Collodi’s Tuscany.

Photo by photonooner used under a Creative Commons license.

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.

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The east end of Fulton Street.

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Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr. Flood (MacAdam/Cage, 2005).
This volume collects three long stories first published in The New Yorker in the mid-1940s about a retired wrecker named Hugh G. Flood, a 90-year-old determined to live to the age of 115 on fresh seafood and Scotch. Like Flood, Mitchell liked to hang around Manhattan’s Fulton Fish Market, where Fulton Street runs into the East River, and he created Flood and his world from what he saw there. The Fulton Fish Market is gone now, moved to the Bronx, but it and an older, blue-collar Manhattan live on in Mitchell’s writing. (Note that the contents of this book are also included in the collection, Up in the Old Hotel.)

Google Books lets you take a look. David Berg has a sort of Mitchell primer. Edward Helmore wrote this obituary for Mitchell for The Independent. Garth Risk Hallberg appreciates Mitchell’s work. Thomas Beller (The Village Voice) says Joycean free-associating talkers populate Mitchell’s work, transplanted to the flinty, vanishing waterfront milieu of early-20th-century Manhattan. Meghan O’Rourke (Slate) calls it a great book, as vivid a portrait of the Fulton Fish Market and of working-class life in New York City as any we have. Luan Gaines calls it an intimate look at a gentleman from the old days. Kristin Dodge found it repetitive and rambling. Maud Newton was not impressed. Hardy Green (Business Week) says it is eminently readable and brings a lost world of New York alive. Bryan Waterman wished his neighborhood on the east side had an oyster bar. Then he found a solution. Here is a gallery of odds and ends Mitchell collected from the Fulton Fish Market. Andrew Jacobs wrote about the last day of the old market in The New York Times.

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The bees of frontier Kansas.

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Thomas McMahon, McKay’s Bees (Harper Perennial, 1986).
McMahon’s novel centers on Gordon McKay, who leaves Massachusetts for Kansas in 1855 with his new wife and some German carpenters with bees and plans to found a new city on the frontier.  McKay has no strong affinity for abolitionists or slaveowners, though there isn’t much room for neutrality in Bloody Kansas.  This novel is very much of a time, an impressive recreation of historical consciousness.

Google Books provides a preview. Here’s an excerpt. In 1987, Elizabeth Mehren profiled McMahon for the LA Times. Here is McMahon’s obituary in The Harvard Gazette and the obituary from The New York Times. Douglas Bauer (The Boston Globe) is not sure which gives him greater pleasure: finding someone who doesn’t know about the novel and explaining why he must read it immediately, or discovering a fellow admirer and falling into eager conversation about its droll narrative voice and its cast of charming eccentrics and its poetically taut lines. Timothy Foote (Time) says the book is a marvel of brains, brevity and sharp description. Amanda Schaffer (Bookforum) says that McMahon’s overflowing enumeration of human, biological, and mechanical peculiarities—not unlike naturalists’ sketches or case studies—largely defines the novel’s structure, and that his facility for sustained abundance, for quirky upon quirkier detail, accumulates into a tour de force. Dedda Pie calls it absolutely amazing. Phillip Routh thought it went stagnant.

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On Pine Ridge.

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Vic Glover, Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge (Native Voices, 2004).
A Vietnam vet and former journalist, Glover wrote this series of short essays about life — his life — on the Pine Ridge reservation.  Pine Ridge is one of the poorest places in the country,  a hard place where car accidents, alcoholism and diabetes kill more than they should.  Glover is a survivor, and his essays glow with a dry humor and an understated spirituality, both keys to getting by.  I really liked this book, and I think it deserves a bigger audience.

Some of the essays were published first in Indian Country Today, including “Armageddon didn’t happen yet,” “Windy day sweat,” and “Ceremonies, hospitals, and cemetaries.” Timothy White (Shaman’s Drum) says it offers an honest portrait of contemporary Native beliefs and perspectives on the reservations. The Midwest Book Review says it reveals the challenges, history, bonds, and rich traditions that infuse and reflect the stark realities of life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Tom Rice sees despair on Pine Ridge. Glover blogs!

Buy it at Amazon.com.

 

Across the Golden Horn.

Photo of Galata Bridge by Geir Halvorsen used under a Creative Commons license.

Geert Mak, The Bridge (Random House UK, 2008).
Istanbul’s Galata Bridge spans the Golden Horn, a long estuary on the European side of the Bosphorus, and links two of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. To the south is Sultan Ahmet, a traditional Muslin part of the city, where you will find the Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace. To the north is Pera, the core of westernized Istanbul. The bridge itself is crowded with cars, pedestrians, fishermen, vendors, beggers, as well as shops and restaurants. Mak’s book is about the bridge, present and past, a little window onto Istanbul and Turkey.

