Book Review - Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

 Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, translated by Carl Wildman

London: Faber & Faber, 2016 (First published in Greek 1946, in English 1952)   ISBN 9780571323272

My wife is a huge fan of this book, and the movie that sprang from it. As I understand it, she had to read Zorba at school, and the experience turned her into a lover of literature. We were talking about Zorba a couple of weeks ago, and she was flabbergasted that I hadn't read the book, and could barely remember the movie (which I saw decades ago). So, I decided to pick up a copy, and I'm glad that I did.

Zorba the Greek is a meditation on life: on living life rather than looking at it from the outside, on jumping into experiences rather than missing out through fear or doubt, and about looking into the future, rather than dwelling on the past. These opposites are drawn out via the relationship between Zorba and the narrator of the novel, who as a writer is grappling with these very problems. Zorba is the everyman we wish to be: fighter, worker, lover, enjoyer of the gifts life has to offer. The narrator is all of the rest of us: full of fear and doubt, afraid to jump into life to be taken along by the current, and forever searching for something greater that we are never sure actually exists.

Zorba knows and understands the venality and corruption of the human race, and yet loves all in spite of that. He has worked through his passions and come to the realisation that all humanity is worthy of our love, especially those that are impinged upon by religion and class. He states that he has learned that there is no nationality and no religion, just good or bad people, and to take those people as they come. While the narrator works hard on his book about the Buddha and questions earthly activities, Zorba has accepted that the life he has is the one he must live to the fullest.

The life the narrator and Zorba share on Crete is by turns funny, heart-warming, and tragic. While the narrator has gone to Crete to both live a "real" life and to eschew his normal writerly existence, Zorba can't help but to take on everything with gusto, from digging in a mine, loving the roué Bouboulina, to eating a freshly cooked lamb and drinking wine. He has an inexhaustible energy, and a capability to see everything with the wonder of a first encounter, that entrances both the narrator and us as readers.

In the end, the money-making ventures all turn to dust, and Zorba and the narrator part, both to continue living in their own separate ways, and to be dragged along by the vicissitudes of history. This final section of the novel is almost unbearable, as we see that together the narrator and Zorba were vibrant, and apart, less so.

This book went much deeper than I thought it would - highly recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Vincibles by Gideon Haigh

 The Vincibles: A Suburban Cricket Season by Gideon Haigh

Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2002               ISBN 1877008354

There is no doubt that Gideon Haigh is the doyen of current Australian cricket journalists, and little doubt that moniker can be applied worldwide. An insightful commentator on current cricket, a wonderful writer on cricket history, and a scathing judge of cricket administration, Gideon provides thoughtful insight on all aspects of this wonderful game.

And that includes suburban cricket...park cricket...village green cricket, call it what you will, Haigh has provided us in The Vincibles with a heart-felt, heart-warming and amusing expose of a season playing in the Fourths for his beloved Yarras (the South Yarra Cricket Club), where he was at the time Chairman of Selectors (and has gone on to be a life member).

While this is a book about a particular season at a particular club, Haigh has evoked every season at every club. For me, much of the humour in the book was when Haigh described incidents that evoked memories of my times playing club cricket in suburban Melbourne. For this is as much a book about characters and off-field incidents as much as it is the on-field action.

There are a few threads that run through this "diary". Money is a major one - getting enough to keep the club's head above water is a constant theme, helped by karaoke nights, trivia nights, and all those other activities that those of us who have been club members would remember. Because Haigh was Chairman of Selectors during the time he wrote this book, selection is another theme that runs through the book, from the early season struggles to field enough people to make up four teams, to the late season struggles of whom to omit from teams when you have a situation where the Firsts have failed to make the finals and the Seconds have been bumped out in the first week, but the Thirds and the Fourths have made the Grand Final. 

The characters that make up the club are what makes the club. Glorying in nicknames such as Churchyard, Moof, Castaway, Torqs and Rasputin, Haigh introduces us to a typical park cricket team - the devout Christian, the itinerant drunk, the pantsman, the barrister - they are all here, working (or bludging) for the common purpose of trying to succeed at playing cricket.

Note I didn't state winning games of cricket: despite the myths, club cricket in Australia is more about blokes getting together to enjoy each other's company while playing a game that they love rather than the all-out pursuit of victory. If victory happens to come their way all the better, but that is not what necessarily sustains clubs and clubmen. It is the camaraderie, the combined effort to master what is perhaps the hardest game to do well at, that we remember from our playing days.

