Finished yet another book that made me give thanks for my ability to read...this time the award goes to Italo Calvino's Marcovaldo, or The seasons in the city.
It's a must read. A collection of twenty short stories, each is set in a consecutive season in a small town of northern Italy. They follow a poor laborer named Marcovaldo who has an eye for the fantastic and a disdain for his surroundings. There are fantastical touches, like a plane bound for India accidentally boarded, a breath that clears a yard of snow, a plant with an astounding rate of growth...but this book doesn't ask you to confirm it as factual, but merely to enjoy it.
The book is divided by a decade or so down the middle, and the first half is set in the poorer yet more innocent Italy of the 50s while the second deals with the illusions of prosperity in the 60s. Of course, it's not nearly as didactic as it sounds...these exterior facts are not explicitly stated, but merely offer a bit more explanation as to what the characters go through.
Furthermore, the book is divided into self-contained chapters, each bearing a title and a label of either Spring, Summer, Autumn, or Winter. In a reflection of the interconnectedness of life and the way days and years often unfold, Calvino weaves shadows of the previous season into the most recent. In the first tale, Marcovaldo finds mushrooms sprouting up in the cracks of the city. Although he tries to hoard them for himself, everyone finds out and gathers them up....and the whole town ends up in the hospital. Three stories later, next Spring finds Marcovaldo treating his fellow citizens for rheumatism using wasp stings, which goes awry with a huge wasp attack. The following Spring's story opens with a doctor prescribing a some good air as treatment for Marcovaldo's children, and they end up in the countryside on the grounds of a sanitorium. These little threads he weaves attaching each story make a cohesive unit of the collection.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
marcovaldo by italo calvino
Monday, November 09, 2009
my special bookshelf
A pause to confirm the excellence of Orhan Pamuk's latest book. It has now been placed on my special bookshelf, whose unofficial title could be 'shelf for the best books I've read and own'. It sits, collecting its first precious dust particles, next to if on a winter's night a traveler (italo calvino), a moveable feast (hemingway), 2666 (roberto bolaño), history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters (julian barnes), confederacy of dunces (john kennedy o'toole), and the bell jar (sylvia plath) among others....not bad company.
So what's the fuss, what enables the 532-page novel to claim such exclusive company? In Museum of Innocence Pamuk continues weaving his interconnect Istanbul world, this time through the eyes of the obsessed Kemal. Kemal's two-month affair with his distant, distant relative stops his current life dead in its tracks and sustains him for almost a decade until happiness flits by him once again. Kemal runs in wealthy socialite circles, and Pamuk explores this world in his ever-luscious detail, with words piling up on each other in sentence after sentence. The eyes of a German model on a soda billboard follow Kemal around for ten years, reminding us of his Gatsby-esque upbringing and potential fate. This book is far-reaching in its plumbing of cultural mores and pieces of Istanbuli history, collecting them as avidly as Kemal collects every particle of his existence with Fusun. If the museum conceit was a bit strained in the more action-packed middle of the novel, it proved its worth as the end approached. The tragic end.
It was every bit as good as those bookkeepers promised me. Perhaps I will thank them as I am returning this weekend to New Orleans...
please read this!
Oh, and quickly I feel I must say Maureen Freely (translator) is amazing at what she does.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
savoring slowly
I'm loving this book so, so much.
It's my second Pamuk novel. First I read Snow, which was just awesome. Istanbul seems so close when I'm reading his books...I can smell the coffee wafting out of dingy neighborhood bars and see the Bosphorus shining in the moonlight.
I don't ever want it to end...fortunately Pamuk's oeuvre is rather extensive, consisting of several masterpieces: Snow, The Black Book, The White Castle, Istanbul:Memories of A City , just to name a few. Then there's, as a friend put it, his B-sides for the hungry fan.
It seems nice to be the voice for an entire city, to know that what you are framing in words will mark for posterity the character of a place you love.
