Three years in Amsterdam.

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Sean Condon, My ‘Dam Life (Lonely Planet, 2003).
A decade ago, Australian writer and funnyman Condon and his wife moved to Amsterdam, where she had a job editing a magazine.  It folded almost immediately, but the two of them stayed on, scrabbling for housing and work, and eventually this book.  Though Condon can be cloyingly self-absorbed, his book gives an outsider’s perspective on Amsterdam unlike that which most tourists will get.

Condon’s site is not uninteresting. Hans J.W. Werner calls it a treat, a travel book that’s not a travel book. Shriram Krishnamurthi calls it a moody, introspective book, sometimes horrifying but almost always compelling. Lonneke van Holland was ticked off a day later. Pip Farquharson says it’s realistic, witty and humourous. Don Heller calls it hilarious. Ian Sanders was amused. Alasdair Kay did this profile/interview. Jay Lee ought a copy from Condon in Amsterdam.

Buy it at Amazon.com.

 

Holland’s Golden Age.

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Simon Schama, The Embarrassment Of Riches (Knopf, 1987).
A tour de force, a cultural history of the Netherlands during the 17th century, the height of Dutch riches and power.  While a reader will pick up something of the time’s diplomatic and military history, Schama touches on those events mostly as context for a rich and sweeping parade of examples of how the Dutch saw themselves and their world.  Out of such disparate strands as whale strandings and  a midwife’s diary, and better known episodes and artifacts like tulip speculation and portraiture, Schama keeps drawing compelling insights.  It is not a light book, though it is stuffed with illustrations.

Here is Wikipedia’s page on Schama. Here is his bio at Columbia University. Google Books lets you take a look. Harold Beaver (The New York Times) calls it an erudite and engrossing study that offers a fascinating panorama. For what it’s worth, historians J.C.H. Blom and E. Lamberts call it provocative but superficial, in A History of Low Countries 483 (Berghahn Books, 1999). It’s on National Geographic’s list of Amsterdam resources. Here is a 1995 profile of Schama in New York. Schama wrote the book in Lexington, Mass.

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Wonderful Barcelona.

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Javier Calvo, Wonderful World (Harper, 2009).
A novel set in Barcelona involving antique dealing, criminal gangs, nightclubs, medieval Irish paintings, Russian emigres, a precocious and disturbed teenaged girl at an Italian school, and the release of an eponymous Stephen King novel. The novel is full of unpleasant people treating each other poorly, with few exceptions, and those not put off by such things are likelier to enjoy it.

Here is Calvo’s Wikipedia entry. This is his blog. The publisher lets you take a look. Edward Nawotka (Dallas Morning News) calls it a peculiar amalgam of crime caper, literary homage and Eurotrash sideshow. Janelle Martin likens Calvo to David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. Ryan Williams says Calvo is a satirist who sides with the villains. Sarah Weinman calls it a magical ride. Lianne Habinek was weirded out and disappointed. Shaman Drum says think of it as a midnight movie in book form. Matt McGregor thinks genre play gets the better of Calvo. Barbara Fister calls it a mashup of crime fiction, caper, dystopia, and family drama. D Reading Room took on the book. Listen to Calvo and the translator, Mara Faye Lethem, on the Ed Segundo show. Shaun Manning interviewed Lethem.

Buy it at Amazon.com.

 

Son of Verviers.

Photo of Verviers by MrTopf used under a Creative Commons license.

Luc Sante, The Factory of Facts (Pantheon, 1998).
Born in Verviers, Belgium, in 1954, Sante emigrated with his parents to New Jersey as a child and grew up between the two worlds, unmoored from Belgium and adrift in America.  To understand and retrieve his heritage, Sante wrote this memoir of sorts, often more a book about where Sante came from than about his own experiences.  Verviers is a hard-luck industrial town in the Walloon south of Belgium, and generations of his ancestors have lived there within a few miles.  Sante has escaped Verviers’ gravitational pull like none of his forebears, but this book is the result of something pulling him back.  On a personal note, the notion for this blog came to me one night two years ago as I was fretting over an impending trip to Belgium and realizing that I didn’t have a book.  Now I’ve found a Belgium book.

