My Arcadia Books

Interview with Nicholas D. Kokonis

By Alexia Phipps, Student at The University of Texas at Austin

(Q) In reading Angelo's story, one has the sense that the stage of Arcadia, My Arcadia and Out of Arcadia: The American Odyssey of Angelo Vlahos has room for every person’s country. 

Indeed. I wrote both books from my heart’s quiet center essentially to address the single large concern that has always stirred me: how one achieves a personal identity and a place in the world. Angelo’s story is not the tale of my life. It is much more than that. Change Angelo's name to Antonia, Oliver, Juanita, Gerardo, Malachy, Frank, Jakub, Mayra, and the story becomes the legend of every poor, marginalized man and woman who, not discouraged by the privations of their lives, strive with determination to find their niche in the world. The idea of man proving his worth had fascinated me since reading The Old Man and the Sea in high school. I was impressed about how, through all his struggles, the old man demonstrated the ability of the indomitable human spirit to endure hardships and suffering in order to win.

(Q) Angelo's story is your torch passed on to each of us to keep the unique American Dream alive. What inspired you to write this story?

The original seed of inspiration probably goes back to my arrival on the American shores in the summer of 1962. I had brought with me twenty years of tightly-packed vivid memories of Arcadia, mostly what I (and my family) had endured and what I had to go through 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, plucking the fruit of memory and careful not to spoil its bloom. After a few decades, with my studies having been completed, I finally got 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 heart-breaking decay. The legendary land where Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, was once worshipped, had been left essentially uncultivated, most of the water wells abandoned and the shepherds, who used to dot the hillsides with their flocks of sheep and goats, 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.

Standing stunned amidst this transformed landscape one summer, after the completion of my doctoral studies, I meditated in sorrow upon the irreversible effects of globalization that had rumbled across the land and, like the bewildered shepherds before an Arcadian tomb in Nicolas Poussin's masterpiece,  reflected: "Et in Arcadia Ego!" A dam-burst of ideas, memories, feelings, and thoughts cascaded over me, unstoppably. Instantly, I knew I had to write a story as a literary document of the bygone era. So, upon returning to Chicago,  I took out My Story  and read it. I realized that I did not write in the victimized man's style any more nor was I interested in writing a personal memoir. But in those precious pages, yellowed by time, I found the leaven to make the dough of Angelo's story rise. 

(Q) Restless Angelo Vlahos, with his deep churning of hope and endurance, is a winning protagonist. Indeed, most of your characters are. Can you tell us about them?

Looking back at my characters now, I don't see them in terms of themselves, in terms of their physical and surface characteristics. I think of them, rather, as the ideas and ideas they embody--as manifestations of the eternal human spirit, irrepressible and unwilling to give in to misfortune. Preparing this story I agonized giving birth to my characters. Now, if I am ever very, very happy, it is during the long nights when I sit with these men and women of my fancy as I would with real people. I identify with them, with all their dreams and actions. I vicariously participate in their lives to learn just a little bit more about what it means to be simply human. I love them, rejoice with them, and at times I even weep sincere tears over their struggles and misfortunes. The illuminate the world of my experience.

(Q) Angelo's story is one of those novels that earn their tears from readers. I couldn’t help but feel for Angelo and his family. Everything that we might take for granted in this country had to be wrung out of the earth with every ounce of their strength. And then, when he started high school, Angelo had to live in the corner of someone's barn, with little help in his world for the weak and the wretched. 

Thank you, Alexia. You’re not alone.  Readers, whether men or women, young or old, or from vastly different cultural backgrounds, have told me that they have reacted, in a personal and immediate way, to a sense of “exactly!” in the story. That they connect head and heart with my characters and rejoice with the story’s message of hope and inspiration for anyone at a crossroads. They personalize Angelo's struggle, and his triumphs become their own. As reviewer Prof. Vassiliki Rapti has stated, "It is impossible for the reader not to empathize with the protagonist." I consider this to be the biggest compliment readers can pay an author, and for that I am very pleased—indeed grateful. It is my fervent hope that Angelo's story will keep inspiring especially the young people to be the best versions of themselves.

