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Raymond Chandler Award
Interview with Petros Markaris |
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| 08/12/2011 |
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by Rosa Polacco, from the catalogue of the 21st Courmayeur Noir in Festival
You studied economics, translated Goethe and have often said that your teacher was Bertolt Brecht. Do these three aspects of your background have something in common with your choice to write crime novels?
I had no intention of writing crime novels until Inspector Charitos came to visit me with his family. Charitos pushed me towards the crime novel. You may know that Bertolt Brecht was very much a lover of crime novels. What I learned from him was, above all, how to maintain a distance from the events and characters of my novels, and how to become a good observer of Athens and its people. He also taught me that people can retain their sense of humor and laughter even in the most tragic moments.
You are the most read Greek writer in Italy. Do you know our contemporary literature, and Italian crime writers in particular?
Besides the classics, like Italo Svevo and Italo Calvino, I adore the novels of Andrea Camilleri. But I’ve read the novels of Massimo Carlotto, Carlo Lucarelli and Valerio Evangelisti.
You share with Andrea Camilleri the cultural matrix of the Mediterranean and a love for Raymond Chandler and Georges Simenon. How would you define the “Mediterranean crime novel” and how does it differ from the fathers of the American hard-boiled novel?
The “Mediterranean crime novel” does not belong to the hard-boiled genre. It is the most important social and political novel of our times. It is a genre of novel that tells a crime story from a social and political angle. The other huge difference is in the food and cuisine. Cuisine is an important component of all Mediterranean crime novels. This doesn’t exist in American, English or Swedish crime fiction. I’m pretty tired of reading about detectives who spend their lives eating sandwiches and drinking beer.
What do you think of Inspector Montalbano?
Montalbano is a fascinating character. He’s the kind of policeman who makes the Mediterranean police crime novel so different. Because he’s a man of law and order, but he’s also very human. He’s full of contradictions, and this is fascinating for the reader. I like him even more in the latest novels, because age makes him even more human.
You also share a passion for the theatre with Camilleri. What can you tell us about this passion? Is your passion still alive and how has it influenced your writing?
Well, I began my career as a playwright. That was the root of my passion for Brecht and the reason I translated his works into Greek. In the 1990s I stopped writing for the theatre and concentrated on screenplays, but I continued translating plays from German into Greek, so I never stopped working for the theatre. Faust by Goethe was my latest translation. I’m not doing any translations now. I spent five years on Faust and it is a great work that brought my translating career to a close.
You have written a lot for the cinema, unlike Camilleri, who only wrote one film, a western. You’ve written above all for Theo Angelopoulos, a director who seems far from the investigative novel. Are these contradictory aspects of your creativity or do Ulysses’ Gaze and the adventures of Inspector Charìtos share something in common?
No, they have nothing in common. And I have an entirely different method when I work with Angelopoulos. Seeing as how the film is going to tell his story, I adapt to him and try to find out how he’d like to tell it, and how I could help him tell it in the best possible way. It’s the kind of relationship full of squabbling that can exist between a director and a writer that have been working together for at least 40 years.
Have you ever written a crime film? And if not, would you like to?
Not now, but I did write a police series entitled Anatomy of a Crime. It was an enormous success and worked for three years in Greek.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the death of Dashiell Hammett. I think his writing and his political commitment are very close to you.
I love all crime writers that were part of Black Mask, but I love Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler most of all.
We met Inspector Charìtos for the first time approximately 10 years ago, with his wife Adriana and daughter Caterina, his hatred for ATM machines, and his old, beat-up Italian car. How have Charìtos and you relationship with him changed in recent years? How has your city Athens changed?
When I’m working on a novel, I drink a coffee every morning with Charitos. During our coffee I ask him why he wants to interrogate this or that person, and why he wants to interrogate them in a particular neighborhood. Charitos tells me his reasons and his way of thinking and I write it all down. Charitos has profoundly changed my perspective of Athens. Before Charitos existed I usually walked around the city without paying much attention to it. Now, when I find myself in some part of the city, I always ask myself if I can set a scene or a chapter of the next novel in that street or neighborhood, which means that sooner or later I’ll come back there to get to know it much better.
You’ve said that you feel more European than Greek and that Greece was once very pro-Europe. The current situation calls into question the idea of a strong and stable Europe, and today there are a lot of Euro-skeptics. Do you still believe in Europe? And in a European Greece?
Yes, I still believe in Europe, but I’m also very worried and I’ve lost some of my optimism. You know, Greece is going through a tragedy today, which is not reflected in the ancient theatre of Epidaurus, but in two infantile nurseries. The first is the Greek Parliament, the second is the European Parliament. But a nursery is not the right place to stage a tragedy.
After a century of wars and dictatorships, this was supposed to the be the century of democracy, an institution that originated in Greece and that’s now in crisis not only for the difficult situation in several countries, but also for the crisis of capitalism. How do you see the future of the blend of democracy and capitalism?
There is a contradiction between the national democratic institutions in each EU country and the lack of democracy in the decision-making process of the EU. No one is willing to find a solution to this contradiction. Instead, it gets worse each day. As long as the leaders of the western world continue to behave like managers of financial markets, the danger for democracy will continue to increase.
A central theme of our Festival this year is the Apocalypse. You touched upon that in your latest novel, Expiring Loans, in the financial catastrophe that we’re experiencing. Do you think this crisis can also be an opportunity for a change in the future?
I really don’t know. Greek has gone through many crises in its recent history. There was the bankruptcy of 1893, the collapse of the country in 1922, German occupation and the civil war. But there was always a hopeful point of view. People believed that things would get better. The current crisis is the only one without a positive outlook.
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