Wikipedia tells you a little about Sante. This excerpt, the first chapter, will not tell you what the book is like. This passage is perhaps more representative. Here is a list of pieces he has written for the New York Review of Books, some of which are available to non-subscribers. More about Sante and his home here. W.S. Di Piero (The New York Times) calls it a forensics of remembrance, an investigation of selfhood as it is articulated in and by history. Geoff Dyer (The Independent) read a compelling narrative compiled from the shavings of memory, with lapses into accretion and survey. Charles Taylor (Salon) tuned out during long sections on Belgian history and culture (I quite liked them). Steven G. Kellman (USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education)) calls it a lush, exotic plant that garnishes the varnished wooden shelves that house most other memoirs. Richard Bernstein (The New York Times) says Sante strives to sustain a literary and psychological intensity that the material itself doesn’t quite allow. It didn’t make Ronnie Cordova want to go to Belgium. Sante writes about French. The Believer interviewed Sante in 2004. So did Peter Doyle, for Scan. Brian Berger interviewed him in 2008. So did Suzanne Menghraj, for Guernica. Watch Sante talk about cigarettes in 2007. Listen to Sante discuss Belgium’s split personality on this BBC program. Here is Pinakothek, Sante’s blog about pictures. Sante posted these pictures, discussed in the book (I think) and complementing it well. I won’t try to explain this.

Buy it now at Amazon.com.

 

Arkansas grit.

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Charles Portis, True Grit (Overlook, 2007).
Mattie Ross is only fourteen years old, but when a hired hand named Tom Chaney kills her father near Fort Smith, Arkansas, she sets out on his trial.  In Fort Smith, Ross hears that Chaney has joined up with a band of outlaws in the Indian Territory, the Oklahoma of yesteryear, and she finds help of her own in Rooster Cogburn, a federal marshal, and a Texas Ranger named Le Bouef.  They head west, each with their own agenda.  It wouldn’t be right to say more of the plot, but the way that Portis narrates the tale in Mattie’s voice should not be missed.  Perhaps this book is overlooked because John Wayne played Cogburn in the movie?

The novel’s Wikipedia page is relatively lengthy and thoughtful. NPR offers an excerpt. Vered Kleinberger put together this page on Portis. Alex T. Moore’s unofficial Portis site has all sorts of content. Ed Park’s piece on Portis for The Believer is a must-read. Orrin calls it one of the funniest, most under appreciated novels in all of American literature; he also collects worthwhile Portis links. Mark Garvey says it feels archetypal, and so well done that it seems to have been written much nearer to the era it portrays (1873) than to our own time. Brian Garfield (Saturday Review) calls it a straightforward tale with endless nuances. Richard Rhodes (The New York Times) calls it skillfully constructed, a comic tour de force. Charles Taylor (Newsday) says it flirts with myth and tall tale, but reading it is like encountering a voice speaking to us directly from America’s past. Cassandra Cleghorn (Tin House) hears Mark Twain in it. Allen Barra (Salon) celebrated when it was put back into print. Rocky Barker says it transcends genre fiction. Steve Zipp calls it an anti-western. Resolute Reader says it has all of the excitement of the movie. Eileen Contreras calls it a great adventure tale. Shane enjoyed it less than he thought he would. Benjamin Potter calls it a real shoot ‘em up.  Donna Tartt believes it’s a masterpiece. Maggie identifies with Mattie. Julie has the movie trailer. Bec says if you don’t like it there’s something wrong with you. Andy calls it pleasantly concise. Variety says the Coen brothers will make it into another movie. Roy Reed interviewed Portis in 2001. Chris Lehman talked about Portis and the novel with George Pelecanos in 2006. Here is the first edition’s cover. And Scott McLemee reports from the Charles Portis Appreciation Society.

Buy it at Amazon.com.

 

Home and away with Hellas Verona.

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Tim Parks, A Season With Verona (Arcade, 2003).
Parks, an English writer, had lived in Verona for two decades when he decided to spend a season following Hellas Verona, the city’s team in Serie A, the top flight of Italian professional soccer (or football, as you prefer).  Previously a serious fan, Parks heightened his commitment by joining the small crew of zealots who follow the team to all of its away games.  A sharp observer of Italy, Parks uses football as a window on many facets of Italian life — cultural, economic, political.  Those who care less for soccer will enjoy this book less than I did, but I liked it quite a bit.

