Lawrence Durrell is best known as a novelist, in particular for the four novels that make up his ALEXANDRIA QUARTET. In addition, he is both a poet and a travel writer. THE GREEK ISLANDS, though not one of his better known works, is much more than an ordinary travel guide. As he says, "the modern tourist is already well provided for in that respect." How, then, would you describe this book?

For starters, it is an island by island discussion of the physical characteristics, history, mythological importance, and peculiarities of each island. Durrell blends these together so well that, by the end of each section, you feel that you know what makes each island unique and that traveling there would be more like returning to the home of an old friend than making a first visit. He also relates those experiences that might be a warning to skip one or two of the smaller islands. In this respect he tells of an island so small that the only place to sleep was on the floor of a small chapel. This, in itself, was no reason to stay away, but the bed bug bites and fleas were. Luckily this sort of experience was the exception, not the norm.

During an extensive period before World War II, Durrell was an employee of the British Foreign Service and lived and traveled in the Greek Islands for several years. After the war, he spent several more years in a similar position for the Allies. He got to know the native inhabitants much more intimately than most foreigners ever do. He lived in some of their homes, hiked and camped in their less populous areas, and absorbed the ambience of many of the islands. During that period he kept extensive diaries. In preparing this book, these diaries along with contacts with many old friends still on the scene provided the basic information for the book.

There are two books that I wish that I had read before my visits to the Greek Islands in the early and mid '80's. This is one and Kazantzakis' REPORT TO GRECO is the other. Each provided its own outlook, and together they give an unbeatable overview. Most of us see ruins, particularly on islands such as Delos, the legendary birthplace of Apollo, drink, dance, and shop on islands such as Mykonos, eat the food and drink ouzo and retsina wherever we go, but we don't go out of or way to meet the "before the tourist came" natives. Durrell talks of going to out of the way islands and villages where one finds a room by finding the mayor who, in turn, introduces you to someone who takes you into their home as if you were a friend of the family. To do this, you have to be more of a risk taker than most of us are. I'm not sure that I fit that mold by the time I was there in the '80's, but I'd like to think that I might have. I certainly did when I was younger and living in the Philippines. Then, I (foolishly?) knew no fear, and even slept, one night in a carabao pen. (A carabao is a domesticated water buffalo.) Any port in a storm when you're young and adventurous.

To summarize, Durrell presents a picture of the Islands that integrates a place, a people, an ancient history, a mythology replete with warring gods and goddesses, and a modern history, including wars and rebellions, and freedom and slavery, into an experience worth reading about, and worth seeking out. If I'd read THE GREEK ISLANDS before my trips, I would have been more on the lookout for that world. I think that it's still there for those of us who really seek it out.

Edited by Lawerence Durrell, The Henry Miller Reader encapsulates some of the very best of Miller's writings. It includes sections from the Tropic books, Black Spring, and Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. I have the 1956 New Directions edition of the book, and I don't know whether it has been re-edited since that point, but any erotic, or sexual content had to be strained out for the censors. What is left is pure genius. There is a wonderful section on Alfred Perles...otherwise known as "Joey," to those familar with Miller's work. His insights on the writings of Anais Nin hold a certain poignancy in light of their twenty year relationship which both writers had to withold from their readers; Ms. Nin was married still to Hugh Guiller. I would highly recommend this book be purchased along with The Tropic of Cancer, or any other of his works.

The 'marine Venus' of the title is a statue which was found by sailors in their nets at the bottom of Rhodes harbor and which much appealed to Durrell, who thought of her as the 'presiding genius' of the place. He began this book while assigned to Rhodes as an information officer in 1945, and finally finished it in Belgrade in 1952 while working as a press attaché for the British Embassy. Before publication, it was chopped almost in half by his editor, Anne Ridler. She excised most of the passages dealing with the recent war, and "left the descriptions of the landscape and people....She oriented the book to sunlight, blue skies, and clear sea." [quoted from the introduction David Roessel].

War still clings like a gray film to the bright fabric of 'Venus.' Durrell writes intense, brilliant descriptions of Mediterranean skies and dazzling Greek villages, but as in all of his works that I've read, there is also a submerged longing for past love, past history, past glory.