Not sure what I'd write about...Wildwood? Driving around? Drunk people outside of BellBottoms?
Sunday, December 14, 2008
le chose du jour
If you are planning (which you should be) on reading 2666, by Robert Bolaño, just go on and buy this box set. I love the broken down format along with the rough cardboard exterior. More on the actual content of this book I'm loving later, when I finish the 900th page. Trust me, it's one you'll want to own.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
if on a winter's night a traveler
I believe books fall into one of three categories:
1) trite and boring
2) really well-done and interesting, yet unoriginal
3) masterpieces of originality and beauty.
I prefer to choose books that fall in the third category, but I fail as often as I succeed.
Here, we have a masterpiece.
Okay, I know I am a little behind the times here, raving about a book published in 1979. But this title definitely deserves a little dusting off the shelf.
Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler is engaging in a meta-meta-narrative postmodern-before-postmodernity-really-existed kind of way. Don't misconstrue my meaning-this book is only as cerebral as you want it to be. The basic premise is a story of a Reader in search of a novel that is interrupted repeatedly, only to be replaced by a different, equally addictive book.
With themes of uncertainty, miscomunication, and mystery threaded throughout, if on a winter's night a traveler
is a unified whole, despite a structure that breaks it up into (depending on how you look at it) two or 11 different books. The successful use of the second-person is a breath of fresh literary air. Of note to writer-readers, Calvino employs a technique of talking about writing in the narrative that is not only fascinating, but potentially quite useful.
Apart from the more serious, critical aspects of the novel, it is just plain enjoyable. And that is the true mark of a masterpiece.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
bright shiny morning
James Frey's new book, Bright Shiny Morning got somewhat slammed this week in the New York Times Book Review. The reviewer seemed to pride himself on his central thesis, which was, essentially, that this novel reads too much like non-fiction and Frey's much publicized non-fiction turned out too be too close to fiction.
Clever. But I actually found the book to be an enjoyable experience, and not at all oversimplified as the reviewer pointed out.
Facts about Los Angeles separate each of the chapters, which sketch the lives of various Los Angeleans, The city becomes a character in its own right, with its promising start as a land of hopes and dreams (and angels) slowly spiraling into a mess of highways, lack of water, and overdose on drugs and crime. This spiral is echoed in the stories of the main characters, Amberton, a movie star, Dylan and Maddie, two small town kids looking for a better life, and...
...Esperanza, the hispanic maid. Are these stereotypical characters, as the NYTimes reviewer points out? Yes. Are they any less riveting for that? No. And I believe they have enough flesh on them, pockmarked and dimpled with Frey's rapid-moving prose, to seem true to life.
I say Forgive Frey! His past sins have no bearing on this beautiful book that links a city (in a portrayal that will serve as a history as well as a story) with those who live and are ultimately subsumed by it.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Indecision
A generation that previously had to rely on Eggers and Safran Foer for their voice has found a much more satisfying option in Benjamin Kunkel. His not-so-recent novel, "Indecision", just found its way into my reading stack, and it satisfyingly captures, without any ostentatious gimmicks, that nagging voice in my post postmodern head.
I suppose it could be called a post 9/11 novel, but the event serves merely as a canvas upon which Kunkel paints witticisms and colorful, real language that captures the "plight" of the well-fed young American. This is our coming-of-age novel, people! A little depressing, considering the main character is/thinks he is doped up on drugs prescribed for an eternal malady: indecision. What to do when faced with a wide open world?
Dwight Wilmerding, the main character, is taken out of his soggy existence in New York City and immersed in the vivid Ecuadorian jungle. His resultant trip is half Heart of Darkness, half White Noise, and wholly entertaining. This is a must-read for twenty somethings who are, well, indecisive, and need a) a good laugh and b) a pause button for their ever-expanding reality. I leave you with my favorite quote:
"In my experience, when a person doesn't know what to do with himself, he will check his e-mail." Read More......
