Don’t Be Afraid: An Interview with Christos Ikonomou
Born in Athens in 1970, Greek short story writer and journalist Christos Ikonomou has been recognized as one of the leading writers in Greece today and called “the Greek Faulkner” by Italy’s La Repubblica. He has published three collections of short stories: The Woman on the Rails (2003), Something will Happen, You’ll See (2010), which won the prestigious Best Short-Story Collection State Award and became the most reviewed Greek book of 2011, and The Good Will Come from the Sea (2014).
It was through two wonderful coincidences — a fall break trip to Greece with the Humanities Sequence and a link to Ikonomou through his translator, Princeton University professor Karen Emmerich — that The Nassau Literary Review was able to chat with the writer outside the Polis Art Café in downtown Athens. A stream of quiet jazz played from the speakers inside as we talked about Something Will Happen, You’ll See, the translation of which will come out in March 2016. It will be Ikonomou’s first collection translated into English.
The sixteen stories in the collection follow Greeks, many of them young people, as they face the consequences of the economic crisis. Lonely young women, factory workers, idealistic young men, and impoverished families, most of whom live in Piraeus or Nikaea, working class suburbs of Athens. Each struggles to face individual hardships in an urban sprawl connected by fear and doubt — but also love and hope.
Ikonomou himself has a personality not unlike that of his writing style. Patient and sensitive, he often laughs warmly, and though he sometimes speaks of his characters and his country with detachment, beneath it lies a powerful feeling which occasionally surges out. We met outside the hip Ianos Bookstore at night before walking a block over to Polis, where we each ordered a coffee before settling down to talk.
***
INTERVIEWER
How did you begin writing?
IKONOMOU
I don’t know, it must have been around when I was ten or eleven years old when I started keeping something like a journal, but not exactly, you know, it was not like a diary. I wanted to write things that I thought I couldn’t talk about with other people. I was not a very social kid. So I think that was the beginning, some kind of communication with myself. And then I started to think that maybe it would be more interesting for me to not just jot down my thoughts but start forming some kind of story; but, that’s the case still, I never wanted to write about myself. I never want to do autobiography, so the thing I like most about writing is that I have the freedom to become someone else, somebody else, to be somewhere else, not me. I don’t know if you understand that. So yes, I think that’s how I started.
INTERVIEWER
So, was there someone or some teacher that inspired you — ?
IKONOMOU
No, I am totally self-taught. I always read a lot. As far as I remember, the only thing I did constantly was just reading, and not only literature. I have this attachment with books. I cannot imagine myself without books; it’s part of myself, part of my world. So you know, I feel a little bit sorry for people who don’t read. I think that if you don’t read you are a half-man, a half-person — you miss a lot. Unfortunately I can’t persuade people, especially young people, to get into this huge experience of reading and writing.
INTERVIEWER
Was there an author or a book in particular that inspired you to become a writer or think more about all this?
IKONOMOU
You know, yes, I’ve never said to myself, “I want to be a writer.” I’ve never thought that; it just came in some natural way, but of course there are a lot of writers who…one of the books that had and still has a huge impact on me is Catcher in the Rye. When I read it for the first time I was about fourteen and there was a revelation, some kind of revelation for me. It was the first time that I said to myself that I want to do that, I want to write in a manner that can speak to my heart, I mean, I don’t know if you understand what I mean. So that’s one of the first books that I can remember that had, as I said, a huge impact on me. I’m very fond of the American literature, and I like very much the American writers — most of them, they have a very straightforward manner of dealing with things and I like that very much because that’s what literature is; you have to be as straightforward as possible. Even if you’re writing about complicated things you have to be clear. I don’t like the abstract writing.
INTERVIEWER
I have a Greek friend who’s about my age who also goes to Princeton, and he’s actually here in Athens right now, not on our trip but for something else. I’ve been talking with him about Greece today and also mentioned some parts of your book to him. One of the parts that really resonated with him, he felt, as a Greek, was the theme of love and dreams. I wonder whether you think that is something that is very particular to the current situation, because perhaps in the crisis these two powers of loving and dreaming become intensified.