Here is Parks’s website. Here is a brief bio. The New York Times provides the first chapter, albeit with some coding glitches. Google Books lets you take a look. Parks incorporated the material in this 2001 column into the book. Chris Rose (Spike) says it is consistently provocative, intelligent and funny. Chris Maume (The Independent) says Parks tackles the Italian dichotomies between peity and profanity, right and left, fat-cat north and yokel south. Martin Matusiak, clearly a soccer fan, recommends it only for fans of Serie A.  Harry particularly liked Parks’ account of a bus-ride to Bari for an away game. Jesse Berrett says it gives you a truly deep sense of how Italianness intertwines with soccer culture, particularly the regional rivalries and endless fatalism of the people. Inge lauds its insight into the intricacies of Italian football and its place in the Italian psyche. Robert MacFarlane (The Observer) calls it addictive reading, for its acute cultural criticism, for Parks’s ability to evoke the ‘choral pandemonium’ of live football, and for its brilliant narrative rhythm. Leslie Myers says it is part travelogue and part psychological study of the culture of being a fan of Serie A. Via Myers, here is the transcript of an interview of Parks by ABC’s Amanda Smith. Robert Winder (The New Statesman) thinks Parks balances the literary and the football adroitly. Vera Marie Badertscher says Parks captures the ferocity of soccer fans and provides a vocabulary lesson you won’t get at a school. Russell Davies (The Telegraph) thinks Parks has gone native. Michael Veseth liked Parks’s descriptions of political and economic facets of soccer (scroll down). Mando recommends it, as does Vadim. Dr Zen read it and would like to live in Italy.

Buy it at Amazon.com.

 

Collodi’s Tuscany.

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Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio (NYRB, 2008).
You may think you know the story of Pinocchio, but likely what you know is Walt Disney’s 1940 film adaptation. This is a Geoffrey Brock’s new translation of the original book, with a brief introduction by Umberto Eco and a longer afterword by Rebecca West. As translated by Brock, Collodi’s original is very different from the 1940 Walt Disney film — it is more complex and it lacks the sentimentality, but it races along nicely.  I would say it’s darker than the Disney film, but West’s afterword points out that all but twelve minutes of the film take place at night or in the dark.  Suffice it to say that Collodi’s story is no cartoon.

Google Books lets you take a look. NPR has an excerpt from the first chapter. Here is Wikipedia’s page on Carlo Collodi, the pen name (after the Tuscan town) of Carlo Lorenzini. Wikipedia’s page about the book is worthwhile. Here is Brock’s bio. Tim Parks’ long review in The New York Review of Books is worth reading.  He says Brock conveys Collodi’s zany spirit of Tuscan humor, a Pincchio who swings alarmingly between lies and candor, generosity and cruel mockery, good intentions and zero staying power. You can also listen to an interview with Parks. The NYRB Classics Editor, Edwin Frank, calls it a brilliant evocation of the promise and precariousness of childhood, when the world is both new and immemorial and everything is possible and yet, because one is a child, nothing is. John Powers says the book’s reality reflects the harshness of life in Collodi’s Tuscany, a place driven by hunger, brutality, greed, and social injustice. Chelsea Bauch (Boldtype) says Brock revives Collodi’s sardonic wit and pitch-black humor. Cathleen Medwick (O) calls it a tale of gumption and greed. Elizabeth was disappointed initially, and surprised that that her expectations did not match what she was reading. Jennifer says it’s both an adventure story and a moralistic tale. Bob Rini has some neat links. Here is a 1927 translation (by an unidentified translator) with illustrations by Frederick Richardson. Here is the original trailer for the Disney movie. If you’re in Tuscany, you can visit Parco di Pinocchio di Collodi.

Buy it at Amazon.com.

 

A ghostly Buenos Aires.

Photo of Buenos Aires by lrargerich used under a Creative Commons license.

César Aira, Ghosts (New Directions, 2009).
A short novel about a Chilean family living on the roof of an upscale apartment building under construction in Buenos Aires on New Year’s Eve. The day starts with arrival of future tenants who want to inspect the builders’ progress. The crew of laborers works a half-day and then breaks for a lunch where much wine is drunk. They depart, leaving the Chilean night watchman to nao and his wife to prepare to host a New Year’s party that evening. As the day passes, the focus shifts to the watchman’s teenage daughter. Oh, yes — the building is also inhabited by naked, floating, dusty ghosts, who will have their own party. Aira is a prolific Argentina author, but little of his work has been translated into English. This book made me want to read more of his work.