Some of his most beautiful passages, both in this book, in "Prospero's Cell," and in the books of "The Alexandria Quartet" take place under water. Here, the author goes for a midnight swim in the final chapter of "Reflections on a Marine Venus"---

"The [moon]light filters down a full fathom or more to where, on the dark blackboard of weed, broken here and there by dazzling areas of milk-white sand, the fish float as if dazed by their own violet shadows which follow them back and forth, sprawling across the sea's floor."

Bright surfaces. Submerged longings. There is even a ghost story floating just below the surface of a trip to the Island of Patmos. This chapter has some of the most powerful and eerie descriptions in the book. It brings together the storms of the 'little summer of Saint Demetrius', a lost, lingering voice from the war, and an Abbot who presides over a monastery where St. John was said to have composed the Books of the Apocalypse.

"Reflections on a Marine Venus" is one of a series of travelogues that Durrell wrote about his pre- and post-war experiences in and around the Mediterranean. The other books in this series are "Prospero's Cell," "Spirit of Place," "Bitter Lemons," (which I've just begun), and "Sicilian Carousel."

Ultimately, these books defy the description 'travelogue'. Durrell wrote about the peculiar genius of a place, not bound by any moment in time, but for all time.

This is a lovely piece of travel writing about the Island of Rhodes by a master observer of both the human character and the land- and seascapes with which Greece and its islands always delight us. It is a richly sensuous account of Durrell's years in the British civil service just after the end of WWII and just before the island is handed back to Greece. The eye is feted with descriptions of fields, hills, oranges and lemons, and flowers of every form and color. Sounds range from the rhythm of the sea (alternately savage and soothing) to Greek folk songs to sparkling conversation with Brit expatriates (including Gideon the half-sighted wonder). The author even offers a neat summation of a Greek picnic in tems of smells: petrol, garlic, wine and goat. Intermingled with these delicious attacks on the senses there is the play of light over the island as the sun moves across the sky and its rays are filtered through sea mist, mythology and the grim reality of having to rebuild a nation and an island after Nazi cruelty has left it a shambles. Like it or not, the reader is filled in on some mildly interesting points in the author's understanding of ancient history and the medieval Knights of St. John, who came into possession of the island for a time. The last section is about an enormous cookout in honor of a saint at whose shrine miracles have been know to occur, even raising the dead. It is a stroke of irony that during the festivities a young child is run over by a truck and dies the following day despite the best efforts of Mills, a good hearted but overextended British doctor. All in all, this is a delightful book, highly recommendable for those who enjoy travel writing. But Durrell is no Rebecca West, and this is not an example of the best Durrell. But it isn't bad Durrell, either.

This duet of novels (Tunc & Nunquam) is among Durrell's great achievements. The sense of time is Proustian, and imagery is as lush as the Alexandria Quartet. The main theme of the novels is a Spenglerian look at the 20th century, and modern corporations/consumerism in particular. This book is a must for any Durrell enthusiast, and involves social analysis as much as it does artistic introspection. Feel free to email me discussing the book.

This is one of the most remarkable, thought provoking, profound, and-- to put it bluntly-- gut wrenchingly tragic plays I have ever read. This great play seems to have been relegated to obscurity because it was written in verse by an outsider to theatre who's much better known as a novelist. In the immediately post World War II era, the pathos of the times found more of a theatrical voice in absurdism. While this play takes essentially the same dark philosophical view with very modern ideas, its verse style and ancient Greek setting must have seemed outdated. It probably smelled too much of literature and poetry to attract interest then. I sincerely hope it eventually will be resurrected and given the recognition that I feel it's due; for I continue to get more out of it at each reading, and I would dearly love to see it staged.

Set in 7th century B.C. Lesbos, the play is a very complex interaction of many characters who each represent different attitudes concerning the nature of the world at large and the role of the individual within that world. Some are proactive; others withdrawn; others self-centered. All have different ideals, and all become victims of real world circumstances that they could not foresee. Most of the play is an intricate, engaging, at times poetic and philosophical, at times passionate dialogue on the dilemma of how to live in an imperfect world. The tragedy is felt when even the noblest attempts fail miserably. The play seems to argue that any kind of idealism is hopeless. It is a very dark view, but elegantly and piercingly supported by the development of the plot and characters. This is only the main theme. There is much more to the play than this, and I strongly encourage everyone to read it for themselves.

