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Christos Chryssopoulos:

ince the publication of his very first book, The Parthenon

Bomber, Christos Chryssopoulos attracted the attention of

critics. Nevertheless, it was Shunyata and his subsequent

book The Manicurist that confirmed the critics' original

opinion of this young author: namely that he is an accomplished

stylist, a writer whose language is carefully wrought, whose at-

mospheres are powerful , f raught with secrets and hints, and

whose settings are international although in no way cosmopolitan.

At the age of thirty-four Chryssopoulos has already produced five

books, with a sixth ready for publication - another novel, entitled

Theatre of Voices, which is eagerly awaited.

INTERVIEW

by ELIAS MAGLINIS

Literature is an endurance race

S

YOU ARE THIRTY-FOUR YEARS OLD AND HAVEALREADY PUBLISHED FIVE BOOKS. ARE YOUWORRIED ABOUT THE RISK OF REPETITIONOR SATURATION?

Literature is the connective tissue of all myactivities. In recent years I have deliberatelylived in a "literature laboratory" of themind. Thus I am not concerned with man-aging some authorial image or career butwith submitting myself to an inner rhythmof writing. The frequency with which mybooks are published follows the samerhythm. I see the publication of one of myworks as a stage, of its taking shape and notas its final destination. Besides, I continueto be surrounded by emotions from all mybooks, and my earlier books find ways ofcommunicating with what I am writing atany given moment. Each work dictates itsown rhythms, requires a different incuba-tion period, competes with the obligationsof everyday life and becomes the object of apublisher. And I myself change from year toyear. Literature is an endurance race and Imay very well abandon it at some point inthe course. Then I shall cease to be a runnerand shall become once more a spectator.

I'D LIKE YOU TO TELL ME A BIT ABOUT THEINFLUENCE FOREIGN WRITERS, PAST ORPRESENT, HAVE HAD ON YOU.

That's a particularly welcome question. I'mglad to speak of other writers. I depend onother writers in order to be able to find myown voice and protect myself from the vani-ty that lays siege to me. To start with,there's a group of writers whose number issteadily growing: this is the group whosework I see as a solid literary proposition to

which I return repeatedly. I approach thesewriters' work as if it were a single book:Borges, Kafka, Hrabal, Bulgakov, Brecht,Hawthorne, De Quincey, Lewis Carroll,

Guy de Maupassant, Poe, Lovecraft,Pavic, Pere, Daniil Kharms. Also the po-ets Blake, Byron, Wordsworth, Marlowe.Among writers of non-fiction I should in-clude Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendtand Sir Thomas Browne. Another catego-ry includes single books which I'd like torefer to with respect, such as The Life

and Opinions of Tristram Shandy byLaurence Sterne, The Manuscript

found in Saragosa by Jan Pototski, the Pil-low Book by Sei Sonagon, and above all TheAnatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton.When I write, I choose the books that Iread with extreme care and see this readingas a source of borrowings and inspiration.All the above authors and books could forma small reading list that I recommend,along with Don Quixote, Beowulf and theIcelandic Laxdaela Saga.

SHUNYATA TAKES PLACE IN A SMALL AMERI-CAN TOWN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 1950S,THE MANICURIST IN CONTEMPORARYPRAGUE. DOES THE FACT THAT YOUR TWOLAST BOOKS ARE SET ABROAD AND THATTHEIR HEROES ARE NOT GREEK MEAN SOME-THING? IS IT THE RESULT OF A DELIBERATECHOICE, IN OTHER WORDS ARE YOU AIMINGAT A "GLOBAL" PUBLIC, OR IS IT A CONSE-QUENCE OF YOUR TRAVELS ABROAD ANDYOUR ASSOCIATION WITH FOREIGN WRITERSAND ARTISTS?

When I write I'm not engaging in dialoguewith the public. Anyway, I don't know whothe public are. When I write I am engagedin a dialogue with the texts that guide meas I investigate the human condition anddissect it using literature as my instrument.My starting point is entirely personal. Thuswhen my books leave my hand, they are nottargeted at any reader but –of necessity– re-main inert. I want them to be the steps atthe entrance leading to a world of thought.In this sense, my books are for those whowill approach them like open doors. Ulti-mately they lead (through a Czech city orvia America) to the fundamental questions:death, love, the interweaving of dream andreality, art, deity. The places in my booksare archetypal places. Constructions, non-

ITHACA ñ 19

My places are places built of books, and I approach

reality as a narrative open toinfinite interpretations.

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places. A city that is sister to Prague. An i-maginary small town in America. Myplaces are places built of books, and I ap-proach reality as a narrative open to infiniteinterpretations.

ONE OF YOUR BOOKS, THE BLACK DRESS, WASNOT PUBLISHED IN GREECE BUT IN AMERICAIN 2000, IN A BILINGUAL EDITION. HOW DIDITS PUBLICATION IN AMERICA AND ITSTRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH COME ABOUT?

