The only universal experiences are pain and death.  Those of<br/>us who are lucky experience a minimum of the former and put off the<br/>latter as long as possible.  Sadly, our chances of escaping pain and<br/>evading death are not solely determined by the caprices of an<br/>indifferent nature but are also subject to the folly and more<br/>significantly the cruelty of our own verminous little species.  At the<br/>outside, the Marquis de Sade was so convinced of the universality of<br/>cruelty that he made it a principle that cruelty was not only the<br/>shortest route to pleasure, power, fortune, and fame, but itself and<br/>inherently sensual and gratifying exercise.  Though in our sunnier<br/>moments we may doubt the wisdom of the Good Marquis' observations, the<br/>dismal history of the past century alone &mdash; an unparalleled<br/>century of mass murder, global conflict, and exquisite torture that<br/>would make a medieval inquisitor blush &mdash; is enough to bolster<br/>the arguments of even the most faint-hearted pessimist.  The recent<br/>folly in Iraq, followed by the embrace of torture, secret prisons, and<br/>extraordinary rendition, while it may be a peccadillo compared to the<br/>monstrous crimes of the mid-century past, nevertheless should quiet<br/>any Pollyanna who would exempt us from the general disease of human<br/>cruelty.  So is there a reason, as Monte Python so memorably put it,<br/>to "always look on the bright side of life."<br/><br/>   Zorba the Greek is an extraordinarily life-affirming story.  It<br/>also has an rich appreciation for human folly, cruelty, and<br/>narrow-mindedness.  Amidst frigid aristocrats, mad monks, brutish<br/>villagers, and vain adventurers, Zorba stands like a rock of conjoined<br/>masculine power and compassion.  A former soldier, he has had his<br/>fill of killing.  (An inveterate serial romantic, he has certainly<br/>not lost his interest in women.)  As a mine boss, he is first to<br/>share the danger of the miners; as a man, he is the first to stand<br/>against the village on behalf of a persecuted woman.  Along with his<br/>backer, a mine owner tormented by a bookish vision of Eastern<br/>mysticism, Zorba cheerfully runs one enterprise after another into the<br/>ground with great gusto and joie de vivre, literally extracting every<br/>ounce of pleasure from wine, women and song, for he is a master of the<br/>Greek instrument the Santuri and is enthralled by dance.  Even as the<br/>shadow of the First World War looms, Zorba is undaunted.  Better than<br/>his bookish companion or the cloddish villagers, Zorba understands not<br/>only pain and death but life, pleasure, and love.  For this, he towers<br/>above the Lilliputians who surround him.   <br/>