Man Martin's Blog, page 228

Greece: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Changing of the Guard

We witnessed the Changing of the Guard in front of the Greek Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The Guard is called the Evzones, after an elite band of mountain guerillas who fought bravely against the Turk.  The uniform is calculated to strike fear in the hearts of the enemy, especially when they learn that each one of the five hundred pleats in those kilts must be handpressed by the guardsmen themselves. Also terrifying are the long black tassels hanging from those red caps.  And who could behold the pom-poms on the toes of the shoes without a shudder?  It is no wonder that in all their long history the Greeks have never once been conquered except by the Persians, the Romans, the Ottomans, the Venetians, the Italians, and the Germans.  Their march is something like a stately goose-step correographed by John Cleese.  The guards are very serious about their business and are not the least bit mortified to appear this way in public no matter what you might think.  All young men must serve nine months in the Greek military and these were selected by exacting standards: they have to be at least 1.86 meters tall.

The Theater of Dionysius

Below the Acropolis is the Theater of Dionysius. Good Lord, what a lot of history has been lived in a small span. Up and to the west is the hill of Mars where Paul the Apostle preached the gospel in the very shadow of the Parthenon. And here was held the debut of Oedipus and Antigone, where Socrates laughed good naturedly - so he claimed - whenever Aristophanes made fun of him in one of his plays.The stage itself was roped off.  "Don't go onstage!" Nancy warned me.  But what I wanted more than anything was to go onstage, to stand where Medea showed Jason the penalty for faithlessness, where Oedipus learned the shocking truth of his parentage, where Lysistrata brought an end to a war by a sexual embargo.But I didn't do it. I didn't risk having a whistle blown at me by a groundskeeper. Still. On this ground walked Socrates, Sophocles, Pericles, St Paul, Plato, and Alexander the Great.  And me.

The Acropolis

For sheer size, the Temple of Zeus is more impressive. It was built by Hadrian and what the Romans lacked in subtlety, they made up for in scale. But looking up and westward between the columns, you can see the Acropolis.
You have to look up. For location, you can't top the Acropolis. Literally can't top it; it's the highest point in the city.
The myth tells us that Athena and Poseidon had a contest over who would be protector of the city; the winner was to be whomever gave the more useful gift. Poseidon gave either a fresh-water spring or else possibly a horse; the vagueness of this detail suggests whatever the gift was, it didn't make much of an impression. Athena gave an olive tree, and was hands down the winner.  "An olive tree!" the people exclaimed. "A fresh water spring or else possibly a horse is all well and good, but we've been waiting all our lives for an olive tree!" The olive tree proved invaluable not only as a source of food in itself, but for oil, a stimulus to trade, and the crowning touch in a martini. No wonder Athena was the goddess of wisdom.
The temple Pericles erected in honor of Athena has never been surpassed in beauty of design. The Greeks modified the turgid columns of the Minoans to tapering elegance. Each column is somewhat smaller at the top than the bottom and each tilts slightly toward the center of the Parthenon. Does this make the building appear taller than it really is, or does it give the marble appear as if, like a living thing, it is bending slightly under the roof's weight? Either way, it pleases the eye in a way only the eye understands.
Elaborate scenes of wars against Titans and Centaurs adorned the metopes - the part just above the columns - and an incredibly lavish depiction of the contest between Poseidon and Athena filled the pediment just under the roof.
The Parthenon also has interesting geometric properties. If you measure the interstices between the columns and multiply by the total number of columns plus the width of the triglyphs, you'll see what I mean. Go ahead, try it for yourself. I can wait.

Nearby and constructed somewhat later is the Temple of Poseidon.  As runner-up, he was entitled to a consolation prize. It's more haphazard looking than the Parthenon, and smaller, but it has caryatids, and who doesn't like a good caryatid?

The caryatids are reconstructions as are now parts of the Parthenon. There is a massive effort underway to restore the Parthenon to its original glory, repairing the damage when Venetians shelled t he place while the Turks happened to be storing some gunpowder there. Honestly, it's hard to have patience with the way the Turks treated Athens.  Why would anybody store gunpowder on the Acropolis? They should have known that was the first place the Venetians would look!

At any rate, there is some controversy over whether the Parthenon should be reconstructed this way or just left "as is."  After all, if it's reconstructed, parts of it will be modern, and then when tourist guides say it was built in the Golden Age of Greece, they'll have to cough into their fists and add shame-facedly, "Well, mostly it was."