IKONOMOU
I think that’s true with the crisis and all. Loving and dreaming are two of the main parts of the human situation, but in times like these here in Greece…I feel very painful for saying it, but it’s a country in ruins, a destroyed country. So I think that it’s even more important to be able to still feel love and to dream. It’s important for me because for these people, these characters, I know that even if it’s more difficult for them to feel love, to be loved, to love and to dream in this situation, they try not to lose their humanity, their ability to love and their ability to dream. So that’s the situation that I’m interested the most in as a writer, how you can overcome a difficult situation even if it’s not a happy ending.
INTERVIEWER
One of the parts that struck me the most was from the last story in the collection, “Piece By Piece They’re Taking My World Away.” There is a young couple living in Salamina who are being dispossessed of their home, and I remember that the two of them have nightmares. There is this line in which the guy says that love is dreaming the same dreams as the person sleeping next to you, but the girl retorts saying that what they had were nightmares. In this part and a few other parts too, love and dreams are connected very strongly, in particular because it’s young people who are going through these sorts of turbulent times and nightmares together — but in a way that binds them even tighter together.
IKONOMOU
Yes, yes. They try to connect with each other, and they don’t know how to do it. The guy here, it’s a little bit ironic, because he tells her all these things, that we are in love and we are dreaming together; but you can understand that she is not too into it. He has all these idealistic things in his mind, but we aren’t sure if it’s honest or not, or if he’s trying to ease things for them. But the main thing about these people, these characters, is that they are beaten up but not losers. They know what’s the deal. They know they have lost things — this guy has lost his home, other guys or girls have lost their jobs — but they’re not just sitting down and waiting for something to happen, they are trying to do something about it. And that’s a very moving thing for me. Really, it upsets me in a good way, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to write about that.
INTERVIEWER
I think if I read you correctly, when you say that they feel like they’re ready to do something it’s not so much a direct political action that they want to take.
IKONOMOU
Yes, yes. I’m not very interested in that because it’s one of the reasons that some people here in Greece, when they read the stories, they tell me exactly that: why don’t they do something in a collective way, in a political way? I don’t want to speak on their part, but that would be a little bit easy for them, to take a political agenda and put all hopes on that. I think they don’t believe too much in politics, and so that makes them even more interesting for me as a writer, because when they don’t have a political agenda they are even more lonely in what they do.
INTERVIEWER
And perhaps more human.
IKONOMOU
Yes, yes, so you can see them as persons, not as members of political movements or whatever.
INTERVIEWER
I think the story that went the most to that idea was “Placard and Broomstick,” the one where the young man has a friend who got electrocuted, died excruciatingly, and he thinks at first, “What kind of slogan am I going to write?” but then in the end there was a very moving passage about how he has all this rage and confusion. He feels like, “I’m so empty,” at the end and “There’s nothing I can write,” so he just goes and stands with the empty placard.
IKONOMOU
Yes, that’s exactly what… It’s a bit ironic because I don’t think he’s empty. I think it’s the opposite, that he’s really full. He knows that he cannot express all these huge feelings as some kind of political manifestation, and I think that would be diminishing for all the things that he feels about this, his friend’s loss. I’m very happy that you see that. It’s very encouraging to meet someone from the other part of the world who can see these things, because people in Greece — I mean not all of them — but most of them cannot see these things, because you need a certain distance from things.
Everything that happens in your life, you need to have some kind of distance in order to see it clearly, so people here are very attached with the political things and all that stuff, and they think, “Okay, what is he doing now going alone with an empty placard? So what, what will be changed?” That’s not what I’m trying to tell them, but they are not listening. That’s not literature. That’s not the role of literature. Literature is not some kind of political manifestation. Yes, of course as a writer you may have whatever ideology or political principles, or you may be left, right, or whatever, but here these people have their own personalities. You can’t treat them like puppets. I hate that. I don’t like when I see a writer do this. I mean, I don’t want to make these people puppets of my own principles, ideas, and all that stuff. They are saying and they are doing a lot of things that I would not say or do myself, but that’s why, as I told you before, why I am writing literature. I’m trying to be someone else. I’m trying to be in the shoes of someone else.