(Q) In a review that I read recently, Prof. Aristotle Michopoulos says that the story of Angelo Vlahos portrays one of the best pictures of post-WW II immigration of Greeks to the United States.  Here it is: “I have not heard of any similar cases of Greek immigrants lately. Kokonis offers the best depiction, through his main character, of that Arcadian spirit. It becomes the light to the future immigrants of how to endure, how to fight and how to persevere in order to attain their own ultimate success.” Your comment.

I thank you and Prof. Michopoulos for the kind words. I think that probably no writer has dealt with my theme from this particular perspective I have. And so I find myself enjoying a clear and unique advantage over other writers. For it has been said that authors are like cattle going to a fair; those of the same field can never move without butting one another. Luckily, that is the last thing I should fear to happen to me now.

(Q) Arcadia, My Arcadia is written with fresh emotional power and astonishing details that evoke the smells, sights and sounds of eternal Greece.  What role did your being a Greek immigrant play in your becoming a writer?

The experience of being an immigrant probably gave me a sense of marginality and out-sidedness that I think contributes to one's formation as a writer. I think that sort of distancing gives writers a clearer perspective on society. Also, my Greek background bequeathed me a wealth of rich material which proved indispensable to my writing.

As a child I was nursed on the legends of my ancestors and stories of the glory that was Greece. Listening to the white-haired men in the village kafenion relate awe-inspiring stories of valor of war heroes, I was inculcated with courage and perseverance. My people's folk sayings and the richness and wisdom of proverbs instilled in me a sense of provincial pride, while my grade school teacher’s enlightening lessons showed me the way of progress in a legendary but otherwise dark and scary world.

 (Q) How interesting! Angelo's story is an award winner. What awards has it earned?

 It has earned a coveted Honorary Prize from the prestigious Academy of Athens, a First Homer and Gold Medal from the International Society of Greek Writers, a Commendation from the Cultural Center of Athens (Greece) and an Award of Special Recognition from the Pan-American Federation. Humbling also was the unanimous decision of the Ministry of Education of Greece to approve the story for the country's school libraries.

 (Q) That's marvelous. What would you like the reader to take away from Angelo’s story?

I wrote this story to recognize those who help us lay our burdens down in the lonely sojourn of our life--those whose actions of charity remind us that no man is an island. There are some things in the world that help us sustain ourselves, and two of them are mercy and grace. A candle loses nothing by lighting other candles. A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.  We clearly see that in the story of Ben-Hur, where the seeds of epic struggle and redemption are sown when a stranger offered him a glass of water.

(Q) I see. Please go on.

I also like my reader to rake away these convictions:  That children need good teachers. Good teachers enable children to become better than they have been.   And as Henry Adams put it, a teacher affects eternity; one can never tell where his or her influence stops. We become what we behold. Another conviction is that dreams are important. They should be strong enough, big enough, to define us. Any person that has achieved something great had a big dream first. If we don't start with big dreams, we can never fulfill them. Our reach should always exceed our grasp, and we should never give in to adversity.

(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:  Elias Venezis, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, A. I. Cronin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ernest Hemingway. When I read the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I could almost see Prometheus stealing the light from the gods and bringing it to the masses.

(Q)  Did you have a regular writing schedule?

I tried to, but it proved impossible. Not only was my professional life as practicing clinical psychologist very demanding, but my family life made having a schedule very difficult. I wrote much of the story either during the late hours of the day, when most of the world slept, or very early in the morning, mostly at Panera Bread restaurants near my 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. Be available for life to happen to you. Read formidably, learn a second language, and be a good student of the history of humanity.

(Q) Good advice. It was fun. Thank you.

You are welcome. If I may, Alexia. Good literature is indispensable. It  has a humanizing effect upon us. It inspires, it enthuses, it arouses in us ever higher aspirations. Thank you for interviewing me.