten meat once a week and fish once a week. And snails. Snails are good for cancer: it's the calcium. Do snails count as meat? Most families would have a cow or two and some chickens and maybe a pig. And when you kill an animal you eat everything. You don't waste anything and you don't feed bits of the dead animal to the other animals like they did in England. Look what that got them. Now, with the common market, it's become more difficult. Rules about who can kill animals makes it difficult. I would never eat the liver and spleen from a butcher shop animal. I don't know what it's been eating. When your neighbour killed out a pig or a goat you knew it was clean. The same with the chickens. Why are chickens in supermarkets all the same size? Why am I not allowed to buy eggs from my neighbour? I know his chickens are happy and properly free range. It makes me angry, you know, when English people say Greek food is greasy. Look at all the dead animal fat they put into their gravy for the Sunday roast. Here in Crete we have the best olive oil in the whole world and that's what we cook with."

So what do they eat when they aren't eating meat? The Italians have their pasta, the Indians their rice, and the Irish have their potatoes. What are the staples of the Cretan diet?

"We still have seasonal eating here you see. Soups and pulses in the winter and fruits and vegetables in the summer. When things are in season you eat them. People forget how many soups we eat. In the winter we have bean soups (such as fassoulatha made with harricot beans), chick pea soups, lentil soup (fakes) , potato and leek soup. In summer we might have tomato or chicken with rice and lemon, - not so heavy. Once, some years ago there was a monk here from a Russian monastery. He had pure white hair and a big white beard like your Santa Claus. Here in the taverna. He was over a hundred and was on his first holiday. He had a translator with him. He asked for soup and I told him we didn't have soup today. "Nonsense," he said "do you have onions? Courgettes? Potatoes? Garlic?" Of course I had all of them. "Well then", he announced, "you have soup. Twenty minutes is all it takes!" And so he had his soup and I ate with him and we drank a little raki together. He was a really interesting man. He had lived most of his life in a monastery but he knew about life".

This fascination with other peoples' lives and this willingness to sit and eat and drink with them while they tell their tales and put the world to rights is another central rite of the Cretan eating experience and one that Georgi is sure contributes to the well being and long life of the Cretans. A good meal with Cretans will take hours and sometimes drifts into the early hours without you noticing.

"It's not good for you, you know, all this sitting for five minutes in front of the television and wolfing food down. How can you enjoy it? If you do one thing then do it properly. If you are going to eat you sit down together and you eat what you need and you drink a little wine and you talk and then you have company and you feel good and if you feel good you live longer and you enjoy your life. Even the old people here feel useful and wanted. They have stories and they have wisdom. They know all of the herbs and fruits and potions that keep you healthy. They are always welcome to eat with you. They don't rush off for antibiotics when they don't feel so good. They'll make some tea with special herbs, maybe chamomile or wild marjoram or oregano or dikti , or they'll take some fish soup, or perhaps have a massage with the lamp oil or proto-raki. Petrol is best for the massage but dangerous...

As if to demonstrate, and in that magical mode of serendipity that seems to go with the langourous life in Crete, there is a shout from outside the taverna. Georgi's dad Pavlos has just walked down the mountain from his home in Mathes, maybe 6 or 7 kilometers, and asks if Georgi wants bread from the baker. Pavlos will buy a 2 kilo loaf and walk back home. Pavlos is 86. Of course, his friend Jiannis could have got the bread. He cycles up and down to Mathes every day on an old sit up beg bicyle with Sturmey Archer gears, but Pavlos doesn't like to take advantage. "He's an old man after all" - Jiannis is 88. At this point we finish our chat because Georgi is going to get some food for Pavlos to take back with him. A yiouvetsi, (lamb cooked with greek noodles) some lentil soup and a bowl of xorta, another of the magic ingredients of the Cretan diet. Xorta is a dish prepared from mountain greens: often cooked from 3 types of wild plant that grow freely on the mountainside and in the olive groves it is served with olive oil, lemon and oftentimes potatoes. "Since my mother died", says Georgi "my father doesn't bother much cooking for himself. I don't know what we'll do when he gets old".

The Elgin Marbles - the problem is in the plural

The new museum of the Acropolis in Athens is open now and it is, by all accounts, a truly wonderful building but the opening has been a sad occasion in one way. The so-called Elgin Marbles are still in London and there is no indication that "they" will ever be returned. And so, all of the old arguments have be rehashed and foisted upon us as if they were newly minted.

The story such as it is is simple: Athens was under Ottoman rule and the Ottomans were destroying a lot of the history that they found. The then British ambassador, said Lord Elgin, was a bit of a wily old Scot and so he knocked off a few chunks of marble from a magnificent frieze in order to decorate his own historic pile back in the UK. Sadly he ran into heavy financial waters and flogged them off to the British Museum at a knock down price. And there they remain to this day.