I'm undecided, but I lean in favor of reconstruction. For one thing, the engineers are doing a truly painstaking job, cutting fresh marble that fits into the existing remains like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  Besides, if they never reconstruct, one day, what will be left? Not to reconstruct seems to leave all the cards in the hands of people like the Venetians and the Turks. "Blowing up the Parthenon, well, that's a shame, but on no condition should you rebuild it."  Is that the proper attitude?

Even in the Golden Age there must have been cavillers.  "The Acropolis used to have a bit of class before they went and threw up that Temple of Posiedon," I can imagine them saying. "That place is 'tau-alpha-kappa-iota,' tacky.  And those caryatids. Ugh."

The truth is, though we hide it from ourselves by erecting a Wall of China or a Pyramid of Giza now and then, everything we do is strictly ad hoc and provisional, just waiting for the next Venetian mortar shell or earthquake to undo.

Enjoy it while you can.

Dinner at Itaki

We spent a whole afternoon wandering the rabbit warrens of narrow streets in the Plaka district, trying to find Itaki, the "good food" "chipp" recommended by the concierge, helpful directions to which she had outlined for us on the tourist map, along with the written out instructions that it was "behing the cathedral."  The cathedral we found soon enough, a Byzantine edifice covered with orange tarp as it underwent some sort of restoration. However, looking for the side street she had circled, we overshot or undershot, and our attempts took us in loops that got us nowhere. Nancy asked to hold the map, rather testily it seemed to me, and after "doing it her way" a few minutes, we were as lost as ever. I asked to hold the map myself, and she yielded with ill humor, and ill-concealed distrust. I'm afraid my tone may have been supercilious. Normally Nancy and I share a bonhomie that is thicker than butter, but when we are tired and hungry, we grow snappish.  It'd been at least an hour since the concierge had phoned the restaurant, promising we'd be there in "a few minutes." So far we only succeeded in finding a place that sold sea food, a mackeral looking at us with fishy disinterest from a bed of ice in the display case. Nancy said that was not the place we were looking for.  I never said it was.
Finally, driven to desperation, we asked a shopkeeper.  He helpfully pointed down the street, indicating we were to turn left, but saying "right." "Do you mean left?" I asked nervously.  "Oh, yes, left The road winds a bit, but just keep going and you'll get there."
We went left at the appointed road and followed it as it wound around, and the more it wound, the more it confirmed the sagacity of the shopkeeper's directions, until finally we came to a building with a familiar facade. "That's the damn Parliament Building," Nancy announced. "Where our hotel is. We're back where we started."
A passing stranger took pity on us. We  him the map and explained where we were going. "Yes, Itaki," he said. "Their fish is very good."  Down the street and take a left. Nancy, as I recall, was becoming querrelous. I, as I recall, was sweetness and light itself. We turned left and came again to the cathedral and the labyrinth of back streets. Before we could get any more mislaid, we asked another stranger, who enthusiastically recommended the place, urging us to "drink a beer for Pappi," when we reached our goal. 
Which we finally did.
It was - if you can't see this coming, get your eyes checked at once - the fish restaurant we passed three paragraphs ago. As we ate - and my mussels were delicious - I studied the sign and the unfamiliar Greek letters that had floored us - IθAKH - Itaki. Below it was a drawing of an ancient Greek sailing vessel.
That evening, going out to dinner at a nearby restaurant - that was our only requisite this time, that it be nearby - it suddenly flashed on me that the name of the restaurant was Greek for Ithaca - Odysseus' home, that he spent an entire epic attempting to return to, and how appropriate that we'd spent so long wandering in search of it ourselves.  "That's not what the name meant," Nancy said when I shared this with her, "but when you write this in your blog, you can say the name means anything you want."
It was dark by this time and none of the shops offered food.  We were greeted by a stranger (odd how full of strangers these foreign cities are!) I asked if he knew a place to eat nearby - nearby was paramount. Price was no object.  He said, yes, there was a very good place, that he lived in the Plaka and could lead us there.
We turned off Ermou onto a dark side street, he chatting the whole time, asking where we were staying, where we'd come from, and other questions of a personal nature. I responded in ever decreasing numbers of syllables, my jaw muscles tightening making it difficult to answer because I now perceived I had naively followed (bringing along my innocent wife) a perfect stranger into a dark allwy where he would surely rob us. I stuffed my hands into my pockets, studying his face, the better to describe it to the Athens Chief of Police, who would only shrug and explain there were any number of men in Athens who fit his description.
I begn to feel relieved when I saw lights and awnings, as place that sold gyros. "This is like the Athens McDonalds," he said. "Excellent!" I cried.  "No, no," he said, and I realized comparing it to McDonalds was not his idea of a compliment.  "We go on."
We passed some sort of construction site.  "This is where it's going to happen," I thought, strangely feeling it was too impolite to just cut and run. "His accomplice is going to step from behind that orange tarpulin with a gun.  I began practicing the long face I would wear - more in pity than in anger - as I handed over all our money, but then we emerged again into light.
"Itaki!"
The waiter recognized us at once, and we him. Never has anyone been more grateful to eat at the same place twice in one day.
As we waited for our salad, I asked the waiter what the name of the restaurant meant.  "Does it mean Ithaca?" a smile playing about my lips.
"No," he said.  "It means 'old.'  Because - ha, ha - the waiters here are so old."
A joke. Not nearly as funny as if the name meant Ithaca.
So the way I tell it, it does mean Ithaca.
After all, it's my blog.