INTERVIEWER
I think that one of the themes that comes up quite a lot, especially in that story with the placard, is the problem with expression. Especially when there’s so much feeling, perhaps that one can’t even understand oneself, but it needs to be expressed. I remember in the “Blood of the Onion,” the story with the workers in the ice-factory, towards the end one of the them says that he can’t take the silence, that he needs to express himself or else he fears that the feelings themselves will go away. And then there’s the really fantastic ending when the broken ice machine suddenly comes to life and all the ice comes forth. It’s as though it’s been expressed, and it’s “with no recipient.”
IKONOMOU
[Laughing] That’s a very interesting reading, I never thought that.
INTERVIEWER
Oh really! That’s the way I saw it…
IKONOMOU
Yes, yes, but that’s the magic in literature. You write something and someone reads it in his own way; he puts his thing in that. But yes, the theme of expression is evident in all of the stories, because that’s one of the things that interests me very much — how we express ourselves and how we communicate. And I think that it’s quite interesting for a writer to see what’s beyond words. That’s one of the reasons that I write so much short fiction and short-stories.
In the short-story form you have to listen to the echo of the words, because as you may know — you are too young but I am sure that during your life you will realize — the most important things in our lives we cannot put into words. There are a lot of things, but you can’t just talk about them. The moment you start to talk about them they lose their magic, they become just words. Everybody talks about love, about hope, about being nice, about solidarity, but that’s the main thing — you have all these words, and people are fed up listening. Everyone says “I love you, I love it,” and the word starts to lose its meaning. But the thing is there. Love is there. And it’s an act of resistance to keep writing and talking about love, hope, and all these things, even if everyone is talking about that.
INTERVIEWER
So, as a storyteller, how do you resist that? Perhaps you could call it a vulgarization of love and hope that we have in life?
IKONOMOU
By writing I’m trying to show not just what they’re saying about these things, but what they’re doing about these things. And I don’t want to do it in a manner of crying out or shouting out. I think that even if you are so young, you see some things, and you can read beyond the lines and beneath the lines. So that’s one of the things that I’m trying to do, I’m trying to put things beyond and below the surface of the narrating. But it’s difficult, because people in Greece are not very well acquainted with that kind of reading and writing. They want things; they want to read what’s on the surface. If you ask them to dig a little deeper, that’s a problem. But you, I mean people like you, even students in Western Europe and the US, I think they are — I’m not talking about the general reading public –they know how to read. So, that’s what I’m trying to do, and I know it’s a risk, because a lot of people may miss what I’m talking about.
INTERVIEWER
One of the things that struck me is that the people you write about are mostly working class people, people who perhaps haven’t been able to get much of an education. Do you think that they would be able to read your stories and see themselves in it?
IKONOMOU
No, no, I don’t think so, but literature, I mean good literature, strong literature, literature of quality is not for a lot of people. Not just because of educational level and all that stuff; it’s a kind of trial to read literature, good literature, because you can’t do just that. To open the book [opens the interviewer’s copy of Something Will Happen, You’ll See], you have to open yourself to the book. And that’s a difficult thing for a lot of people, because they don’t want to get out of themselves.
INTERVIEWER
So it’s more to do with the character of the person.
IKONOMOU
Yes, because a lot of people tell me that your characters are not very well educated, and I say, “So what, maybe yes, they are not very well educated,” But not all of them are — in my new book there are different characters — but that doesn’t mean that they have ideas and feelings and things that they can talk about. I think that most of them, not all of them of course, are rich people deep inside, they have a rich inner world. Maybe they are not able to express in a very good manner or not at all, but it’s there.
INTERVIEWER
I feel like so many of the characters have a sensitivity that makes them a lot more perceptive to their problems but also makes them a lot more vulnerable to them.
IKONOMOU
Yes, the vulnerability is…I think it’s very interesting as a literary situation, because there are so many possibilities.
INTERVIEWER
Speaking of expression, but through more implicit ways, one of the things that I found most interesting was how you used weather in your stories. I’m not sure if this was intentional or not…
IKONOMOU
[Laughing] Everything is intentional!