It occurs to me that a major part of the problem here is to do with language. Let me explain. All discussions of this thorny problem refer to either The Elgin Marbles or The Parthenon Marbles. Note the use of the plural: as if all of the fragments were stand alone pieces. Well, that just ain't so. The Parthenon frieze, from which these chunks of carved pentellic marble were ripped untimely, was and is a single work of art. It was designed as a single piece. It was executed as a single piece. And until Elgin's hired vandals got to work it had remained a single piece for several centuries.

Imagine if Elgin or one of his fellow ambassadors had cut the face out of the Mona Lisa and flogged it off to the National Gallery. Who could sensibly maintain that the 2 pieces should not be re-united?  No person in their right senses.

It's time to put back together what our forebears put asunder. There is NO reason not to and every reason so to do. And maybe if we all stop talking about the marbles (plural) and start talking about the Parthenon Frieze (singular) we shall all stop obscuring the real issue with a linguistic trick.

A New Short Story - part 7

Vantaris leaps into the churchyard where Gilbert waits with the ropes. Gilbert rubs his eyes and thinks immediately of the great god Pan -  the great god Pan is dead he repeats to himself.  "Which one?" Vantaris takes a short rope from the proffered bunch and hobbles the goat by its hind legs. He lifts the young goat from his shoulders like Jason removing the golden fleece and puts him gently down by the church door. The kid struggles briefly against the hobble which is attached to his upper thighs but soon settles. He pets the kid behind the ears before coming to sit himself beside Gilbert under the mulberry stand and pulls off his boots. He trousers are covered in burrs and grass darts, he is coated in a pale red dust but his smile is broad.  From his back pocket he pulls a crumpled red pack of Sante and offers one to Gilbert who scans the blonde woman on the box lid before taking one. They light their cigarettes and a silence descends as they savour the first hits of the smoke to their throats. "Tsikourdia?" asks Vantaris? "Why not?". Gilbert is still coming round. Vantaris strides over to the church door and reaches up above the door lintel  whence he produces a rather simple Yale type key. He opens the door and disappears into the gloom. emerging moments later with a plastic water bottle of clear spirit in his left hand and a long thin grey stone in his right.

They sip in turn from the tsikourdia, the native Cretan spirit. "OK Vantaris, what's the plan? Does the kid have to go to the vet in Vrysses? Becky will be expecting me back - can you manage now? You can give me the rope back on Thursday." Vantaris produces two knives from one of the infeasible number of pockets that beset his trousers, one of which Gilbert is sure he recognises. "That curved knife ..." "Yes, Becky gave it to me ... said it was her very first lavender knife ... said it was blunt now and you didn't know how to sharpen it ..." Vantaris strokes the curved blade carefully across the stone concentrating intently. "But her knife had a pale blonde handle ... beech I think ... but that one -  -  ..." Vantaris laughs but sticks at his task "Blood Gil, blood will darken wood ... I changed the tip a little ... reground it ... it is a wonderful knife for cutting throats now ...". Gilbert now looks carefully at the other knife and feels a prescient twist in his stomach - it is a skinning knife, of that there is no doubt. He looks at Vantaris who looks up, his task complete, and holds him with his dark brown eyes and nods. He takes up the second knife and reapplies both it and himself to the stone. "Not here surely?  ... the pappas will go berserk ..." Silence save for the blade on the stone, a distant cicada, the first Gilbert has heard this year, and a goat bell somewhere. Eventually Vantaris lays the knife and the stone to one side.   


"You think I care what some black shrouded eunuch thinks? With their new religion? With their canting? With their churches built of our stones? With their gospels written in our language?  You think I give a straw?  My people were killing animals here before their Jesus was born ... before the Ottomans ... before the Venetians even... before the siege of Troy ... back in the times of Minos ... long before that arch-clown Evans "discovered" Knossos and made of it some archaeological joke? My people were in Egypt mummifying their Pharoahs when the Jewses were captives, slaves. Fuck the preist ... and fuck the truck he drives in on." Vantaris laughs long and loud. "Hey Gil, you know Zeus was born here? Of course you know. Near Psiloritis. You know how we know? Because Zeus killed his father and fucked his sister - how could he be anything other than Cretan? A Sfakian."

"Enough?" he says waving the nearly empty bottle?" Gilbert nods assent and Vantaris gets up and puts the bottle and the stone back in the church, locks it, and puts the key back in its hiding place. He bends and strokes the neck of the goat that stands perfectly still. He looks across to Gilbert "Come on Gil ... killing time ... for Manousos's baptism"