Profane Feasts

Recipient of the Literary Titan Book Award for 2024

With an increasing multitude of Greeks stomping around metropolitan New York, the author noticed many of them seemed to be employed as corporals of the service industry-park attendants, apartment painters, supermarket clerks, and, especially, dishwashers, waitresses, and short-order cooks. This circumstance led him to wonder: How did it happen that these custodians, busboys, and counter girls ended up being the last remnants of the ancient architects of Western Civilization?

To explore this question, he began writing storychapters, which followed the exploits of one Greek family transplanted in Brooklyn, NY, as it wrestled to make sense of life in America from the 60s to the end of the 20th century. He used family feasts at Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, a wedding, and a funeral as milestones in their journey, and labeled these feasts profane because of the unholy manner in which they were conducted. The profane feasts herein are narrated by Alexandros Dropolous, Jr., as he passes from childhood to young manhood and, ultimately, to his own wedding feast and the baptism of his son.

Whether their adventure had been carefully planned or pursued intuitively, the author believed this family of Greeks in America was using their classical history as a kind of modern-day Trojan horse. The idea was not to topple our government which, after all, is held together by Greco-Roman ideas, but to replace their own lost greatness with the American dream by inserting themselves, patiently and unobtrusively, into one household, one coffee shop, one school, one house of worship at a time.

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Profane Feasts

Recipient of the Literary Titan Book Award for 2024

With an increasing multitude of Greeks stomping around metropolitan New York, the author noticed many of them seemed to be employed as corporals of the service industry-park attendants, apartment painters, supermarket clerks, and, especially, dishwashers, waitresses, and short-order cooks. This circumstance led him to wonder: How did it happen that these custodians, busboys, and counter girls ended up being the last remnants of the ancient architects of Western Civilization?

To explore this question, he began writing storychapters, which followed the exploits of one Greek family transplanted in Brooklyn, NY, as it wrestled to make sense of life in America from the 60s to the end of the 20th century. He used family feasts at Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, a wedding, and a funeral as milestones in their journey, and labeled these feasts profane because of the unholy manner in which they were conducted. The profane feasts herein are narrated by Alexandros Dropolous, Jr., as he passes from childhood to young manhood and, ultimately, to his own wedding feast and the baptism of his son.

Whether their adventure had been carefully planned or pursued intuitively, the author believed this family of Greeks in America was using their classical history as a kind of modern-day Trojan horse. The idea was not to topple our government which, after all, is held together by Greco-Roman ideas, but to replace their own lost greatness with the American dream by inserting themselves, patiently and unobtrusively, into one household, one coffee shop, one school, one house of worship at a time.

19.99 In Stock
Profane Feasts

Profane Feasts

by Tom Tolnay
Profane Feasts

Profane Feasts

by Tom Tolnay

Paperback

$19.99 
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Overview

Recipient of the Literary Titan Book Award for 2024

With an increasing multitude of Greeks stomping around metropolitan New York, the author noticed many of them seemed to be employed as corporals of the service industry-park attendants, apartment painters, supermarket clerks, and, especially, dishwashers, waitresses, and short-order cooks. This circumstance led him to wonder: How did it happen that these custodians, busboys, and counter girls ended up being the last remnants of the ancient architects of Western Civilization?

To explore this question, he began writing storychapters, which followed the exploits of one Greek family transplanted in Brooklyn, NY, as it wrestled to make sense of life in America from the 60s to the end of the 20th century. He used family feasts at Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, a wedding, and a funeral as milestones in their journey, and labeled these feasts profane because of the unholy manner in which they were conducted. The profane feasts herein are narrated by Alexandros Dropolous, Jr., as he passes from childhood to young manhood and, ultimately, to his own wedding feast and the baptism of his son.

Whether their adventure had been carefully planned or pursued intuitively, the author believed this family of Greeks in America was using their classical history as a kind of modern-day Trojan horse. The idea was not to topple our government which, after all, is held together by Greco-Roman ideas, but to replace their own lost greatness with the American dream by inserting themselves, patiently and unobtrusively, into one household, one coffee shop, one school, one house of worship at a time.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9798891320437
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Publication date: 12/01/2023
Pages: 214
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

Tom Tolnay is the former editor of Back Stage, the film/TV/theater weekly newspaper in NYC, and founder of Birch Brook Press, a small publisher in upstateNew York where he edited and printed letterpress books of literary fiction, poetry, and essays.
Two of his novels, Celluloid Gangs and The Big House, were published by Walker & Company. Two story collections by Tolnay were published by Silk Label Books and The Smith Publishers. More than fifty of his stories have appeared in literary, university, and consumer periodicals in the U.S., Canada, andU.K. Among these magazines are Saturday Evening Post, Ellery Queen, The Fiddlehead (Canada), Alfred Hitchcock, Shooter Literary (UK), Twilight Zone, The Iconoclast, Confrontation, North Dakota Quarterly, Carpe Articulum, Sterling Magazine (Canada). His short stories have been anthologized by Dell, Signet, Down East Books, and Literal Latte Books.
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