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Alexis Stamatis:Μπαρ Φλωμπέρ (Bar Flaubert)
Our hero/narrator is Yannis Loukas. He is forty years old by the end of the book and earns precarious living writing articles and stories. It is precarious because the last three stories he submitted have been rejected. He He did publish a collection of short stories four years ago but it barely sold. He has started writing a novel but has made only limited progress. He has a long-term girlfriend, Anna, but that relationship seems to be fading out.
His father is Markos Loukas, a seventy year old famous novelist. Markos has hoarded everything connected to his life in order to write his autobiography which his son is helping him with. Yannis’ mother runs a small art gallery. Her son’s favourite artists is Degas, who is mentioned several times but never named till the very end.
Markos outlines his literary philosophy: everything, has to be justified in a novel! It has to be a perfect, flawless construction – like a building – with the supporting structure, the elements it supports, openings, even an expansion joint! The reader may see it all as being smooth and plastered, but inside there’s a whole cosmogony: mortar, stones, bricks, cement, beams.
One of the many things Markas has kept is the large amount of manuscripts aspiring writers have sent him to comment on. The vast majority he rejected but the nine he approved of have gone on to have some literary success. He is particularly damning about Loukas Matthaiou, calling him a fraud who seems to have been associated with Ginsberg, Burroughs and such like. Markas seems to object to books which seem to have no structure and no characters, as found with Ginsberg, Burroughs and such like. Prose is not just jumping from one thing to another. Prose is footslogging, you need a steady step and keen eyes.
When poking around the manuscripts his father has kept, he finds the Matthaiou manuscript. Not surprisingly it is called Bar Flaubert, allegedly the name of a bar in New York but, as we later learn, of far more significance. Yannis reads it and gives us both excerpts and a summary of the whole work.
I find myself entirely with Markas on the quality of the book. . Here is a typical sentence: Ten months passed. Months of stone, cylindrical ones with openings as in an aqueduct where our love surged like a wave
Yannis thinks it is brilliant and wonders why his father was so opposed. However he has never heard of Matthaiou and wonders why. He challenges his father who responds The man was useless,. he raises the issue with his mother who seems to know something but brushes him off.
He consults a friend, an expert on Greek literature. He has heard of him and introduces him to Arnold Hansen, an American associated with the City Lights group who conveniently lives in Athens and speaks Greek. Hansen gives him more information, which will suggest that Barcelona is where to go. He has some money from an inheritance and his life seems to be going nowhere so off he goes to Barcelona.
We now follow Yannis’ as he gallivants round Europe – Spain, Italy and Germany and finally Greece- in search of the elusive and apparently disappeared Loukas Matthaiou, whose real name is Loukas Pateras, translated into Spanish as Luca Padre while in Italy his other name is translated, making him Luca Mateo.
Yannis has a whole host of adventures including stolen paintings, being shot at, nearly starting affairs with various women involved in Lucas’ story, people he speaks mysteriously dying, Hermann Goering and Brecht, the search for Arcadia, both the real one and the imaginary one, a fifteenth century Byzantine tower and much more. He and we soon learn that the book and, in particular the title, offers numerous clues to Lucas’ highly colourful adventure, which also included being shot at.
Yannis becomes completely obsessed with his quest which we might call his mid-life crisis – he is forty by the end of the book – and his life is seemingly going nowhere . both professionally and romantically. He abandons everything – father’s autobiography, articles he is writing, novel, girlfriend and friends – to chase after the various clues and find the various people who can lead him to his goal, Loukas Matthaiou.
As he gradually interprets the various clues in Loukas Matthaiou’s book and reads it more closely. He comes to realises that the author wants one thing – Arcadia. Arcadia is, of course a literary concept which involves a love of and closeness to nature. However it is also very much a real place in Greece and clues in the book suggest that Yannis might find his quest leads there. Loukas has been in several cities as mentioned. However there are various clues that he was not always happy in them, particularly Berlin which was still divided when he was there .and where his wife had lived and suffered from the Allied bombing in World War II. So, in short Loukas wants Arcadia while Yannis wants a purpose in life. However, life being what it is, things do not always work out the way we want.
This certainly was a fascinating mystery unravelled. As I mentioned earlier, I was not impressed with either the excepts from Loukas’ book nor the summary of it and I would have left it in the bookshelf where Yannis found it. When he first read it, Yannis had no idea of the clues it had in it nor that it was going to change his live in several ways. Another issue that I found odd was rhat Yannis was generally aggressive towards people he met in his quest and whose assistance he sought. Maybe this is a Greek thing. However overall out is certainly a very clever and well thought out work whhich will keep you curious till the end, the very end.
Publishing history
First published in 2001 by Kedros
First English translation in 2007 by Arcadia
Translated by David Connolly