LAS VEGAS – Losing to Syracuse deflated Pitt quarterback Niko Peramos, who had dreamed of national championship glory his senior year. Instead, the Panthers would play Illinois in the Alamo Bowl.
Niko was invited to the Heisman Trophy festivities in New York, and some believed he would be the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft with millions awaiting him in professional football.
However, his persistent whining about that loss to the Oranges irritated his brother Stavros.
“Adelphós mou, listen. . . Do you think maybe you’re being a little hard on yourself? Stop hitting yourself. “
Enter the despicable Hairdo, who wants Niko to fix the Alamo Bowl, and Big George, the patriarch of Peramos with ties to the underworld, and Chris Andrews’ debut novel takes off.
His title, “Adelphós Mou” (My Brother), is a nod to his rich Greek heritage.
Andrews, the 66-year-old director of sports betting at South Point, has written two popular non-fiction books about his spirited career in setting sports odds and taking bets.
The novel, to be published next month, is raw and wild, incorporating metaphor, symbolism and surprise. She began writing it after an enlightening maiden voyage to Crete in 1998.
A friend of Andrews reviewed “Adelphós” and told him, “You write with such emotion.” “That’s what I’m looking for,” he says, “to make you feel something.”
He delves into his roots in Pittsburgh and Greece, with visits to Iceland, London and Las Vegas. Andrews has toyed with the visual possibilities of it.
Too much depth for a movie, he concludes. Can’t say in two hours. Four or five, maybe six episodes. “Maybe a Netflix miniseries.”
HITTING A NERVE
The framed lithograph, five feet wide and three feet tall, dominates the living room of her Las Vegas home and says all about Andrews.
Anthony Quinn’s arms are wide, Greek fisherman’s cap in left hand, daffodil in right, head crooked. He is minutes away, perhaps, from breaking into a Sirtaki, the fabulous dance of his that concludes “Zorba the Greek.”
“Triumph” is a self-portrait of Quinn, the creative genius native to Chihuahua, Mexico, who played Zorba in the 1964 Michael Cacoyannis production filmed entirely on Crete.
Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel “Zorba the Greek,” published in 1946 as “The Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas,” features a peasant who shows uptight writer Basil how to unabashedly celebrate life.
It made clear to Basil, Kazantzakis wrote, “the meaning of art, love, beauty, purity, passion.”
Andrews says that all Greeks consider the late Quinn, a perfect Big George, daydreaming, an honorary countryman.
“In ‘Guns of Navarone,’ Quinn also played a Greek,” says Andrews, who has visited his homeland four times. Those trips provided “Adelphós” with invaluable depth and context.
“[They] It helped a lot, in understanding the culture, and a lot of little things are there. I definitely struck a nerve with how they are, especially Manoli, the Greek banker. I think I nailed it pretty well.”
He nailed it all. Anyone who isn’t thirsty for a raki, the half-gulps of pomace brandy that Cretans often drink but rarely get drunk, doesn’t have a heartbeat by the end of the tome.
Daughter Jacque has been a vital editor/proofreader. Andrews solicited an uncompromising assessment from an author friend, who suggested he get leaner and meaner.
Andrews trimmed his 160,000 words down to 120,000, employing cruder jargon. Other specialists examined him. A lawyer friend told Andrews, “Yeah, that’s how the case law would work.”
He emailed me a complimentary manuscript last fall. The unflinching dialogue drips with authenticity. I’ve known these people my whole life, Andrews says, in the corners and valleys of Pittsburgh’s multiple cultures.
“I think it’s real and reflects the tone of the characters. On an emotional level, my heart and soul are in this book. I can still read it and have tears in my eyes at certain parts.”
NOBODY IS PERFECT
Andrews and I are fond of a lot of raw black and white movies from the 1950s, a decade or so, that air on TCM. He texted her when Zorba was starting out.
“It’s already on,” he replied.
If his last days are near, his wife Pam knows she must have a TV, tuned to TCM, by her bed.
He first saw “Zorba,” the movie, when he was 17 and read the book for the first time at 30 or 31. Near Heraklion on Crete, the largest of some 300 Greek islands, the international airport is named after Kazantzakis, who died in 1957 at 74.
Among Andrews’ four packed bookstores, Kazantzaki titles dominate the special shelf, including “Zorba,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel,” “Captain Michalis” and “San Francisco.”
The most beloved by Greeks, he says, is “Liberty and Death,” about Crete’s battle for independence from the Turks 100 years ago.
Odysseus, who hatched the idea of the Trojan Horse, is another hero.
“Flawed, really flawed,” Andrews said. “The perfect Greek. A warrior. A bright [bleeping] with man He is not a guy you can trust. That is our people. In Zorba, Basil finally says, ‘I’m tired of saying, is this a good guy or a bad guy?’
“Well, everyone has both in them. That’s Zorba. And no one in my book is seen as perfect. No one. “
Andrews has long felt like a Renaissance man, eager to cook and travel. He’s not just a guy, he says, “doing numbers and taking bets.” He has at least one more nonfiction project and one other piece of fiction on his schedule.
His first stab wound in a novel?
Triumph.