Customer Reviews

Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First, this book demonstrates what clarity in academic writing is all about. The author makes a transit of nearly two hundred years in the analysis of the reception of the archaeological works on the island of Crete. Did I enjoy reading this book? Absolutely, I did. Though I enjoyed this author's previous work on the tomb of Agamemnon more, I admire this book more for its degree of difficulty and its clarity in defiance of that difficulty. Gere accounts for Schliemann and Nietzsche, as well as De Chirico, Freud, H.D., Graves, Gimbutas and Bernal, while laying out the story of the discovery, recreation, cultivation, and reception of the ruins of Knossos. This story fascinates in part because early Cretan civilization is perceived by generation after generation as a pacific, matriarchal Eden and as a foil to war after war (the War of Greek Independence, World War I, World War II, the Cold War). Gere does a great service too in showing how this peaceful utopia was a creation of archaeologists intentionally aggrandizing some pieces of evidence while relegating the bellicose others to the heap of forgotten history. After reading this book it is my opinion that Cathy Gere is an incredibly smart historian and a gorgeous writer. This book makes a very solid contribution as a cultural history of modernity and its biased cultivation of an idyllic past.

To my luck, this book was released shortly before my planned vacation in Crete, site-not-to-be-missed being Knossos. The archeological museum was being renovated with only highlights on display. To my relief, the site was not as "restored" as the book might suggest. And most of the artifacts are not distorted either. (I do restoration for a living.) Given the overlays of interpretation of the Minoan remains (often contradictory), it was fascinating to hear the various licensed experts giving very often the same discredited spiel the author describes.

I thought this was a very good book on cultural history in the 20th cent, and the myth-making we often do with our archeology and ancient history. You can generalize this to most of the human sciences.

This is indeed a brilliant examination of archaeological hopes and lies. What other reviewers fail to mention, however, is that the editing is horrible; it is astonishing that the superb University of Chicago Press can have sunk to this level. There are errors on almost every page: misspellings, faulty grammar, missing articles (as in "a" and "the"), poor punctuation (unnecessary commas, for example), and repeated redundancies (like "various different"). I have to give the book five stars, for the author's sake. Many of the mistakes must be hers, but it's the editor who should be truly embarrassed.

As an ancient history buff with a penchant for Ancient Greece, I hoped to glean from this book some new information on the Minoan Civilization. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed against the modern reinforced concrete walls of Knossos. I should have heeded the author's warning in the book's introduction:

"The aim of this book is the opposite of archaeological. Instead of searching beneath the modern reconstructions in pursuit of the limestone and gypsum temples built by the people of the Bronze Age, the present narrative attempts to understand the temple builders of the age of concrete - the archaeologists, architects, artists, classicists, writers, and poets of the twentieth century A.D. who reconstructed Minoan Crete in modernist materials." (page 5)

As a result, I did not learn much about the Ancient Minoans but, more importantly, most of the author's professional analyses of various people's musings on diverse topics, in view of the evolving socio-political climate of the times, were over my head. However, I did learn a lot (way too much) about Nietzsche, Doolittle, Freud, Graves, Picasso, Joyce and a host of other poets, artists, writers and philosophers some of whom I had never heard of and others whose works I was never really interested in. Then again, I did find some sections interesting: those on Schliemann's and Evans' archaeological discoveries, the military activities on Crete during the Second World War and the few paragraphs on modern interpretations of Minoan archaeology.

I found the writing style to be very scholarly but often rather dry. Several sections seemed to me to be irrelevant while others I found difficult to understand; but occasionally I did find some sections to be quite captivating. Overall, notwithstanding the book's actual focus (or foci), I still did not enjoy reading it as much as I had hoped, hence my rating. As for the intended audience, I would recommend that any potential readers ponder the above quotation before making any decisions about reading this book. I'm sure that there are many readers out there who would thoroughly enjoy it.

Before you buy this book read the review from the American Journal of Archaeology by Nanno Marinatos. Mary Beards review of Geres book in the New York Review of Books: Knossos: Fakes, Facts, and Mystery, has been widely regurgitated. Her claim that the Knossos frescoes are largely modern fakes is now echoed thoughtlessly in Wilkipedia.

Geres opening statement re: "sub- Barabara Hepworth sculpture known as the Horns of Consecration" sets the standard of scholarship. What of the horns discovered subsequently in Santorini? Decide for yourself if Knossos paintings are modernist inventions; compare them with undisputed Santorini murals. Evelyn Waugh is quoted as an authority: "their painters have tempered their zeal for accurate reconstruction with a somewhat inappropriate predilection for covers of Vogue." Since when was Vogue a source of originality in the history of Art?

As for the tired old Freudian cliches re Evans (and schliemann) the least said the better.

I've read the review in the TNR which tells me that it was Robert Graves who jumped out of the window and not Laura Riding, that the White Goddess is Minoan themed, if so then Graves must have seen Minoans having dominated world culture religion and what have you all through the ages and that he wrote Good bye to all that after Riding's window jump ooops sorry if the TNR and presumably this book say so, he was the jumper
a book that confuses the mind of the otherwise sane seeming reviewer so much that she/he makes mince meat out of my favourite author for the last almost 60 years is not for me.
BTW Graves wrote a delightful little book imagining life in a New-Crete - if one had only read that one knew that all the TNR-review comes up with is hot air of profound ignorance but the urgent desire to seem a lot more well-read than one happens to be
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