| My Icon Case: Literary Sketches of a Greek-American Family 45,000 words My Icon Case offers a history of my family that focuses on my four grandparents (all of whom were born in Greece and immigrated to America around 1930). Though generally chronological, the book is by no means a straight history, but devolves into a series of closely-crafted vignettes. Each major event is placed in a literary frame, and my relatives spring to life vis-à-vis such legendary heroes as Jason, Odysseus, and Antigone. In addition, woven intermittently through the tapestry of the book, the history and culture of ancient Greece emerges as a living, shaping force. The book is directed to two specific audiences. The first is an ethnic audience composed not only of Greeks but of other nationalities who share a similar "ethnic consciousness" (e.g., Jews, Italians, Arabs, and Russians). The second is a more general audience of educated (though not necessarily literary) readers who support such publications as The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books and who seek out writers with strong, individual prose styles and wide-ranging, inter-disciplinary interests. The book is written in first-person, and I present myself as a sort of ethnic E. B. White or Garrison Keiller who has found his folk, his authentic human voice in a unique, if somewhat idiosyncratic space where the tales and passions of simple immigrants meet and fuse with the themes and characters of the Great Books of the Western world. TO READ THE FIRST SECTION OF THIS BOOK (THAT TELLS THE STORIES OF MY MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER), PLEASE CLICK HERE. | ||