'Crete' by Barry Unsworth

'Crete' by Barry Unsworth ; published by National Geographic, 2004, 8vo; hardback; pp 170 inc. biblio.Price €18.50 (approx).

I am indebted to the historian and archaeologist Tony Fennymore for pointing me in the directions of Alikianos and Argyroupolis.

This has been an awfully difficult review for me to write. I really find it goes against the grain being negative about books in general, especially when they may appeal to people genuinely interested in that greatest of islands. On the face of it, 'Crete' by Barry Unsworth may seem like a worthwhile addition into a market, remarkably short of good, extant, travelogues. Some of the prose within - as one might expect from a once 'Booker Prize' winner - is excellent; the mythological retellings occasionally verge on the sumptuous; full of understanding, curiosity and imagination. Oh yes, this author can write, that, dear friends, is indubitable! Unfortunately, with this particular book, our guide appears to know practically nothing about his subject matter, and the three or so weeks he spent on the island, appears to have educated him little. There are allusions to previous experiences in Greece, and the author even claims to have once been "reasonably fluent" in the Greek language. If so, he appears to have forgotten much, and this book is instantly forgettable. A total reliance on other people's material; a constant inability to get facts and figures - even when copied - straight, make this one you may wish to avoid.

We all rely on other material; Thomas Hardy once wrote, "art can but transmute, invention is not absolute"; it's nigh-on impossible to write on any subject without borrowing others' words, thoughts or ideas, at least to some extent. Here, the words of  Xan Fielding, Adam Hopkins, Sonia Greger, Michael Llewellyn Smith, Costis Davaris, Beryl Darby and others, are quoted and, at times, the author expertly weaves their voices into his text. Far too often, however, he appears to liberate those words to use as "fillers" - apropos very little - into what is, ultimately, an extremely unsubstantial little tome. Occasionally, he misunderstands the original completely, leading to confusion all-round, as in the retelling of the so-called "Kandanoleon (occ. Kantanoleon) Wedding murders" (for those of you who don't know this story, a version of it can be found by following this link, from a photo I took of a plaque in Argyroupolis).

Xan Fielding wrote of these murders, in his book 'The Stronghold', from which the author quotes, unfortunately Mr Unsworth then feels the need to qualify the story's inclusion within the book and as luck would have it,  happens upon the very village (Alikianos) which may have been the murders' location.What are the odds? We have a chicken and egg scenario here. Did the author visit Alikianos having read 'The Stronghold', or was it the other way round. Indeed, did he visit the village at all. Who knows? Certainly not me! What I can tell you is, through no fault other than his own, our author suddenly finds himself up a creek, without  the proverbial paddle, wrestling with a far larger crab than he ought! There are two villages with claim to be the location of the Kandanoleon wedding murders, and Mr Unsworth describes the wrong location! "How"? "Why"?  "What"?, I hear you cry!  An elementary mistake, really, but an extremely poor one to make; compare and contrast the following sentences:

Pictures © Stelios Jackson/west-crete.com 2005

1) "The ruins of the Molino mansions are still there, overgrown with weeds and long abandoned. On the lintel above the entrance the Latin motto can still be made out: Omnia Mundi Fumus et Umbra (All the Things of the World are Smoke and Shadow), a saying which was to apply with particular force, in the next century, to Venetian dreams of conquest and empire"

2) "The entrance lintel, which is now overgrown, carries the inscription 'Omnia Mundi Fumus et Umbra' (All in the World is Smoke and Shadow) a sentiment to which the Venetians were particularly attached, and which ultimately turned out to be grimly accurate regarding their Cretan possessions"

The first is taken from pages 64-65 of 'Crete', within a piece on the village of Alikianos and the Kandanoleon murders; the second is from (the 4th edition, pages 320-321, as per the author's bibliography, though the 6th edition was available before Mr Unsworth's book was published!) of the 'Rough Guide to Crete and its own description of the da Molino "castle", within its piece, also on Alikianos. Do the two descriptions seem remarkably similar to you? Yes. Other than rampant plagiarism, the fact that Mr Unsworth believes the "lintel doorway" to be here shows scandalously poor research! The erstwhile Da Molino residence in Alikianos has no lintel doorway, never mind one with a Latin inscription; the doorway with inscription can be found at Argyroupolis (see pictures), the other Cretan village to claim this story as its own. What Mr Unsworth has done here, is repeat an error from the Rough Guide to Crete. The authors of that guidebook had, no doubt, read that the scene of the Kandanoleon murders came replete with lintel doorway and erroneously ascribe it to the place they believed this piece of Cretan folklore to have taken place. Mr Unsworth swallows the hook, line and sinker!