INTERVIEWER
…the things like rain, like when it would start raining or stop raining, nightfall, or the wind picking up, expressed the emotional tenor of the stories in ways that sometimes the characters themselves, I think, weren’t even aware of. It felt very strong. And also because weather is so important — weather changes especially — in so many of the stories, it felt like it linked them together a lot. I’m not sure whether you wanted the characters to be linked together in this one world, one environment…
IKONOMOU
Yes, I’m very happy you see that. You’re a very smart guy. [Laughs]
INTERVIEWER
They all live very different lives and have very different problems. But then very often, say in the first story, “Come on Ellie, Feed the Pig,” the girl feels very hurt because her boyfriend has left her and taken all of the money, and she sees the rain falling on the iron railings and sees it as though it’s crying, and in other stories too when something very tragic has happened it may start raining. So in a way when I read through that it felt like even though they’re lonely and suffering on the own, in a way they’re…
IKONOMOU
They’re linked to each other and by the elements, yes.
INTERVIEWER
And something that went explicitly to that was in the story “Mao.” Several men — the admiral, Michalis, and another guy — are talking, and one of them mentions that hatred is like the air of the city — they’re all breathing it, hatred and fear — which is a very ominous image. But he also feels like in a strange way this is tying us all together.
IKONOMOU
Yes, I wanted to show that they are, as you said, living in their own tragedies, but there’s some kind of invisible unity or common experience through the elements or the weather, the setting, or the environment they are living in. So I wanted to do that, and I hope that it worked in some kind of way. But again, you see, that makes me very anxious, because I have this thing in my mind when I’m writing, but I don’t know if the reader will get it. You can’t point it out, so now I’m doing this. You have to be kind of implicit, as you said. And you hope that the reader will see that. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m writing and rewriting and rewriting. I mean I have written “Mao,” I don’t know, thirty times, thirty drafts, because I don’t know if I got it right. There is one right way to tell a story, and you have to find it. Each story has its own way to be told, to be written, and that’s what I’m trying to do, trying to find the right way.
INTERVIEWER
To go back to the effect of interweaving or intermeshing these different stories: do you feel that that’s something best achieved through a collection of short stories? Because I wonder if you were to write a novel, would these characters in their different lives have to eventually meet each other?
IKONOMOU
Yes, I’ve never thought of writing a novel, but that’s the idea that I have of a short story collection. It has to be some kind of connecting, some kind of connection between the stories. Here it may be the obvious, that they are working class characters and live in the same place, but in my new book most of the characters are living on an island, the same island, and I think that a short story collection has to have some kind of connection between the stories. I could never do a short story collection about things which have no connection between them. I know that other short story writers don’t do that, don’t care about that, but that’s the idea I have — that’s what I want to do.
INTERVIEWER
I noticed that one of the ways you connect the stories is by repeating certain elements, say certain places. I remember there is a certain church or certain streets where a few events happen, and then there are also certain things that the characters observe or do very similarly. I remember in two of the stories there is a grieved man, a father or a widower, who climbs into the recycling bin because he feels, “This is the so-called ‘progress,’ but I’m going to recycle myself because I am worthless now.”
IKONOMOU
Yes, that’s one of the things that I am trying to do, I am trying to interconnect the stories between them. But mostly I care about the connections of feelings and situations and all those things.
INTERVIEWER
Just a bit earlier you were going to say “heroes” instead of “characters.” I was wondering about the last story, in which the character, as you mentioned, has these heroic visions of himself. He keeps telling his girlfriend that they’re going to buy a boat and that they’re going to go off, and she of course won’t have anything of this sort of dreaming. What do you think is the role of this kind of hero? I think in your stories it’s often a young man who is very idealistic. There’s also the young man in the “Union of Bodies” who is dreaming of the month that he is going to spend with his girlfriend at his boss’ villa. What do you think is their situation? In a way it’s hopeless, but…
IKONOMOU
They keep trying to…I like them. I think that they know that’s hopeless, but I don’t think they are foolish. They are not stupid. They are guessing that things won’t work, but they keep trying; and I find it very tragic, of course, but that’s what literature is about — that’s what I like to read, that’s what makes me feel…Even if I know many situations are hopeless, the fact that they don’t give up, it’s kind of encouraging for me as a person, and as a reader I read a lot of short stories or books that are hopeless, and that encourages me. I don’t know if you have read the The Metamorphosis of Franz Kafka — ?