Here is Wikipedia’s page on Aira. Google Books lets you read a little. Scott Bryan Wilson (The Quarterly Conversation) says it is ultimately about the mechanics within families and the ways in which they create expectations for our lives. The Complete Review, which has a helpful collection of links (some of which are below), says it makes for an unusual and haunting coming-of-age novel. Jesse Tangen-Mills (Bookslut) sees fugues of free association combined with the ordinary banality of everyday life. Natasha Wimmer (The New York Times) says Aira is one of the most provocative and idiosyncratic novelists working in Spanish today, and should not be missed. Thomas McGonigle (Los Angeles Times) warns that the novel’s opening is shy in revealing the greatness within. The New Yorker’s anonymous reviewer says Aira conjures a languorous, surreal atmosphere of baking heat and quietly menacing shadows that puts one in mind of a painting by de Chirico. Megan Doll (San Francisco Chronicle) says Aira makes the strange seem banal, and calls it absurd and pedantic. Chad W. Post (Three Percent) says it’s an incredibly enjoyable book that can be read during an afternoon. Josef Braun (VUE Weekly) calls it a kind of jazzy essay, combining vividly detailed people and places with unfettered, often dazzling abstraction. Andrew Seal posts some favorite passages. Another (unidentified) blogger calls it one of the most uniquely, genuinely odd books you’re likely to stumble across. Mookse says Aira’s imagination and intelligence are for real. Douglas Messerli says Aira’s short novels seem like much longer fictions. David Auerbach doesn’t like Aira’s bad writing — he thinks Aira hasn’t spent enough time thinking things through. Melissa Tuckman says it’s a phantom-novel, airy and gestural, and that’s what makes it so terrifying. Carlos Amantea says it’s a story grounded in reality, but also a ghost story. Robert Birnbaum reads it as an allegory of class consciousness. Will Ashon feels no pressure to make sense of it. Francis Reynolds says Aira creates a strange and unsettling atmosphere.  Kathleen Brazie says it is driven by finding what lies in the space between real and unreal. María Moreno interviewed Aira for Bomb. Marcelo Ballvé wrote about “the ultra-experimental, madly prolific Argentine novelist César Aira” in The Quarterly Conversation. Scott Bryan Wilson interviewed the translator, Chris Andrews, also in The Quarterly Conversation.

Buy it at Amazon.com.

 

Southwest New Mexico.

Photo of the Gila National Forest by Dolor Ipsum used under a Creative Commons license.

Sharman Apt Russell, Songs of the Fluteplayer (Bison Books, 2002).
Writing for Salon’s Literary Guide to the World about southern New Mexico, Philip Connors says that

for a vision of contemporary life in this part of the world, one could scarcely do better than to pick up Sharman Apt Russell’s “Songs of the Fluteplayer” (1991), a collection of personal essays that range from the clash between environmentalists and cattle ranchers to the moral quandaries involved in hiring illegal laborers. At its best, it explores human-imposed boundaries — say, between public land and private, or between America and Mexico — with clarity, grace and a subtlety that subverts simple-minded moralizing.

When she wrote the book, Russell taught writing at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, where she has been since 1981, and lived in the Mimbres Valley, also in the southwest part of the state. I haven’t read this one, but I enjoyed Russell’s Kill the Cowboy.

Here is Russell’s bio at WNMU. This brief bio links to several of her articles. Her Wikipedia entry isn’t much longer. Google Books lets you take a look. Janet Schoberg says it captures the charm and challenge of the American Southwest. Susan J. Tweit interviewed Russell for Story Circle Book Reviews.

Buy it at Amazon.com.

 

The great enchantress.

Photo of La Pedrera – Casa Milà by Paco CT used under a Creative Commons license.

Robert Hughes, Barcelona: The Great Enchantress (National Geographic, 2004).
Hughes, an Australian expat who was Time’s art critic for years, has long made Barcelona his home away from home, and wrote a longer and more celebrated book (confusingly titled Barcelona) on the city seventeen years ago. National Geographic must have decided that this made him the right person to write about the city for their Directions series, for which well-known authors write short books about places. The result sometimes feels like a writing assignment rather than an organic book, but it works as a handy introduction to the city. Hughes follows a chronological approach in describing how the built environment of Barcelona came to be, and what is unique about Barcelona’s culture pours out around the edges.

Here’s Wikipedia’s page on Hughes. Hughes wrote an homage to Barcelona in Time in 1992. Here are two paragraphs from the book on Antoni Gaudi’s Casa Batlló (with a picture of the facade). Miquel O’Dochartaigh posts some favorite passages. Ian or Linda Kaplan calls it a readable overview of Barcelona, its architecture and Catalan culture; he likes it more than Hughes’ other book, but not as much as Colm Tóibín’s Homage to Barcelona. Sarah says it brings the city alive like no other, and she lived there. George V. Reilly gave it 3.5 stars (out of 5) and calls it well-written and opinionated, if overly selective. John Novick found it helpful. Paul Symonds says it’s at once a personal account and a travel documentary; he recommends nine other Barcelona books, too. Nancy Todd calls it a fascinating painting of the Catalan capital; she, too, has other recommendations. Natalie Perrin calls it schizophrenic. Adam D. Roberts used Hughes as a guide. Reuben is inspired by Barcelona’s architecture. Tyson Williams picked it up before he went to Barcelona, where he took photos.And Jennifer Schuessler reports on Barcelona bookstores.

Buy it at Amazon.com.