Another pudding without a theme
Philip Glazebrook
THE INNER SEA: THE MEDITERRANEAN AND ITS PEOPLE by Robert Fox Sinclair-Stevenson, f19.95, pp. 549 It is evident that Robert Fox has exten- sive knowledge and experience of many Mediterranean countries, but, when he was asked in 1984 'if it was possible to write a book about the whole of the modern Mediterranean and its countries', his wisest answer might have been, 'Let's see how Eric Newby gets on with his book on exact- ly the same subject'. And Newby's Shores of the Mediterranean (published that very year) would have shown him that whilst it is possible to compile a compendium of thumbnail sketches of lands touching the Inner Sea, the wholeness of such a subject — the existence of a thematic core causing its diversities to hang together — is an attractive illusion in the minds of journal- ists who have spent 'half a lifetime' being sent here and there about Europe, and who very naturally want to collect their experiences between hard covers. The Inner Sea, which Robert Fox went ahead and wrote anyway 'in an access of naïveté or pure megalomania', shows an author run- ning after his thematic goose, trying to salt its tail with facts and figures.
Now and then Mr Fox catches his goose. In his 15 pages on Sicily he presents the history of the island as background to him- self in the midst of it today, and lets his picture of the place unfold as he takes a Journey through it. Here the facts and figures adhere to a narrative, if not quite to a theme. But then Sicily truly is the multum in parvo of Mediterranean peoples and their history: in Sicily all the lines converge, so that a history of the island from the Peloponnesian War to World War II would indeed be 'a history of the whole Mediter- ranean'. Malta is another such entrepot, and on the graspable entity of Malta Mr Fox is again excellent, as he is on Albania and on the confusions now upsetting the Balkans. These, the most successful sections of the book, read like the focused account of a single journey of enquiry, a central thread of narrative providing the homogenising factor.
It is the big countries, the sprawl of Spain or France, which are the difficulty. Clearly Mr Fox knows them well, too well to be able to crush all their amorphousness into shape for a chapter: as he says of Italy, if you spend any length of time in a country 'some encounter or occurrence sets at nought any previous attempts at under- standing'. It is in the big countries that he resorts to throwing facts at the goose's tail. A town is chosen, its history potted, a leaflet about the cathedral put into your hand, a quick tour of the sherry bodega arranged, the mayor produced to answer questions, then back in the bus. There's Vesuvius on the right: Pliny saw it erupt, 'later, the same scene was viewed by Nel- son and Emma Hamilton'. Next there's an interview with the manager of the Alfa Romeo factory, and if you're patient I'll take you to Harry's Bar, the famous one, and introduce you to Harry. Rather des- perately, like someone trying to get a kick- ing horse into the starting stall, all this diversity has the blanket of a generalisation chucked at its head to quieten it:
Tunisians are as attuned to the currents and conflicts of the Mediterranean world as any, and more so than most.
It is the method of John Gunther's 'Inside' books. There is insufficient critical analysis to turn the raw material from journalism into literature. It seems to me a fault of the reporter's approach that his aim is to secure a meeting with someone important — anyone important — and then to record his words without question-
ing their validity. Thus, in Malta Mr Fox contrives to meet the Prime Minister, and writes down what he says: 'We have decid- ed to break completely with the notion of warfare'. Now, comment on that piece of wishful thinking could illuminate the dilemma of a powerless little island in the midst of the Inner Sea — in the very midst of Mr Fox's theme — an island which may indeed squeak out its wishes in peacetime, but which occupies far too strong a square on the board to be left alone by greater powers in time of war. But Mr Fox makes no comment: he has to hurry on to inter- view the leader of the opposition.
There are signs of hurry throughout the book, and of the hurried, uncomfortable language of an uncorrected first draft. A man steps 'forward forth': a city is on 'the other side shore' of the sea: it is 'the low water 'acqua bassa' low water' which threatens Venice. His publishers, in their hurry, evidently skipped the whole proof- reading stage: misprints and missing words make the text painful to elucidate, whilst they have left uncorrected the author's obvious hetises, such as accusing Zeus of putting on a bull outfit and raping Perse- phone.
An 'eminent historian' told Mr Fox not even to try to make sense of the Mediterranean, but he ignored the advice, took up the challenge, and has written (as he says himself) an untidy book about an untidy subject.
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