INTERVIEWER
Yes, yes.
IKONOMOU
— that’s a hopeless situation, that’s a very bleak reality, a guy wakes up and he’s a cockroach. But the fact that Kafka chose to tell that very dark story and show things about what it means to be stranger — this short story or novella The Metamorphosis, I think is about being strange, being strange to the universe, you are not man, you are not animal, you are a stranger even to your own family; they have a huge cockroach in their house, and you are strange to your own body. So even if it’s a very sad story, a very dark story, a very bleak story, the fact that someone told this story makes me feel — it’s a kind of encouragement for me — that someone chose to write about so difficult a theme, such a difficult situation, something that is totally crazy.
INTERVIEWER
So in a way it’s a very hopeful thing to tell a hopeless story.
IKONOMOU
Yes, in some kind of way it’s a little bit weird, because otherwise you have to tell, I don’t know, a story with a happy ending and it’s not very interesting.
INTERVIEWER
Speaking of Kafka and the kind of distancing from the world, family, and even self, I remember a story that’s actually not in this collection but which I had read online on Five Dials, “Like People Who Hadn’t Laughed For Years.” I don’t remember the exact line, but the very beginning of that story was something like, “Layoffs. There’s something good about them,” and the idea was that layoffs cause people to look at their lives differently and start talking with people they haven’t talked with before. The protagonist finally gets to know his coworker, Lykos, and a relationship is formed in that way. Lykos has been pulled out from his life and the protagonist has from his, and then in a way the two of them, now distanced from their work environment, go to Piraeus at the Cross where actually I just went —
IKONOMOU
You’ve been there!
INTERVIEWER
I was really eager to see that place, because I really liked that atmosphere of two people taking a break from the world, two people who hadn’t known each other. But then in the space that’s been opened up they get to know each other.
IKONOMOU
Yes, that’s what I’m trying to do, but you know, I almost feel a little bit uncomfortable to talk about how I write, because when I’m writing a story, or rather when I’m rewriting a story — I don’t write stories, I rewrite them — I’m in a kind of ecstasy, I’m not myself. So it’s a little bit difficult for me to share exactly what I had in my mind. Very much of what I want to do is to present these people in flesh and bones, not to be some kind of projections or ideas. I want them to be autonomous. I want them to be human beings; that’s what I’m trying to do. I don’t want them to be some kind of puppets.
Say I want to write a story about what, hope is a good thing, so I’m going to write a story about hope. I can’t do that; I think it’s fake. I have to do what these people say or don’t say, or do or don’t do when they are in this particular situation, and sometimes, as I have told you, here in Greece, that I’m more interested in the situation, not the characters. And people say, wow, why do you say that? I’m trying to clear the air out and I’m saying of course I’m a fiction writer, characters are one of the most important things, but I’m also interested in the situation, because in their situation you see the character. You see who you are from what you had in your life, what you lived. I think it’s quite dynamic to place a person in a specific situation and see what he or she does or says — that’s the most interesting thing.
INTERVIEWER
You wouldn’t be able to know a character unless you saw them in some scene.
IKONOMOU
Yes, yes, that’s right; I want to see them in action, to see what they have in their minds and in their hearts, and what they do. Maybe I have a vague idea about them, but I want to see them in action in the situation, and the thing that confirms what they do. Otherwise it’s a bit static for me to place a character and start characterizing — this is a nice person, not a nice person, is he weak or strong — no, I don’t like that. I mean, who cares about that? It’s not fiction. As a reader, I want to find out something for myself. I don’t want you to tell me. As you did this morning, you went by yourself to Piraeus in an unknown place, you went around, you saw things, you heard things — it’s a little bit similar with fiction writing, fiction reading. You have to find some things for yourself. That’s the important thing.
