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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Sadly disappointing., 31 Oct 2008
According to Wikipedia, David Solway is a Canadian poet, educational theorist, travel writer and literary critic of Jewish descent. He was formerly a college lecturer of English Literature, has spent most of his life in the Montreal area and now lives in Hudson,Quebec. For many years he spent his winters teaching in Montréal and his summer vacations and leaves of absence living and working on one or other of Byron's Isles of Greece - Lesbos, Alonissos, Sifnos, Paxos, Amorgos, and Skyros.
The Anatomy of Arcadia is written in diary form, and is a reflection on what Solway considers to be the profoundly significant differences between traditional travel and the "virus" of tourism, based upon a year's stay on Paxos. Solway begins with an account of being defrauded by an Athenian taxi-driver on arrival, and the opening description of Paxos focuses on the inhabitants' frenzied, and often dangerous slaughter of migrating birds. These incidents pretty much set the tone for the rest of the book. He's critical of the material greed of the newly affluent part of the population, and the inefficiency and corruption that lead to constant struggles for the basic necessities of life (food, heating, transportation, etc.). The book reveals a combination of enjoyment and irritation with Paxos and Paxiots, but in many ways his year on Paxos seems to have been a disillusioning experience.
Tourist or traveller -- does it matter which term is used?
In John Gill's book 'Stars Over Paxos' he says doesn't like tourists either (especially British tourists). But I rather got the impression that Gill's idea of tourist in this context is the stereotypical package holidaymaker in Kavos or Ipsos, whereas Solway seems to have a far wider definition in mind. For David Solway and his ilk, the word 'tourist' has a negative connotation. I suspect, looking through the eyes of a local, it doesn't much matter whether the visitors see themselves s 'travellers' or 'tourists` - they`re a livelihood.
It's interesting to compare this book to John Gill's. Both set out to include in their wider context the whole way of life in the Greek islands, which appear so idyllic to the visitor but which in reality is an economic struggle to grow and keep up with the rest of Europe. Unfortunately the lasting impression I took from this book is how much of a literary snob the author is. He displays particular scorn for an earlier author's description of life on Paxos - Peter Bull. Example:
"Peter Bull's account of Paxos (It Isn't All Greek To Me) displays little propulsive force and even less critical mass. It suffers from almost every conceivable flaw of intention and execution that can mar the pages of a single book. This is the only form of ecumenism it exhibits, as if it were the author's unstated purpose to ransack the annals of travel writing for every possible embarrassment, opacity, maladroitness and stylistic dereliction he could find and marshal them all encyclopaedically into his own personal compendium."
and later in the same rant ...
"The amazing thing is that he is blithely and ethereally unaware of this deflationary aspect of his writing, and the result is a devastating bathos. When one's work reads like a deliberate parody of the genre in which it is embedded, when it approximates satire, but is in fact seriously intended to be accepted at face value, in this case, as a comical, lighthearted and ebullient description of the Merry Prankster's adventures on a Greek island, then one can only ascribe the clash of modalities to a condition of terminal adolescence, the absence of latitudinal awareness. The impression one gleans from this book is that of an astigmatic, essentially harmless but jejune and quixotic teddy bear obsessed by his own furry perspective on the world."
Well, sorry Mr Solway, but the impression I gleaned from your book was of a wannabe Durrell, but one who lacks both warmth and humour. Having read both Gill's and Bull's books I found them immeasurably better reads than Anatomy of Arcadia.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with preferring literary masterpieces, but it's the contempt of anything else that I take issue with. The problem with literary snobbery is that it overlooks the fact that there's no point in having a society capable of reading, if it doesn't. People don't read books that are tedious and boring. Perhaps that explains the comparative popularity of Peter Bull's book and this one.
Anatomy of Arcadia is not the Highly Regarded Work of Literature that the author would like it to be. It's a bore. If you're suffering from insomnia - get this book. It'll cure you.
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