Just a quick note to those who appreciate the historical Sappho as a woman who loved other women: the character Sappho in this play has only male lovers. We know so little about her that, in spite of the evidence of her poetry, this may not be unrealistic. This is in no way relevant to what the play is about, and I mention it only to prevent some Sappho fans from being disappointed.

Our hero: a genius inventor living in Athens with a prostitute destined to murder her brother and become an international film star. His nemesis: Julian, suave & shadowy head of a huge multinational firm out for global domination ... and our hero's soul! His lover: Benedicta, Merlin Industries' fabulously wealthy heiress. Raised in a Turkish seraglio, she spends her days falconing in the hills above Istanbul ...

Improbable? You bet! Half the fun of this book is the B-movie TechniColor melodrama that Durrell lays on with trowel in hand and tongue almost certainly in cheek. What saves this from being a Grisham-style potboiler (fun in its own way) is the suspicion that Durrell doesn't believe in the plot any more than you do: the whole show's just a vehicle for his ideas. The shifting combination of doubles that each character pairs with in the story's weird geometry hints at the concept that everyone in the novel might just be an aspect of the same binary consciousness. The narrative style too--which loops and reloops languidly from past to present, then swoops in a flash to a climax, like one of Benedicta's falcons--tips you off that the workings of memory and the subjective sense of time it brings to our fragile notion of reality are as much a concern to Durrell as any of the events that unfold in his exotic & highly artificial world.

By today's standards, Durrell's prose is more than a little purple; that his women are basically walking dummies and his Orient the perverse, decadent hothouse of the British imperialist also marks "Tunc" as the relic of another era. But if you liked the "Alexandria Quartet" and want to recapture some of the magic, this book should fill a few pleasant afternoons.

P.S. "Tunc" forms a pair with "Nunquam"--both part of Durrell's "Revolt of Aphrodite" series--and each makes more sense if you read it in conjunction with the other.

In a similar manner that The Alexandrian Quartet concentrates on the responsibility and the struggle of the individual artist, Tunc (meaning next in Latin) represents the scientist. Told in typical flashes of memory, the story describes the induction of a gifted scientist, Felix, into Merlin, the mysterious and very powerful firm that everybody seems to be a part of. He soon finds himself married to the ill Merlin heiress, Benedicta, and recipient of limitless wealth. As Benedicta becomes more and more tempestuous and suffers more and more psychological damage, Felix feels a new yearning for his scientific freedom. Something, whether it be the never seen chairman of Merlin, Julian, or the firm itself is always a step ahead of him. Told with the same linguistic perfection of Durrell's other novels, Tunc gracefully unfolds itself into the reader's comprehension. Nothing is revealed before it ought to be and the reader is kept with just enough information to follow the story, but no more. It is definatly worth reading.

It is not a Masterpiece. It is the best book ever written. Full of characters poetry and love. Lawrence durrell said that it is an inquiry about modern love. This book is perfect in every sence. Alexandria the city with its beauty and decline is the inspiration power. The novel of the millenium. Really. This book has the power to change your life or at least put you in a world so exotic amazing and real that you will start losing your words and breath.

The Alexandria Quartet I will read and re-read many times in my life. The 4 books make up a beautiful journey through the streets of Alexandria, Egypt. It's rare to read books with such depth of soul. I believe there is not a human emotion left untouched by Durrell in the Quartet.

Durrell is a master with the word and the mind-- his creation of four separate books are united by love, deceit, and desperate measures, wrapped in sensual language and the exotic backdrop of Alexandria. His machinations take the reader by surprise, with multi-faceted characters that appear destined for one obsession, yet consumed by another. His vivid descriptions of expatriate life rival those of his contemporaries Evelyn Waugh or H.E. Bates. Engrossing.

