Yay! My new Italian books arrived!

Couldn't resist! Okay, so no, he's not up to reading Nadia Terranova's Gli Anni al Contrario, or really much of anything in Italian. But we do read Italian books together! Books with Pimpa exploring Firenze alongside Dante (delightful) and books about the Riace bronzes and books about a boy named Leonardo who loves the beach and has a lot of questions. Buona lettura a tutti!
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Dialogue in search of a story

Overheard:

“She has a psychological problem. She still pays her bills with checks. Who does that?"

(Said by a man at the Albany airport last year who spoke in a mix of English and Italian dialect, punctuating his Italian with phrases in English like “I don't know” or “yeah,” and punctuating his Italian with the words perche’, cazzo, mai!) 

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Houses of Atlanta

In Cabbagetown.

I love taking photos of houses. And Atlanta offers a smorgasbord because the housing stock can sometimes change block to block or neighborhood to neighborhood. This is a project in search of a real photographer. I imagine an exhibit where the walls would be covered with photos of houses in Atlanta, as distinct as people's faces.

In Grant Park.

In Home Park.

What I'm Reading (March-April)

Third installment here of what I am reading. Not just the official book list but all the books I peruse throughout the month.

So that includes what I am reading as I study for my MFA in Writing from Bennington College and the other books that tickle my fancy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I want to record life exactly as it happens, and in the case of one's reading life, that means taking into account not just the books you read from start to finish but books you skim, books you pick up to read for a few minutes while waiting for something else to happen, stuff you consult in the course of research, books you cadge from the Little Libraries in your neighborhood (does anyone else do this? Atlanta, and especially my neighborhood in Atlanta, is full of these joyous little wooden structures that look like mailboxes or better yet miniatures of the houses behind them) etc.

So here we go for March/early April:.... 30 days in the life of Jeanne reading (books only).

Books read for Bennington coursework:

Viola Di Grado, Hollow Heart

Marie Howe, In the Kingdom of Ordinary Time (poetry)

Muriel Spark, Public Image

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (still reading)

Junot Diaz, Drown

Books read (in parts) for Bennington lecture research:

Giorgio Bassani, Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini

Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico Famigliare

Books read for fun!:

Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

Ongoing Italian novel consumption:

*Donatella Di Pietrantonio, Bella Mia

*Nadia Terranova, Gli Anni al Contrario

These last two books I've read only in part!

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Reading Bruce Chatwin

It was bound to happen -- sooner or later, I would begin reading Bruce Chatwin's travel books.

I've long been interested by "In Patagonia," which I still haven't read, so when I stumbled on a book of Chatwin's letters at my local library in Atlanta, I decided it was time to begin my journey in Chatwin country.

And what a journey. He sounds like an incredible charming person who could also be incredibly difficult, incredibly enigmatic, incredibly pedantic, incredibly myopic about his work and what he needed to do it well.

So an overachiever, probably. An overachiever who seemed to travel constantly. He and his wife lived largely separate, and his letters alight from all corners of the Earth, from Patagonia (of course) to Italy to Australia, India, and on and on.

Notably, excerpted letters from other people contained in several footnotes alert us that he was a blabbermouth! Or at least, that's how some people viewed him.

What's more, an unexpected feature of the volume of letters is a running commentary by his wife, giving the behind-the-scenes on various situations, debacles, fantasies and love affairs (yes, love affairs) embroiling Bruce at any given moment.

I often think about the nature of genius in one specific way: does it require a self-devotion so steady that the person naturally repels most other people in his orbit?

The answer seems to be yes. But what of it? A book of letters written by a traveling man or essays about journeys constitute mini-vacations for me. As I read, I'm sitting each night on the futon I've covered with a Mexican blanket in my drafty home in relatively staid Atlanta but for a moment I'm walking along the Thames or interviewing a man in the Amazon or crossing a bridge in a bright African nation.

Not bad for a book I took out of the library on Ponce.

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When work + travel = life (for HLN)

I like to write about travel whenever I can. And sometimes work and pleasure combine. 

Here's a story (click on 'story') I wrote for HLN, a division of CNN, about a new kind of travel company that organizes long overseas excursions for so-called "digital nomads" who can work from anywhere. 

"Think of it as co-working meets Club Med."

Wow!

"The Business of Living"

Apparently that's the name of the Italian writer Cesare Pavese's published diaries.

The Business of Living. Or in Italian: Il Mestiere di Vivere.

File under: Books I want to read.

(With my thanks to the Writer's Chronicle, where the book appeared in the bibliography of an article about translation).

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"Elena Ferrante’s real identity? I don’t really care" - My piece for Asymptote Blog

Click the link to read it:

Elena Ferrante’s real identity? I don’t really care - Asymptote Blog: 'Right, because it’s the work that matters, no?'

What we're drinking (South. Italian reds, chiaro)

Nero d'avola and Neprica (which is a blend of grapes mainly grown in Southern Italy, including Negroamaro and Primitivo).

Cin-cin!

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Mommy

Sometimes Leo says "Mommy" and it's not because he is telling me something or calling my name.