INTERVIEWER
So do you feel that in order to conjure up the flesh and bone of the character you would also need to have the stone and concrete of the environment that they’re in?
IKONOMOU
Yes, yes, that’s one of the ways you can place them in a specific environment, a specific place. As I’ve said before, I don’t like the abstract things. I don’t care about that. Even in my life I don’t like abstract situations. I want to see them in a specific environment. I want them to look at things, to smell, to have all my senses in action, so I can place them right and see what’s going on. Fiction is a kind of dream, where things are not what they seem — that’s one of the things that I believe in as a reader, that’s what I’m trying to do as a writer.
INTERVIEWER
I think there are certain environments that showed up quite often, and perhaps the foremost of those for me was the balcony, which I think is particularly Greek — ?
IKONOMOU
Yes, that’s a Greek thing.
INTERVIEWER
We don’t seem to have them anywhere else.
IKONOMOU
I don’t know if they have them even in Europe.
INTERVIEWER
People go out to smoke…just look out —
IKONOMOU
Yes, over summer they go out to the balcony, they watch TV, they talk to each other, they eat. A few years back they even slept on their balcony at night when things were a little bit safer. I mean I remember in my neighborhood in Nikaea, where I grew up, there were a lot of people who, during the summer nights when the nights were hot, went out and slept on their balconies. It’s a thing of community, and it’s a nostalgic thing […] But yes, the place is very important for me.
INTERVIEWER
Speaking of community and Nikaea, I’m wondering about “Mao,” because he [the eponymous protagonist] was very much the guardian of the neighborhood and gave everyone peace of mind at night before the incident when some people drove by and he shot at them, after which he disappears and becomes hated by the neighbors. Do you feel that in a way he is a hero, or someone that Greece today needs?
IKONOMOU
That’s quite interesting, very interesting question. I have to think about that. Yes, I would like to think that, but I don’t know. The story doesn’t answer, so maybe yes…
INTERVIEWER
…because in the end he is driven out.
IKONOMOU
But it is a very interesting metaphor.
INTERVIEWER
I remember the old men were saying that real democracy is when poor people will stand up for themselves, take care of themselves and that we should have more people like Mao.
IKONOMOU
Yes, that’s very interesting. Yes, that may be the case. We may need some kind of Mao, not shooting people on the streets of course and not saying bad names and bad words, but I’m not sure that many people in Greece…You know, we have a tradition here; people, especially politicians, come out as some kind of saviors: “I’m gonna save you.” And they don’t do that. There is a huge resentment against the politicians; one of the main reasons is that you put your trust in somebody, and then you feel you are betrayed by him. That’s the case in Greece in all its recent history. On the other hand there are still a lot of people who believe — and that’s a tragic thing for me — who believe that the country will be changed by itself, in a miraculous way, or by some new savior, some new messiah.
As a person, as a Greek, I don’t believe that. Most people talk about change in Greece, we have to change all these things, all these bad things that got us into the crisis, but they don’t want to change themselves. And you know, it’s some kind of lullaby to say, okay, I will wait until the world will change so then I will change myself. No, the world will never change, the whole world, so you have to try at least to change this tiny part of the world that is yourself. You are part of the world. That’s…I think that’s an idea that I have constantly in my mind, and that’s one of the things that I was trying to write about in my next book: what does it mean to realize that, okay, you cannot change the world but at least you can try to change yourself in a way. It’s very easy to wait all the time, for someone else to come over and change things.
INTERVIEWER
And I think earlier you mentioned the idea of memory, and that’s certainly something that comes up a lot in the stories, especially from characters of the older generation, for whom nostalgia is a very painful thing. What do you feel the role of memory is in dealing with the present and say, changing yourself?