I really enjoyed this book, where the denouement that describes the day that Haigh's Fourths lost their Grand Final while on the next-door oval the Thirds claimed a famous victory shows the reader that just being a part of a team is fulfilment in itself. As Haigh writes "The second-rate, when you think about it, are much maligned. Being second-rate is still pretty good. In fact, it's usually the best you can hope for, in a world where genuine first-rate anything is a rare commodity."

I really enjoyed this book - it almost makes me want to roll the arm over again and strap on some pads.....almost. Highly recommended. 

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick

 The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick

New York: Viking, 2010                                                        ISBN 9780670021727

Could this be the definitive book on the Battle of the Little Bighorn? It may well be. Nathaniel Philbrick has brought his considerable talents to bear on the events that occurred between May 1876 when Custer and the Seventh Cavalry headed out to face the Lakota, and early July, when the news of Custer's defeat at the Little Bighorn became public. Along the way the reader not only gets an insight into Custer's character and history, but also those around him, and of the Indians, for whom this battle was also a "last stand".

While at times I felt the structure of this book was a little formulaic, with the narrative drive of Custer's demise interrupted by asides into history or culture, there can be no doubt that Philbrick has amassed voluminous sources and presented the reader with an account that has looked at all the evidence at hand (in a book of 466 pages, there are 92 pages of notes and a 27 page bibliography) and explained as near as can be known exactly what happened on the bluffs overlooking the Little Bighorn on 25-26 June 1876.

While many books about this subject have a barrow to push, either excoriating or glorifying Custer, Reno, Benteen or others, Philbrick has let the facts speak for themselves, noting when the "facts" might be passed down to us by someone with an axe to grind. No-one comes out of Philbrick's telling unscathed.

 Anyone who has read anything about Custer will know of his rashness and inability to follow orders: Philbrick emphasises that Custer had other worries than Indians on his mind in June 1876. He was seriously in debt after some disastrous investments, and as also in political trouble, coming out for the Democrats in opposition to President Grant. He needed a grand victory to secure himself both financially and politically. 

Major Reno perhaps comes out of this telling of the tale worst. His poor leadership and drunkenness during the battle led to the rout of his companies down on the plain, and if it wasn't for Benteen taking control on Reno Hill he too may have been lost with all his men. There is little to be said in his defence, and in fact the most interesting thing about his role in the battle is why Custer put him in charge of the left wing of his divided force to begin with, given the open hostility between the two. Reno could never surmount the misfortunes life threw at him, and died a drunk and broken man.

The most interesting character from the US Army side was Captain Frederick Benteen. A pathological hater, especially of Custer, his mix of disobedience, insubordination, lack of discipline and outright inspiration and bravery in those two days are breathtaking. He truly hated Custer and his decision to stay with Reno rather than go to Custer with ammunition is one of the great "what ifs" of the battle. While we will never know if it would have been decisive for him to join with Custer, we can be fairly sure that if he had moved on and left Reno to his own devices, Reno's battalions would have suffered a similar fate to those of Custer. In the end, it was Custer's desperation for a victory that he wanted to claim for himself and himself alone that led to disaster.

Philbrick, in my opinion, provides the clearest most easy-to-follow account of the fight on Reno Hill, and also reconstructs a very plausible account of what happened to Custer and his men. In the end, after all that has been written over the years, it is becoming clearer and clearer that Custer was simply outnumbered, and would most likely have been overwhelmed no matter what tactics he might have chosen to employ. That the situation came to that is a result not only of Custer's undoubted shortcomings and flaws, but of the machinations of Terry, the tentativeness of Crook, and even the actions of Sheridan and Grant.

What was meant to be a simple victory over a people being dispossessed became instead a symbol of hubris and mismanagement. The victory was merely delayed, and not by very long either. As Philbrick explains, most of the Indians involved in the battle were in reservations by the beginning of Winter 1876. He touches on the tragedy that was to follow, from the deaths of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull to the tragedy of the massacre at Wounded Knee, and the end of a way of life, if not a people.

For those interested in the Battle of the Little Bighorn and in what actually happened on those summer days in 1876, I can highly recommend this book.

  

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell