Dinner with Penelope

Soon, I will travel to Greece. Months ago, I found a list of books about Greece recommended by Rick Steves. Dinner with Penelope sounded the most interesting --it's a memoir written by an American woman in her 20's about the year she spent in Greece. The book was published in 1996.

I have spent months trying to get through the book and ultimately, I failed. Given the fact that it's a memoir, we learn no personal details about the woman who writes it. I have no idea why she chose to spend the year in Greece. She speaks Greek but is not of Greek descent.. again who knows why? In spite of being in her twenties, she seems to approach life like someone in their 70s. She provides 10 million details about a vase inside an Orthodox church or some mundane facts about Byzantine history.

I did learn a few things about Greece that I feel could be summed up by this paragraph:

We are on our way to Mystras, the ghost town which gazes down on the Spartan plain, perhaps the most significant of the medieval sites on the Greek mainland, remnants which have the direct link to contemporary Greece that the classical sites do not -- in these settings the never-resolved struggle between Christianity and classical culture, between philosophy and theology, was engaged, the struggle which is powerfully present, both overtly and covertly, in the living Greece I am traveling in. The schizophrenia of modern Greek history, as well as thought, is demonstrated here, since this site, which became one of the last outposts of the Byzantine Empire, was built by enemies of the Byzantine Empire.

So the Greeks have a long, complicated history and they are complicated people. They are also grossly sexist.. the only personal details the author offers of her experience are the many times she is accosted by Greek men.. who are convinced of their superiority. Women are pleased when their husbands die and their value seems to be determined by keeping their children dependent on them.

2/3 of the way through the book, I had a hard time appreciating Greek culture, so I stopped reading. However one sentence stays with me -- today's Greece seems to know that "her face is her fortune." Greece is apparently such a beautiful place that in spite of a culture that seems to be stuck in many different centuries of the distant past, the country is still thriving because of its geography.

I look forward to having my own experience however brief it will be.. I am also grateful not to have been born into that culture.