"Pope Joan" or "Papissa Joanna" was originally written and published in 1886 by the Greek author Emmanuel Royidis. The book tells the story of Pope John VIII, the purported female Pope who ruled Christendom for a period of two years, five months and four days in the middle of the ninth century. "Pope Joan" is a comic masterpiece of irreverence towards the medieval Church and the accepted pieties of its revisionist historians. Indeed, insofar as Royidis continued to propagate the legend of Pope Joan, to claim that the work contained only "facts and events proved beyond discussion", the text itself ingeniously combines history and legend, as well as brilliant wit, to subvert claims of authority. As Lawrence Durrell notes in his Preface to his brilliant English translation and adaptation, "the authorities of the Orthodox Church were horrified by what seemed to them to be the impious irony of its author-and no less by the gallery of maggot-ridden church fathers which he described so lovingly." Not suprisingly, Royidis was excommunicated from the Orthodox Church and his book was banned in Greece.

The first three parts of "Pope Joan" tell the story of Joanna prior to her arrival in Rome, before she became an historical personage. Set in the ninth century, the narrative captures the European world in disarray after the death of Charlemagne, captures a time when civilization was tenuous and the Church provided one of the few viable social structures. It is this part of the narrative that is unambiguously fictional, the imagined story of Joanna's life in Germany and then in Greece. After her parents die, Joanna clandestinely enters a monastery where she meets the monk Frumentius and develops a romantic relationship with him. When her true sexual identity is surmised, Joanna and Frumentius flee one monastery and then another, eventually ending up in Greece. Joanna soon becomes tired of her romance and her intellectual brilliance attracts the attention of Church leaders throughout Greece. She leaves Frumentius and departs alone for Rome, where the legend, some say the history, of Pope Joan begins. She becomes a papal secretary renowned for her intellect and, when Pope Leo IV dies, she ascends to the papacy. Pope Joan becomes pregnant and dies after giving birth during a procession through the streets of Rome.

While the general outline of the narrative may seem only mildly interesting, the brilliant translation and prose of Lawrence Durrell, together with the biting, irreverent wit of Royidis, make "Pope Joan" an unsurpassed work of comic genius. A flavor for this wit and style can be found in a short passage describing what ensued after Pope Joan gave birth: "Great was the consternation when a premature infant was produced from among the voluminous folds of the papal vestments . . . Some hierarchs who were profoundly devoted to the Holy See sought to save the situation and change horror and disgust to amazement by crying out 'A miracle! A miracle!' They bellowed loudly calling the faithful to kneel and worship. But in vain. Such a miracle was unheard of; and indeed would have been a singular contribution to the annals of Christian thaumaturgy which, while it borrowed many a prodigy from the pagans, had not yet reached the point where it could represent any male saint as pregnant and bringing forth a child."

While the apologist position has consistently denied the historicity of Pope Joan, there is at least some suggestion that the legend is indeed a fact. As Durrell suggests in his Preface, one telling point is that Platina includes a biography of Pope John VIII in his "Lives of the Popes". And no less an authority than The Catholic Encyclopedia states that Platina's "Lives of the Popes" is "a work of no small merit, for it is the first systematic handbook of papal history." Historical disputation aside, however, "Pope Joan" stands as a brilliant work of comic writing and masterful translation, a masterpiece of Royidis and Durrell.

People that buy the Cross version are buying the wrong book. Look instead to the beautifully written, gleefully and irreverently funny version by Emmanuel Rhodes, written over a 100 years ago, translated from the Greek by famed author Laurence Durrell.

Truly, there is no comparison between the Cross and Durrell versions. Jane Austen chided her gullible heroine in "Northanger Abbey" for indulging in pulp Gothic novels that were "all plot and no reflection". The Cross book is all plot and no reflection. Or even worse, it is all agenda and no reflection. It is unabashedly, tediously revisionistic, hell-bent on making Pope Joan an idealized, religiously progressive proto-feminist. Cross projects all our late-twentieth century values onto her, time and place be damned. And it bludgeons you with its purpose for hundreds upon hundreds of pages. Joan never emerges as a character, just a cause. This is a book that in 50 years we will be able to look back upon and say, "Oh, how '90s". Plus, the writing is cliched and really rises no higher than that of "genre" level prose.

The Durrell translation of the Emmanuel Rhodes book is everything the Cross book is not. The prose simply sings, even in translation -- there were passages that were so beautiful, they gave me a palpable headrush. It is filled with gleeful black humor, the plot is tight and well-constructed, and the book, though irreverent, is filled with respect and affection for the character of Joan. Rhodes has no agenda for Joan, he depicts everything with honesty and clarity. For example, he does not attempt to make apologies for anti-Semites, and even adopts their views in casual references as a device to voice the world views of the characters that is required to immerse the reader in the time and place of the book. And Joan's baser impulses driving her actions are never gilded over into something more heroic than they are. Plus, the Rhodes book is simply fun.