The Black Dress is a book of its own kind. Itbelongs to the category of Artists' Books. Itis a book-object which should be ap-proached as a work of art and not solely as abook-transmitter of its linguistic and visualcontent. The Black Dress is the result of mycollaboration with the American photogra-pher and book artist, Diane Neumaier. Inthis book a text of mine (the imagined di-ary of a lonely elderly woman) is juxta-posed with photographs by Neumaier(street shots of pedestrians in some anony-mous city). The text was written in Greekand translated into English by me, whilst atthe same time Diane Neumaier was compil-ing the visual component for the project.We both worked with the specific aim thattext and image should coexist in a non-message-bearing relationship. In The BlackDress the photographs don't illustrate thetext, and the text in turn doesn't elucidatethe visual component. What we aimed at,through this contiguity of word and image,was to give rise to associative, unexpectedstimuli.The book was designed in collaborationwith the printer Eileen Foti. In form it is re-lated to the constructivist books of theRussian avant-garde (Lissitzky, Rodchenko

and so on) and to the tradition ofAmerican book artists like Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, John Baldessariand others. The Black Dress canbe taken as a comment on what abook could be and indirectlycalls in question the mainstreamnotions of 'bookness'. At thesame time, the process by whichit was created was an interestingattempt to combine differentartistic practices.

The book was printed in a limited collec-tors' edition of 65 copies and was createdduring a long writer's residency at the Print-making Workshop of the Rutgers Centerfor Innovative Printing in New Jersey, USA.

SOMEWHERE IN THE MANICURIST YOUWRITE THAT ITS MAIN HERO, FILIPPOS, IS"SWEPT AWAY INTO HIS VISIONARY WORLD".BUT WE COULD SAY THE SAME OF THE MYSTICFLANEUR AND THE LITTLE GIRL IN SHUNYA-TA. IN GENERAL YOUR CHARACTERS ARE OR-DINARY PEOPLE, YET AT THE SAME TIMETHERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT THEM THAT ISOUTSIDE REALITY. WOULD YOU SAY THATCRIME AND DEVIATION OF ALL KINDS IS CEN-TRAL TO YOUR PREOCCUPATIONS?

Your question makes me realise that I don’tperceive reality in any clear terms. I myselflive as an observer. At the age of thirty-four Idon't drive, I'm always walking through A-thens on foot, like a wanderer, I haven't gota steady job or a secure income, I don't owna house and I haven't created a family. I livereality as a performance, like a story or afilm. This choice isn't a value judgment. Iperceive a life that is based on all the thingsthat define reality for us (work, home, fam-ily, etc) in the same way. Thus deviationand crime constitute exaggerations or end-points or differentiations of everyday behav-iour. They are not exceptions to the regularstate of affairs. All the same, they interestme only as instances that reveal deeper, ba-sic motives, contradictions and convictions.My characters take nothing for granted.They face life as a subjective choice, and themoral questions that arise are set within itin a dialectic manner.

YOUR BOOKS ARE CHARACTERISED BY APERMEATING SECRETIVENESS. THEIRS IS AWORLD OF SILENCES, OF ABSENCE BUT ALSOOF INNER TENSION. DO YOU HAVE SOME-THING PARTICULAR IN MIND WHEN YOUORGANISE YOUR MATERIAL, OR DOES THISELEMENT APPEAR BY ITSELF?

Both. My books are expressions of who Iam. In them are included extended con-fessional texts as well as a host of mattersreferring to myself. If this is not immedi-ately apparent, it is because they undergoa series of successive disguises. This, Ithink, is both a personal need of mine andan aesthetic choice. There is indeed secre-

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Christos Chryssopoulos wasborn in Athens in 1968.His first book, The Parthe-non Bomber, was publishedin 1996 by Anatolikos Edi-tions. He has subsequentlypublished The Recipes ofNapoleon Delastos (Odys-seas, 1997), Shunyata (Odys-seas, 1999), The Black Dress(bilingual English-Greek edi-tion, RCIPP Editions, NewJersey, 2000). He translatesfrom English. He has been in-vited to writers' centres inSweden, the Czech Republic,the U.S.A. and Iceland.

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tiveness and caginess. Deliberate mecha-nisms of concealment and instinctive sup-pressions. This may arise from my convic-tion that we can never know things intheir entirety. I don't believe in the exis-tence of all-embracing examples. Natureand mankind conceal themselves. Theyfrequently do not know their own entire-ty, which anyway is continually takingshape. In my work, every consciousness isimperfect and single. This truth is oftenperceived as secretiveness or isolation.

THE FACTUAL ELEMENTS IN YOUR NOVELSHAVE THEIR OWN IMPORTANCE. IS RE-SEARCH, THE COLLECTING OF INFORMA-TION AND THE CHECKING OF FACTS, PARTOF A WRITER'S WORK? HOW IMPORTANT ISWHAT IS COMMONLY CALLED "THE WRIT-ING LABORATORY" TO AN AUTHOR? HOWIMPORTANT IS IT IN YOUR OWN WORK?