The Temple of Zeus

The Temple of Zeus must've struck awe into the hearts of visitors when it was complete: a hundred plus enormous Corinthian columns holding up the roof of a temple, inside which sat Zeus himself, a giant statue made of ivory and gold.  "OMFG," people must've said when they saw it, and in the case of Zeus, the "FG" wasn't just a figure of speech.
The Turks, during their occupation, knocked down one column after another, extracting lime for their building projects. One column lies in slices on its side, but it wasn't the Turks who did that, but an earthquake.  How one extracts lime from marble, what use lime is in building, and what became of whatever the Turks built, I can't say, but you can't help thinking part of the real motivation was just raw envy and spite. Making off with the gold and ivory statue was old-fashioned greed - which isn't as bad and in any case had probably been accomplished long before the Turks. Anyone who leaves a gold and ivory statue sitting around in a public place has it coming, as far as I'm concerned.  But to destroy the columns!
Lord Byron gave his life in a Romantic (that is to say, useless) gesture, wishing to join the resistance against the Turks. He wrote some poems, too, but those had limited persuasive effect. Nevertheless, if he hastened the end by even one day, one hour, if he helped save but one percent of one tenth of one of those mighty columns, he is a hero to the world.

Athens, Greece

Nancy and I went to Greece on vacation. For the next two weeks, I'll be blogging about it.
When you first arrive in Athens, you may be surprised that it's a city - or at least I was surprised. So habituated I was to thinking of it in terms of ruins - Paul the Apostle being a veritable latecomer - it struck me as incongruous that there were ovepasses and highrises that Athens is home to some five million souls.  The ruins are still there, of course, tumbled to the ground, mostly: Hadrian's library a litter of columns and rubble, within which sprouted a Byzantine church, now itself a ruin; as the living presence inside moved on and left marble and limestone shells.
Beyond Hadrian's library, we came to Keramikos,an ancient cemetery at the walls of the original city.  The adjacent museum housed artifacts including grave monuments, funerary urns, and burial offerings - some of these dating to 1500 BC.  A group of British ladies next to me commented with pleased "oohs" and "ahhs."  "Look at those dice," one said about a display behind the glass case, "he must've been quite a gambler."  "Wouldn't have been happy without them," speculated another.  "Why, you could still play with them today," said yet another, pantomiming picking them up through the glass.  "Things never change," said one of them.
Cheered by this happy observation, which I believe had been made by Xerxes somewhere in Hesiod, I left the museum, passing by an ostuary, its lid suspended by clear plastic pillars to reveal it was filled with bone fragments, I went outside where Nancy was waiting for me on a stone bench, behind her a scrubby pine twisted like a bonsai, behind that the undulating hills of ancient graves, and behind that the skyline of breathing Athens.

Flying to Greece

Tomorrow we're flying to Greece and my head is too full of that to think of much else.  I know I should be working on this blog flying to Greece but the thought of flying to Greece flying to Greece flying to Greece makes it very hard to concentrate.  I also have to flying to Greece teach class today and tomorrow so I have to be on my toes especially since flying to Greece tomorrow is April Fool's Day.  But I don't care about that.
I'm flying to Greece.

How Many Digressions Can a Novel Have? Any?