IKONOMOU
Memory has this dual character. It’s a good thing, because your experiences are part of who you are and what you do, but the other thing, especially in places and societies like the Greek society that goes back a long time, is that the collective memory maybe is a thing that holds you back. Because we have a tendency — and I don’t want to take your time because it’s a complicated thing to explain, but I will try to tell you as simply as I can — we are as a society, as a people, we have the tendency to go back to our glorious past all the time and to talk about the past and our ancestors and how things were so good back then, and now…we are not living in such glorious times. So it’s some kind of retreat which shows that you have very low self-esteem, you don’t believe in yourself, you don’t trust yourself, you don’t believe you can do things right now and for the future. So let’s go back to the past which is nicer and glorious and all these things. So memory is a thing that maybe, as I’ve said before, holds you back, because it won’t let you open up to the present, to the now, or tomorrow.
INTERVIEWER
I was talking with my Greek friend that I mentioned earlier at a dinner my class had where everyone was talking about how wonderful the Acropolis is, and he said that to the Greeks of our generation the Acropolis isn’t so amazing. And, in fact, young Greeks today are getting quite fed up with all the narratives about classical glory.
IKONOMOU
Yes, that is the case, I totally agree, but why is that? This is, I think, because not only the young Greeks but most of the Greeks just feel proud of their past. They don’ know the past; they don’t love the past; they don’t love the Acropolis; they don’t know what it means really. It’s just a thing of national pride. That’s superficial, to feel just pride. You have to love something.
INTERVIEWER
So it’s just become an empty symbol in a way.
IKONOMOU
Yes, that’s right. And that’s one of the things that makes me very sad about my country. Most of the people, and I feel very alone in that, because most of the people talk about classical Greece, Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, they don’t know nothing about that. They’re just names. We have Plato, we have Aristotle. What does it mean “we have”? No, we don’t have anything! They just happened to live in the same place, they spoke a language that…We cannot speak the same language now — nobody speaks ancient Greek, only some people — so if you want to really connect with, to learn about and love them, they are not gods. They were human beings.
I mean Plato and Aristotle, I don’t feel proud about them. I love them because what moves me is that they just try as human beings to understand what is going on in the human condition, what is the position of the human beings in the world, and what is love, and what is wisdom, and what is it to be nice or to be evil. It’s their intellectual struggle that moves me, not that they were Greeks, that I am Greek too. I don’t care about that. I don’t feel pride about that. But unfortunately, most of the people here cannot grasp that.
INTERVIEWER
So do you feel like it’s already too far away for Greeks today, or is there perhaps still hope of reconnecting?
IKONOMOU
No, I don’t think so, not on a collective level. Of course there are people, people like me who try to connect by the way I just described to you, but I don’t think…no, it’s hopeless. Our educational system, the whole situation here is beyond repair. I’m not optimistic. I have hope, because hope is something different than being optimistic. I don’t think so. I hope that you can understand that being here in Greece, in a place where you can see how all these things can lead people to such regretful situations — it’s living an experiment, unfortunately.
INTERVIEWER
I think that the distinction between hope and optimism is a very important one, because in many of your stories what happens in the ending is so bleak — but you couldn’t call it tragic, because in the first story in which the girl is eating the dessert that she made, she had been trembling and said to herself, “It must be low blood sugar.” But of course we know that she has been very hurt. But in a way the eating of that dessert shaped in the form of her boyfriend’s body was something nourishing and hopeful.
IKONOMOU
I’m very glad you see that.
INTERVIEWER
Another part that I’m really interested in is from the title story, when there’s that very strong image of the young woman who superglued her hand to her boyfriend’s hand so they could stay together, and then when the protagonist sees them in the hospital, the girl extends her hand, but then the protagonist hesitates. “Don’t worry,” the girl whispers to her, “there’s no glue on this one.” Even later when the protagonist goes back to her and her boyfriend’s apartment, she wonders, “Why did I hesitate?” and even thinks that “Perhaps I will glue my hand, one to my boyfriend and one to the house,” to prevent herself from being evicted.
I think this was one of the clearest instances when you’re dealing with love and people’s relationships sticking together, literally. I guess you could say that that’s the most hopeful thing that they could do in these times, a lot like “The Things They Carried,” the story in which five men are waiting outside the social security office. At first they’re kind of distant, but the cold brings them around the fire; and by the end they’re actually right next to each other sharing warmth, though in the end they’re still in this big city. Do you feel like this is something that only individuals can do, small groups of people, and perhaps the whole city itself is something that won’t give you warmth?
