"My Greek Café", the latest book of Professor Emeritus McCormick is set on a lesser-known Cycladic island. Unlike his fiction, "Io nelle scuole pubbliche", this latest publication is a diary, one in which the author describes his everyday experiences living for ten months in a former Greek café that was being converted into a residence by its absentee proprietor. For the once-in-a-lifetime privilege of living, and writing, there for one academic year, the author was charged with advancing the café’s transformation.
Since the café was located on a piazza next to city hall and across from the Orthodox church, the author was well-integrated into island life. In a mountain village overlooking the port, he bought his cheese, locally produced, from Louis the grocer, ate at Stavros’ place, the only restaurant open and learned about island culture from Frangiskos, a press attaché at the Greek embassy in Paris. His French wife, Josette, a painter, was the only other non-Greek that lived up there over the winter.
Learning when and where to buy fresh bread, picking wild sage for his tea, helping the islanders put out a forest fire and attending the service where the priest, inside his small Orthodox church, re-enacted on Good Friday Christ’s bearing of the cross were all part of the author’s learning experience.
The Swiss writer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wrote in "Reveries of the Solitary Walker": No place “has made me so truly happy… as the island of Saint-Pierre.” Robert McCormick, with respect to his Cycladic residence, would surely agree.
"My Greek Café" in Italian, can be purchased locally at both Fontana edizioni and Segnalibro. You can also find it online at this link.
Check out Professor McCormick's historical novel "Petros".