Let's start with one of my favorite episodes from one of my favorite novels.  Huck wanders ashore and witnesses the cold-blooded daylight murder of a drunk named Boggs.  A lynching party gathers to get the murderer, Colonel Sherburn.  Well, Sherburn faces down that mob, calls them cowards, calls all of mankind cowards, and off the mob goes, to their various houses, tails between their legs.  And that's not all.  In the next scene, Huck goes off and sees a CIRCUS!  A circus, I mean, what the hey?  After the chilling mordant scene with Sherburn, Twain can't think of anything better to do than to take us to a circus!  Strange thing is, it works, but the even stranger thing is, neither one of these episodes, neither the one with Sherburn or the visit to the circus, has ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE STORY!
Jim's not in either one of them. You could take both sections out, without marring the story in the least.  Now of course, part of this has to do with the fact that Huck Finn is a picaresque, so a lot of the episodes are kind of random anyway, but then what about that other great novel, Moby Dick.  Take all of the inner chapters - the digressions if you will - the chapters on whiteness, on why it's impossible to draw a whale, about whether whales have faces, or how whales can see - take all of that out of Moby Dick, and what's left would be as short as, well, Huck Finn.
Again, none of that stuff directly affects the story, or even indirectly as far as I can tell.
I think every novelist has at least one (I have three) "learning novel" in a bottom drawer or an old flashdrive somewhere, a botched attempt at a novel, begun with all the enthusiasm and hope of youth and inspiration, and somewhere along the way becoming abortive, and finally being abandonned as the mishapen lump it is.  I would venture to say that 99% of the time, what leads to the death of a learning novel is too damn many digressions.  The novel forgets what it's about and starts chasing interesting butterflies, and next thing you know, you end up with a muddle that isn't one thing or another.
So how come Twain and Melville get away with digressions?  More importantly, how can the rest of us?  I've thought about this very carefully and here is my answer.
I don't know.
I think, however, it has something to do with how well the digression serves the overall structure, sometimes overtly and sometimes occultly, of the novel.  Put more simply, a good digression seems to be a digression, seems to be leading away from the point of the novel, but actually is leading us into it.  The crude master of this is Charlie Dickens.  Stuff will appear in his novels that seems utterly out of place - a grave robbing scene?  What's that doing there?  Amusing, of course, but it hardly belongs in Tale of Two Cities, does it?  Then twelve chapters, later, lo and behold, it does have to do with the plot, because it just so happens...
Dickens can't get along without his "just so happens" moments; I swear he should title at least one chapter in each of his novels, "It Just So Happens..."
Melville's and Twain's digressions don't pay off in the Dickensian sense - there's no revelation later of the significance of a seemingly irrelevant side-plot.  But when Huck resolves to "light out for the territory" because he's had enough of being "sivilized" part of what's behind it is the chilling speech he heard from Sherburn.  And when Ishmael is hanging onto Quequeg's coffin, awaiting rescue from the Rachel, we know we've have been on an odessy with him - not around the world, but around the whale - Moby Dick's subtitle is, remember, The Whale - and that's what it is - the novel itself is a whale, and like the levianthan can not be seen from all sides in one go, and so Melville needs his digressions just to give us the sense of scale.
Or something like that.
Anyway, what was my point?  Oh, yes.  A good digression isn't beside the point.  It is the point.

The Price You Pay Until Somebody Pays Your Price

"Work is inconvenient, and soils the clothes," Sancho Panza.
In this, as in so many other things, Sancho was profound.  Work is inconvient; there are many things I'd rather be doing today than going to work.  I'd like to write.  I'd like to read.  I'd like to send off volleys of emails and phone calls to bookstore owners.  Outside it's raining.  No doubt I'll get wet.
No doubt these and other considerations led Sancho to opt for a job squiring Don Quixote.  The hours were irregular, the pay nonexistent, but at least it wasn't a desk job and besisdes, the don kept promising him governorship of his own private island one day.
But for the rest of us, the day job is still a necessity.  I always feel sick at heart when someone tells me, "I want to write as soon as I retire."  Dear Lord, write now!  I feel equally sick when someone spins out her fantasy of how she's working on a book of poems that will catapult her to riches.  I smile and nod and make encouraging noises, but I'm thinking, "Don't delude yourself."
Only for the very rare few will fiction writing earn enough that they can get the day job.  And folks who wait to leave the day job to write... probably never will.
That's the thing about paying work and creative work, and what makes writers such special people.  If you're going to write, you're going to have to do it when you can squeeze out time between the other pressing concerns of existence: getting a living, fixing that broken hinge, doing the dishes.
This is the reality of the writer's life, not very glamorous is it?  Like Sancho, I still dream of my own private island, and I'll get there, one day, I will.  But in the meantime this is the price I pay until somebody pays my price.  Cervantes started Don Quixote while in prison.  Think how helpful a good long prison sentence would be in giving you time to write!  Maybe Sancho is a projection of Cervantes himself, the earthly man, reasonably concerned with filling his belly and having warm straw to sleep on, driven into one painful calamity after another by this mad vision of glory that keeps spurring him on.  Quixote can't help it; he's crazy.  What's Sancho's excuse?  What's mine.
Sorry if this sounds glum.  It's a rainy Monday in Atlanta.  6:25 AM.  Time to go to work.