IKONOMOU
Yes, maybe that’s something that someone can find about myself in these stories. That’s what I have experienced. I know a lot of people here in Greece don’t see that thing in a very favored way; they think that’s some kind of individualistic thing to say that we can’t do things all of us together. But that’s how I have experienced things here being someone who was born here and raised up here; that’s how I see the world. But it would be fake for me to put these people out into the streets in some mass marches. I think that’s the way they feel too.
They feel that, as you said, that as small groups they can feel that kind of warmth and solidarity and some kind of community, not in huge groups. A lot of people in Greece don’t see that, but they just talk about that, don’t do nothing about it. It’s a different thing to say that we have to be all together and do things all together, but that’s not happening. So what? So instead of just being by oneself, at least we can form some kind of small communities. That’s not a bad thing for me. That’s what they do, they don’t try to compel it.
INTERVIEWER
And to kind of go a level higher from your book, do you feel like Greek literature today has achieved something of that community?
IKONOMOU
No, I don’t think so. You know there is a very common misconception here in Greece: a lot of people think that writers are some kind of special creature. They are not. You can find writers who are sensitive and some others who are not so sensitive. It’s a matter of your conscience, how you understand the world and the place of yourself in the world. Being a writer does mean for me at least that definitely you are a very sensitive person and a very conscious person. You can tell a story in a very interesting manner, you are a very good storyteller, you have some admirable technique. It doesn’t mean that you have some kind of special sensitivity about things.
What I’m trying to do is to write about Greeks and Greece, but I don’t want to write just about Greeks and Greece. I write about the human condition, the form it takes in a specific place. But I am trying to look beyond the walls of language and my country, I’m trying to reach out to Americans, to whoever is interested in my story, and I’m trying to write about human beings, what it means to be human and what it means to try to be human in an inhumane environment. With all these things, the crisis and all the stuff, all these things make you want to close up to yourself and not care about other people, just how you can protect yourself. And that’s what I’m trying to do, but that’s a human thing, not a Greek thing.
INTERVIEWER
So then you feel that to read is also to open oneself up, perhaps to become more vulnerable but also more sensitive? And then the act of opening up through reading is also intimately linked with opening oneself up to people in life?
IKONOMOU
Yes, that’s right, that’s right, that’s what I’m trying to say, but I don’t know why they don’t understand me. It’s very simple for me; I mean, that’s what I do as a reader. But you know people, when people read books they don’t even — I mean young people, many of them they read a lot, but actually they don’t read, they just consume books. They read to see what’s next [flips book] — “Ok, ok, next book.” It’s not like that. I mean, I don’t want to consume books, I want to read books. And I don’t want to read books just because I want to be an intellectual or whatever. It’s part of my experience as a human being in the world. What else do you have? You have travel, yes, you have relationships, and then what else do you have? What else do we have to gain some experience from the world, and to start to think about what we do here, why we are here?
INTERVIEWER
Well I don’t have too many other questions, but do you have something that you would say to young people today, something for young Greek people today, or the young Americans, the students?
IKONOMOU
Yes, I am thinking a lot about young people, because I think it’s a very challenging time for them with all this volatile environment and all this huge information thing, all this information going around. But I think that if I was young now, if I was twenty years old, I would like not to be afraid. Don’t be afraid, that’s what I’m trying to tell young people. Try to understand the meaning of life and hope — it’s not a distant planet; it’s something that you make out of your life. That’s what matters, what you do in your life. For me there is no general meaning in life. You give to your life its meaning by what you do and what you don’t do, what you say. So try to make it worth it, that’s what I would say. If I could go back twenty-five years ago when I was twenty years old with the experience and the mind that I have now, that’s what I would tell myself: try to create hope on your own. Don’t expect it from someone else, from something else. You have the power to do it, not in a general way, but in your day-to-day life, I don’t know if you know what I mean. That’s what I would like to say.
[Interview conducted on November 6, 2015]