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Katerina Thanasoula, ERT/Radio, Greece, talked with Nicholas Kokonis about his book.

(Q) Nikos, what inspired you to write your novel?
Katerina, the original seed of inspiration probably goes back to the time shortly after my arrival on the American shores in the summer of 1962. I had brought with me twenty years of tightly-packed vivid memories, mostly what I (and my family) had endured so I could obtain a visa to America. While working as a busboy and attending college, I decided to record most of these remembrances as My Story, using a borrowed old Greek typewriter and only two inept fingers. I wrote this with the only intention that it might some day serve as a convenient anamnesis. It took me a few decades to finally get around to the project, the final outcome of which was Arcadia, My Arcadia.

(Q) Please explain.
Every time I visited my homeland, Arcadia, as a grown man, I witnessed with dismay the desolation of the land. It seemed as though the land had fallen into decay. The legendary land where Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, was once worshipped, had been left essentially uncultivated, and the shepherds who used to dot the hillsides with their flocks were scarcely seen anywhere. The green patches of land, where every farmer produced his own vegetables and raised his own animals, were a thing of the past.

I meditated in sorrow upon the irreversible effects of globalization and its discontents that rumbled across the land. Instantly, I knew I had to write a story as a literary document of the bygone era.

So, upon returning to my American home one summer, I took out My Story, yellowed by time, and read it. I was astonished at its originality and was moved deeply, realizing that I had somehow anticipated my homeland's desolation. I knew I did not write in that style any more nor was I interested in writing a personal memoir. But in those precious pages I found the leaven to make the dough of my new story, Arcadia, My Arcadia, rise.

(Q) That's a long time.
Yes, it is, but I took long breaks in-between as family life and private practice required. You know, sometimes you have a burnt-out feeling and you must stop for a while.

(Q) How did you come to be a writer, Nikos?
I thought of being a writer when I was in high school, Katerina. At the time I used to read a great deal, and at some point it occurred to me that someone had to write all those books out there, and that one day I might write one myself.

(Q) What role did your Greek background play in your becoming a writer?
My Greek background bequeathed me a wealth of material which subsequently proved very important to my writing. I would briefly mention here the richness and wisdom of Greek proverbs and sayings, the mystical world of the church and the mesmerizing writings of my youth?s favorite authors, Papadiamantis and Myrivilis, and the splendor of Mavilis' sonnets. I began writing my own sonnets at 18.

(Q) Could you comment about the experience of being an immigrant and its influence on your writing Arcadia, My Arcadia?
The experience of being an immigrant probably gave me the necessary perspective of outsidedness, of distance, that I think was important. It is often that sort of distancing that gives a writer a clearer perspective on the society around him.

(Q) Which authors have most influenced your own writing?
It probably would be true to say that the most influential writers are those one reads youngest, since the mind is most impressionable then. Among my influences I would have to include, then, a host of authors such as Nikos Kazantzakis, Elias Venezis, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Ernest Hemingway and many others. My own ideal was to try to take something from everyone I read. I kept a series of spiral notebooks, Selected Flowers, where I kept everything I had liked in the books I read--a metaphor, a phrase, a new word maybe. I still have those notebooks. I never wish to part with them. They are remembrances of long hours of fine pleasure either at the Public Library of my youth's hometown, Tripolis, or at home.

(Q) Did you have a regular writing schedule?
I tried to but it was impossible. Not only was my professional life as practicing clinical psychologist very demanding, but children and my family life made having a schedule difficult. I wrote much of the story either during very late hours, when the rest of the family slept or very early in the morning, mostly at PANERA BREAD restaurants near my Chicago home (when I finally bought a laptop that made writing even more fun).

(Q) What did you do when your writing did not go well?
I just left it for another time. I could not write if I did not feel an inner urge to do so. Then, when it came, I felt compelled to write, and the writing came naturally. The thoughts seemed to flow out of my mind.

(Q) Do you have any tips for young future writers?
Have an ear, an eye and a nose for things. Read formidably! Be a good student of the history of humanity.

(Q) Will your book be available in Greek, Niko?
Yes, Katerina. As a matter of fact, it is scheduled to come off the press in the latter part of 2007 or in the spring of 2008.

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