Self-Promotion as an Act of Generosity

When authors see their novel in print from a big publishing house, they often naively believe that the publicist is going to make sure it rises to the top of the best seller list, lands in the hands of Oprah, and is the hot topic over Hollywood power-brunches.  This is not the case.  The truth is, and now more than ever, that responsibility for publicizing a book is on the author's shoulders.  Yes, there may be a publicist, but she is often a poorly paid or even unpaid intern, with many other books to look after, and not even enough time to read the golden words of prose that surely merit your place among the immortals.
Authors, often being shy and unworldly, don't always make the best self-promoters.  They think promotion is sort of a blood-sport that begins once the book is in print, and safely ends with the new catalogue.  Instead, promotion is an ongoing enterprise, that begins at once, even before the first word of your novel is typed.
They imagine publicity requires a fast-talking Phil Silvers character in a plaid jacket and a fedora, chain smoking Pal Mals as he reels off one line of malarky after another.  I have come to realize, and I realize more and more, that effective promotion comes down again and again to being generous. After all, the reason you wrote a book in the first place, was because you felt you had something to share.  This instinct for sharing is exactly what the world wants from us, and in fact, it is so hungry for our talents and our ideas, a thousand lifetimes would be inadequate to take advantage of all the publicity opportunities out there.
As a writer, there are four groups crying for you - your readers, your community, your booksellers, and your fellow authors.

Be Generous to Your Readers: You're not asking readers to give you their time and money; rather you want to give them something; your talent, your vision, your craft.


• Start by writing the very best book you can. Don't settle for getting it done, get it right.

• Offer giveaways of autographed books through goodreads.com and librarything.com

• Write a blog in which you share genuinely interesting writing: share your passion. After posting your blog, don't keep your light under a bushel: tweet it, email it to friends who might be interested, post it on facebook

• Prepare carefully for speaking events, don't just read; perform! Memorize if possible

• Bring book-related giveaways to readings: bookmarks, recipes from the book, key chains or novelty items


Be Generous to Your Community: Become a literary luminary. You are a writer and have a special knowledge of the written word. Share it with the world. There are many places EAGER for your talents: your children's school, your local library, community center, gym, church or synagogue, local bookstores.

• Lead a book discussion club

• Start a writer's group with regular meetings and chances for critique

• Host readings at your library, bookstore, or local coffee shop

• Write reviews for books you recommend: submit these to your local bookstore, to the local paper or shopper, or post on your blog.

Be Generous to Your Bookseller: God bless the bookseller. God bless the bookseller. God bless the bookseller. Even with electronic books, we depend on communities of readers booksellers foster. This also applies, as do most of the suggestions below, to local libraries.

• Patronize your favorite bookstore. Meet the owner or manager and say how you like their store.

• Offer to write "So-and-so recommends" cards to place under your favorite titles

• Host book clubs, readings, writing groups in the store

• Put links on your blog, website, and facebook to the store: let the owners know you've done so

• When traveling, stop by bookstores and introduce yourself. If you have a book in print, offer to sign their stock. If they don't have copies, have attractively-printed information to give them

• After doing a reading or signing at a bookstore, write a personal note (not an email) thanking the owner or manager. Enclose photos of the event

Be Generous to Fellow Writers: We're all in the same boat, even if some of us at the stern and others at the bow. Writing is not a competition sport: you want people to succeed because their success really benefits you; synergy among creative people is a powerful thing.

• Help others become better writers: teach classes at a college, community center, or school.  Freely offer advice and encouragement
• Foster writing groups

• Write fan letters (not emails) to your favorite authors

• When your book is in print, offer to tour with fellow authors

• Visit other's blogs and comment frequently. Offer to write guest blogs or let others guest blog on your site.

These are just a few ways generosity can help you promote yourself and your work.  What ideas do you have?