Wikipedia’s entry on the Golden Horn is helpful, as is the page on the Galata Bridge. Here is an English-language bio of Mak, who is a Dutch journalist, on his website. Mak wrote about spending time on the bridge. The New Statesman ran this excerpt. Alev Adil (The Indepedent) says Mak’s intimate portraits disrupt tidy European prejudices. Lesley Mason says that as an insight into modern Turkey, it is charming, learned and unique. Viola Fort (The Guardian) says it’s part history lesson, part cultural essay. The Armenian Odar enjoyed meeting people he would probably ignore if he were to cross the bridge. Via Martyn Everett, Jeremy Seal (The Telegraph) says Mak has reinvented the city’s iconic bridge as the focal point for the frustrations and humiliations endured by Turkey’s urban dispossessed. Doulter says Mak reports how Istanbul is in a permanent state of flux, a perfect example of new nomadism. For Gary Schwartz, it brought back memories of Istanbul. Ali Çimen interviewed Mak. Listen to Ramona Koval interview Mak on ABC’s The Book Show, or read the transcript. Here’s a curious story about the book’s publication in Holland. Esther has more.

Buy it at Amazon.com.

 

“Dost thou know Dover?”

Photo of Dover by diamond geezer used under a Creative Commons license.

William Shakespeare, King Lear (Washington Square Press, 2005).
Perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, set in the royal court of a pre-Christian Britain. King Lear decides to divide his lands between his daughters, Goneril and Regan, and to disown his youngest daughter, Cordelia, who fails to flatter him as her sisters do. Lear then struggles with age, powerlessness, and madness, while Britain suffers as his daughters intrigue. Cordelia, who has married the King of France, returns with a army at Dover, where she finds Lear and the play finds its denouement.  While King Lear is hardly a guide to Dover, all of the major characters save the Fool are drawn to it, and the place has a special significance within the play.  (On this point, I am indebted to Susan Snyder, whose essay follows the play in the Folger edition noted above.)  Dover functions as a frontier, the edge of Britain, and the place where Lear and Gloucester go to transcend their experiences.

There are so many sources on Lear that a few posted here will only scratch the surface. Wikipedia’s entry on King Lear is lengthy and worthwhile. Google Books gives you a preview or MIT gives you the whole thing. You can listen to the play here. Is this Lear’s domain? Ed Friedlander wrote this essay on enjoying the play.  Here is more on the Dover connection. Songline visited Shakespeare Cliff. Plinius looked for it in the play. Here are Shakespeare playing cards. Here is Laurence Olivier playing Lear, Act IV, Scene 6, on the heath near Dover.

Buy it at Amazon.com.

 

Possibly Beijing.

Image by Nod Young used under a Creative Commons license.

Jonathan Tel, The Beijing Of Possibility (Other Press, 2009).
This collection of short stories is not just set in the Chinese capital, it is of and about the city. Tel’s Beijing is a city is close to the country, in a China which is not far from the West, and set in modern times which do not leave the past behind. Tel is fascinated by the different lives which come together in the city, by the forks which bring people to where they are now and the turns in which lives are changed and left behind — by all of Beijing’s possibilities. This Beijing is populated by messengers in gorilla suits and pick-pockets, opera composers and buskers, executives and factory workers. The disparate strands are tied together in the last story through a clever device, an effective bit of playfulness that seemed neither contrived nor obtrusive. The stories also are accompanied by Tel’s black-and-white photographs of Beijing.

Via Scott Esposito, here is one excerpt (Zoetrope)and here is another (if that link doesn’t work, try this one), and another. Terry says Tel’s Beijing is a vast, unknowable stage where opposites clash. Mark H. says Tel takes the everyday mundane life of typical Beijing residents and shares their dreams, humour and irony. L. Dean Murphy says it captures the essence of China’s rapid change. Simon Fowler says Tel’s writing shows a subtle and playful humour, and a sense of Chinese history and culture.  Barbara Ardinger says these stories are hypnotic. Jonathan Shock calls the stories windows into the split second pieces of action you see every day on the streets of any big city, and adds that in Beijing you know that the truth is much more interesting than what your imagination can muster. Publisher’s Weekly calls it a glimpse into the complicated, vibrant world of Beijing. Matthew Jakubowski interviewed Tel for The Quarterly Conversation. Here are questions for discussion and the publisher’s reader’s guide. Tel talks about taking the photographs which accompany the stories. Marshal Zeringue caught up with Tel, who’s been reading about China.

Buy it at Amazon.com.