I enjoyed Cross's version of this story, especially the historical detours into the state of law and medicine in the Dark Ages. But, I'm glad I read it before I opened the Lawrence Durell/Emmanuel Royidis' version.

This is the funniest book I've read since Fried Green Tomatoes! It's a hilarious, irreverent, bawdy, sacreligious saga at the expense of every prudish, hypocritically pious notion ever spawned in Christian history. It's a scream! I wonder if my neighbors have been disturbed by my uncontrollable howling. As an example, there's the bit where Joan uses the leg bone (sacred relic) of a martyred saint which she and a group of monks are transporting, to fend off the overly-amorous monks during an episode of gluttenous over-indulgence!

This very literate debauchery is the work of a genius.

The beauty of belonging to a reading group is that everyone is exposed to books that they might not normally read. I don't think that I would have considered reading this book except that it was the choice of my book club.

Well, this story was not really what I expected at all. Constance, Lady Chatterley is a rather likeable person who is trapped in a sad and boring life. What happens to her and her lover is something neither really anticipated nor expected. The book starts in 1917 and at the time when it was first published, the subject matter of LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER was considered to be totally shocking and unacceptable.

Yes, a few parts of the book have rather crude passages, and language, but Lady Chatterley herself is a very sympathetic character. The style of writing used by D. H. Lawrence is very descriptive and the pace of the story is probably a little slower than modern readers are used to. Aside from some offensive language, I think that this was a rather interesting, but very depressing book. Many of the characters seemed to be lacking in any kind of a moral code and I found most of the men in the story to be rather despicable.

This was the first book by Lawrence that I ever read, and it made me want to read his other works. Something in Lawrence's style, whether it's his complete and almost unsettling way of capturing human thought and emotion, or his flawless way with language, makes you long to be 'subjected' to his words for another 300 pages.

Since Lady C's Lover was the first of his books that I read, I had the idea, not surprisingly, that all of his works would contain that purity and honesty of word choice (aka profanity) that this famous work is ripe with. Don't think this for a minute. When you read Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, and The Rainbow, you will get the feeling that Lady C's Lover was Lawrence's great mental eruption. These other works *tremble* slightly with allusions; VERY subtle allusions. It's as though Lawrence's mind was building up and preparing itself with his other works for what would be Lady Chatterley's Lover. Because, if you haven't read anything by Lawrence and know little about him, you will receive a MASSIVE surprise with this book...either a very pleasant (my case) surprise, or an unpleasant one. If you took offence at Holden Caulfield's language, your mind will scream at the language of Lady C's Lover. What we call 'the F word' in our more self-conscious moments, is used surely more than 100 times in this work. I don't think I've ever seen more straight-out connotations, allusions, imagery, everything, than in this book. It's amazing! At times, you will catch yourself marvelling at how Lawrence must have written it in a white hot fever, unable to stop, but surely knowing just how hard it would be to get this puppy published in his day and age. The work, then, is a brutal piece of honesty written, I feel, for the author's sake more than for the public's. That makes it priceless. It's one of the rare moments when we can view a writer's 'literary soul,' the part of their mind that usually will not surface for fear of not being publishable.

Whether you'd describe it as beauty, art it would be a good idea to read Lady Chatterley's Lover so that you can know for yourself what you feel about what is probably one of the greatest books ever written.

Lawrence really lays bare his soul in this book. It is the story of a ripe, red blooded woman who needs a real man. As usual there doesn't seem enough to go around. Ladies! I hope you all meet a Mellor's in your lives. Gardening is indeed a great trade for aspiring lovers. And You'll love this tale - it was one of Lawrence's best.

Lawrence wanted to bring us back to our dynamic center; he hated this celebral world and head sex. His domain was the realm of the body ... And all of its pent up sexual dynamisms. If you read Fantasia of The Unconscious you will be able to access his views right from his teeming intelect. He was perhaps one of the finest writers Britain ever produced and his literary output was prodigious indeed!