What you call "the writing laboratory" isof primary importance to me and consti-tutes the heart of my method of writing. Icould define my personal method as a col-lection of habits, decisions and tasks. Itincludes the careful choice of what I readwhen I'm writing, the management ofeveryday time, the amassing of notes orchance findings, the location of the factualmaterial, the revisions, etc. I could saythat I set up an idea-processing factory.It's a strictly defined process to the extentthat it rules out choices such as associa-tive writing, brainstorming or confession-al writing. And it remains a negotiationsince it differs every time I sit down towork, depending on the stage the bookhas reached, my mood, the questions thatI'm dealing with. What's more, everydaylife often subverts or influences my way ofworking.In conclusion, I'd like to stress two points.First, I feel that the existence of a "writinglaboratory" shouldn't constitute an un-breakable commitment for the creativewriter. The writer's aim is to invent reali-ties which serve his literary purposes, evenif they subvert historical experience. Sec-ond, the existence of a personal method is-n't a deliberate choice on my part butrather a rule of thumb which took shape

over time. It's a combination of my weak-nesses, my obsessions, my skills, my lazi-ness, and I hope it's a sign of maturity.

CRITICS HAVE CALLED YOU AN "ACCOMPLI-SHED STYLIST". WOULD YOU AGREE WITHTHIS DESCRIPTION? IS AN EMPHASIS ONSTYLE REALLY ONE OF YOUR PRIORITIES ASA WRITER?

You're touching here on a question thatconcerns me a lot, because I'm interested

in the classification of literary work bygenre. The relation between form and con-tent is of primary importance in the way Iperceive literature. I place great weight onform (in both structure and style) and Ican't separate it from the other elements ofthe narrative, as for example plot, under-lying ideas or themes. I approach all thesethings together, as parts of a whole. Andthe whole, which is the finished work, issomething greater than simply the sum ofits parts. A successful work leaves roomfor multiple synergies between these ele-ments. I believe that the cultivation ofstyle is what all artistic creators are con-cerned with, and in the case of literature itis expressed through the language.

YOU HAVE LIVED AND TRAVELLED A LOT INBOTH EUROPE AND AMERICA. MOST OFYOUR BOOKS WERE COMPLETED AT SPECIALWRITERS' CENTRES IN ICELAND, SWEDEN,PRAGUE AND ELSEWHERE. TELL US ABOUTTHE WORKING CONDITIONS IN THESE CEN-TRES. HOW DOES A YOUNG GREEK WRITERFEEL IN THAT SORT OF ATMOSPHERE ANDHOW DO HIS COLLEAGUES AND FELLOW-IN-HABITANTS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES RE-

SPOND TO HIM, AND BY EXTENSION TOGREEK LITERATURE GENERALLY?

In no way do I regard staying at a writers'centre abroad as an essential condition forwriting my books. I don't need to leaveGreece in order to be able to write. On thecontrary, all my books were written inAthens. What staying at one of these insti-tutions affords me is the luxury of isola-tion and the free time to complete the de-tailed and demanding work of the finalediting. At the same time, associatingwith writers of different ages and nation-alities gives me the opportunity to ex-change ideas and information with col-leagues whose creative work is carried outunder conditions utterly different fromthose in Greece, and who consequentlyhave a completely different way of seeingall the usual questions that preoccupypeople involved with literature: earning aliving, securing the time to write, infra-structure for research, critics' reviews, re-lations with publishers, etc.The living conditions in these centresvary. Usually the writer is provided withbed and board and a space in which towork, while it is left to the individual todecide how he uses his time and to whatextent he takes part in common activitieswith other writers or chooses to workalone in his own space. My own personalexperience is that these centres have a par-ticularly welcoming attitude to a Greekwriter. Naturally, it is up to each one tomake his own contribution, according tothe knowledge, experiences and skillswhich he has amassed. As regards Greekliterature, it is rather a terra incognita forthose outside the walls and for that reasonI think it is very important that the Na-tional Book Centre continues to supportGreek writers in traveling abroad.

WORKS

THE PARTHENON BOMBER, ATHENS, ANATOLIKOS,1996. 64 PP. THE RECIPES OF NAPOLEON DELAS-TOS, ATHENS, ODYSSEAS, 1997. 155 PP. ISBN: 960-210-294-2 SHUNYATA, ATHENS, ODYSSEAS, 1999. 157PP.ISBN: 960-210-315-9 THE MANICURIST, ATHENS,ODYSSEAS, 2000. 128 PP. ISBN: 960-210-388-4 THEBLACK DRESS, DIARY, RCIPP EDITIONS, NEW JERSEY,USA, 2000

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I'm glad to speak of otherwriters. I depend on otherwriters in order to be able to find my own voice and

protect myself from the vanitythat lays siege to me.