The fact that the inscription isn't in Alikianos at all, but in a completely different village, within a completely different nomos, is research of the worse kind, especially as the author fails to acknowledge his source. Not that Mr Unsworth claims to have visited either site; he is just passing through Alikianos, as one does, on his way up to "desolate" (!) Omalos to walk the Samarian gorge. In fact "the sun had hardly risen", by the time the Unsworths arrive at Omalos, so it would have been pitch-black when they left Alikianos and, believe me, the "mansions" of da Molino are difficult enough to find even when illuminated by the midday sun! Tony Fennymore had pre-warned me of the Alikianos fiasco;  if I wasn't already having trouble making head or tail of the mistakes within, I now had to contend with an increasingly nagging feeling: if the author didn't visit this site, which other places, mentioned within, did his sock-lined sandals fail to touch?

So many places are mentioned, without having any logical place in the author's itinerary. That itinerary appears to allow Mr Unsworth to take a drive along the North coast of Crete, stopping  (from west to east) at: Spilia, Chania, Rethymnon, Aghia Pelaghia, Herakleion, Elounda and Aghios Nikolaos, before heading south to Ierapetra and Myrtos. This is a journey that can be done in a day - albeit a rather long one - and easily done in three days. Very little seems to happen to the author during his stay on the island. O.K., maybe he's not as disaster-prone as I - few are - but there are absolutely no anecdotes worth mentioning - or none which are in the least bit memorable - aside those liberated from other, far better, books. Accommodation was found at Aghia Pelaghia and Elounda; the latter, it would appear, the Unsworths stayed at for some time, yet as the author clearly dislikes the place, one has to ask, why? Is this a package tour our guide is on? He's not a great fan, either, of the "all-inclusive" type of hotel he appears forced to stay in when visiting Aghia Pelaghia (it doesn't seem nearly "all-inclusive" enough for Mr Unsworth!); neither am I,  which is why I'd prefer to avoid them and stay in one of the many other hotels situated there instead. Maybe our author wants to write about how the other half live; maybe our author is the other half! 

There are far too many mistakes contained within 'Crete', to be able to relate here, without making this review longer than the book! Some of these are caused by the author slavishly copying dates from books contained within his bibliography: "When the formal declaration with Greece was read out in November (1913)...." (page 99); this monumental piece of history, took place in December 1913; a schoolboy error, a result of the author evidently misunderstanding page 422 of  Detorakis' 'History of Crete'; had he skipped forward to page 430 of that book, he would have discovered for himself the correct date. Nit-picking? Possibly; but this is one of the most important moments in Crete's long and varied history; a date when, for the first time in over 700 years, the Cretans could feel they were not under foreign rule;  try telling an American they celebrate Independence day in June, or an Englishman that the battle of Hastings took place in 1065. You'll get very short shrift; and quite rightly too!

If I managed to trace the source of that particular mistake, there are plenty of others which completely befuddle me as to their origin: Where, for instance, does Mr Unsworth gets the idea that Kydonia (Ancient Chania) is unique for having yielded deposits of both Linear A and B tablets? "No other site has been so far discovered containing examples of both scripts" (page 45). It's completely beyond me! The author later visits Knossos, so he's at least aware of the existence of the site, if not the fact that it has unearthed plenty of examples of both scripts; in fact, on Crete, Linear B is almost exclusive to Knossos. Talking of Knossos, Mr Unsworth's reverence towards Sir Arthur Evans is verging on the toady (this is no doubt due to his reliance on Joan Evans' biography of her brother, rather than the rather better, newer and certainly more iconoclastic biography, by Alexander MacGillivray, called 'Minotaur'). Knossos was known long before Sir Arthur "acting on a solitary conviction", excavated it. Evans was in fact thoroughly reliant on Crete's very own Minos Kalokairinos who had already unearthed a number of pithoi and sent them to various museums throughout the world, for fear of the Ottomans becoming interested in such things. The site was also very well-known to that maverick excavator of Troy and Mycenae, Heinrich Schliemann; in fact he tried to buy it, long before Evans arrived. Continuing with the ancient disinformation, we are told how the city of Aptera enjoyed its "greatest splendour...during the Hellenistic period, from about 500BC" (page 87); a date which, in fact, is the beginning of the Classical period and some 164 years before the Hellenistic period began; and this from a writer of historical novels? There are some very strange notions in this book indeed!

