Item: 1 copy of Beyond the Aegean, by Elia Kazan

This goes back to the library tomorrow.  It was kind of a cross between The Godfather and Gone with the Wind -- the former in style, and the latter in substance.  It takes place after World War I, a time period in which the Greeks and the Turks are fighting for control of a region called Anatolia.  It's similar to any number of world conflicts, in that each party claims pre-existing rights to the same land.  But they've both been there having this fight for so long that, as somebody says at 1 point in the book, they are stuck with each other.

Speaking plainly, I didn't actually like the book.  I didn't enjoy reading it, and not just because some of the scenes were unpleasant.  I took it with me as airplane reading on the DC trip and it made the flight back seem longer, not shorter.  I did find it interesting to learn something about that region and its history, but I was also a little grumpy the whole time, aware of time passing while I was reading something I didn't truly want to be reading.

Elia Kazan was a filmmaker, and I can see the book being well-suited for a movie (a long one).  It does have a good story, with elements of suspense, loyalty, intrigue, violence, etc.  As a book, though, I wanted it to explore the deeper elements of the questions suggested by the episodes recounted, the decisions made by the characters.

Reading about this time and place set me to trying to comprehend what it is to have a war in one's own land.  On what do you base your survival when there is no business, no economy, when all of the stores are closed because it's too dangerous for them to be open?  What's to stop the invader from taking any property you consider to be yours?  What happens when even the army is too weak to provide any protection?  Is there any essential difference between us and our enemies (think of Bush's remark on Abu Ghraib, this is not the America I know)?  How devoted are you, really, to your homeland?  Would you betray your neighbor to save yourself?  Would you dishonor your country for food?  How do we understand morality under such conditions?  If I had written the story, there would have been digressionary passages on these questions, but it was written for a different type of reader than I am, the kind concerned with action and facts.