The author evidently has no idea where the Sporadic group of islands are. Firstly he places the Cycladic island of Ikaria in their number and later claims that Turkey lies just beyond them! The Sporades can be found just east of the Greek mainland, close to the peninsula of Pelion and a very considerable ferry ride from both Ikaria and Turkey! If our author is challenged in the History and Geography departments then he's no great director either! Do not take the road north of Aghioi Deka if you wish to visit Gortyn (page 127), as you would have already passed the site!  On page 19 we are told that the Venetians "invaded" the island in 1204; they didn't invade Crete at all, rather they acquired it from the Boniface of Montferrat (old Boniface had himself acquired Crete following the disgraceful goings-on during the Fourth Crusade and wasn't at all keen on the island; neither were the Venetians to begin with, a situation which allowed the Genoese to squat on Crete for a few years, before being forcibly kicked-off the island); a fact of which the author suddenly appears fully aware, later in the book. Even when Mr Unsworth reminisces of the short time he spent on the island of Symi, in the Dodecanese -  during the filming of his novel 'Pascali's Island' - we are not spared glaring inaccuracies. Writing about the Ottoman occupation of the island and the islanders' hatred of anything symbolically Turkish, we read: "Almost a century has passed since these islands (the Dodecanese) were united with Greece" (page 100); it's little more than half a century since Symi became part of greater Greece; the island was ceded to the Italians for 35 years, hence the confusion! 
Blaming the "tourist board and respective local populations", for the situation where two caves exist with associations to the great god Zeus (Ida and Psychro) "on the basis that two excursions are better business than one" (page 9), shows a remarkable ignorance of ancient literature; and of 19th century travel books; and of modern-day archaeological theory. The author will no doubt be mortified to learn that it's likely that the real location for ancient Dikte is, in fact, close to Palaikastro, on the east coast; the tourist board and respective local populations will, no-doubt, make a mint on the basis that three excursions are better than two!

In most respects, for me, this was an extremely disappointing read. There is little doubt that the author was commissioned to write this book on the strength of his previously published material. The publisher has been duped. There are dozens of writers out there who would have made a far better fist of this project, but, sadly for us, most of them are not 'Booker Prize' winning novelists. Having said that, don't be surprised if you enjoy the book. The kind of errors contained within, pained your reviewer, but you may be more able to ignore them than he. 'Crete' is part of the ongoing 'Literary Travel Series'. It is published in the USA, and no doubt has a North American readership as its target audience. I would suspect that audience, by and large, is unlikely to visit Crete, but still wish to enjoy good travel writing and, as I said in my preamble, 'Crete', on the face of it, may seem like a useful addition to that market. The style of the book could be described as "mock-old-fashioned", even, perhaps, "retro"; pages have that barely guillotined look; the pictures are black and white. The style I like; the pictures are awful! When the author sticks to what he is good at, i.e. storytelling - or at least the retelling of stories - the book moves on with great pace and verve; however, when he tries to come across as an expert on Crete and/or Greece, everything comes crumbling down around our ears. To me the great danger of reading books such as this is, if the reader takes the word of the author as gospel, those mistakes are going to be repeated, until they in turn become "common knowledge"; until everybody knows there's a lintel doorway with Latin inscription at Alikianos; until the Classical Age, becomes the Hellenistic Age, or vice versa; until Ikaria becomes an island in the Sporades...if one cares to look at the real face hiding beneath the mask, one will find it to be far less attractive than originally thought.

Stelios Jackson, July 31st 2005