He just says it, like you might say 'well' or 'wow' or 'so.'

"Mommy."

As if he says it when he can't think of anything to say or when he simply wants to reflect on how full our lives are he says "Mommy."

What I'm reading (February 2016)

Okay, so I'm going to keep going, at least for now, with recording what I am actually reading. Not just the official book list but all the books I peruse throughout the month.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I want to record life exactly as it happens, and in the case of one's reading life, that means taking into account not just the books you read from start to finish but books you skim, books you pick up to read for a few minutes while waiting for something else to happen, stuff you consult in the course of research, books you cadge from the Little Libraries in your neighborhood (does anyone else do this? Atlanta, and especially my neighborhood in Atlanta, is full of these joyous little wooden structures that look like mailboxes or better yet miniatures of the houses behind them) etc.

So here we go for February/early March:.... 30 days in the life of Jeanne reading (books only).

Books read for Bennington:
Antonya Nelson, Female Trouble

Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

Books read for lecture research (still Bennington):

Giorgio Bassani, Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini

Jhumpa Lahiri, “Diario,” diary excerpt published in the Italian literary magazine, Nuovi Argomenti (Fall 2015 issue) 

Other books read but not finished:

Viola Di Grado, Hollow Heart
Muriel Spark, Public Image

Books I purely perused and nothing more:

Fabio Volo, E' Tutto Vita

Neil LaBute, Seconds of Pleasure (stories) [From a LITTLE LIBRARY] 

Books I need to pick up again and finish:

Jane Austen, Emma

How good is homemade fried calamari?

Oh pretty good.

 Babbo sa cucinare bene!

 Buon appetito!

I heart pizza?

Made with love, of course, by Il Nostro Inviato, a.k.a Mike.

NYC Translation event -- Wish I were there!

An amazing translation event is planned for tomorrow in New York.

A conversation with the translators of Elena Ferrante and Roberto Bolano (Ann Goldstein and Natasha Wimmer, respectively).

Hosted by Asymptote Journal, a journal of literary translation, which recently quite generously published an essay of mine on its blog (read it here). The event is in honor of its 5th anniversary.

Oh I wish I could go!

If you can, lucky you. Click here for the details.

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Why blog? Here's why

I often wonder why I keep this blog when I could just continue to practice my religion of Italian studies fetishism privately.

I could continue to write in my journals (plural -- the one in my car, the one for fiction, for nonfiction, et al).

I could post curiosities to Facebook and Twitter, and leave it at that.

But as Anna Clark so eloquently puts it on her blog, it's to "practice the public art of writing and reflection."

When someone expresses it that way, it sounds so lovely, so noble.

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Two reasons I love Italian newspapers

They always have an interesting take on American politics. To wit, the political cartoon about Hillary Clinton showing the Statue of Liberty blow-drying her hair.

In the case of La Repubblica, the newspapers are so colorful! And often covering intellectual topics that betray a deep interest in other cultures. Here they're writing about Spain under Franco, with some harrowing pictures to boot.

Bassani on his characters (Nuovi Argomenti)

"Basically, in my novel, every character worth considering is a manifestation of my own personal feelings."

“Nel mio romanzo, insomma, ogni personaggio degno di questo nome e’ una forma del mio sentimento.”

This statement comes from an interview Italian author Giorgio Bassani (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis) gave to the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, and which was published last year by Nuovi Argomenti.

Bassani is talking in the interview about what portion of the indelible characters he created in the novel, Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini, are real. But if there is an easy answer, he eschews it.

"What's true?" He asks. "Did these characters actually exist?"

He continues, "I could talk on and on until tomorrow morning about how the shorts Micol is wearing really belong to a young woman I saw one day who made a big impression on me when I was a boy. Or the sweaty face of Malnate, which really belongs to a friend of mine who isn't called Malnate but rather Vincenzo Cicognani, who lives in Lugo. His face sweats when he argues, and he's also very tall."

At the risk of being repetitive, Bassani summarizes his thoughts in this way: "Basically, in my novel, every character worth considering is a manifestation of my own personal feelings." (Original Italian above)

To wit, he says, "The main characters are manifestations of feelings of the person who wrote the novel, which is to say, more or less Micol is me, Professor Ermanno is me, Rovigatti is me, the father, it's me."

In the Italian, Bassani has a novel way of putting it -- he actually uses French to express himself: "Sono tutte forme del sentimento di chi ha scritto questo romanzo, cioe’ effettivamente Micol c’est moi, il professor Ermanno c’est moi il ciabattino Rovigatti c’est moi, mio padre sono io."

***
Here's the original Italian which I transcribed from Nuovi Argomenti:

"Cosa c’e’ di vero? Questi personaggi sono effettivamente esistiti?"

(BREAK)

“Potrei trattenermi fino a domani mattina a dire che gli shorts di Micol appartengono a quella tale signorina che io ho visto un giorno e mi ha colpito quando ero ragazzo, oppure che la faccia sudata di Malnate appartiene veramente ad un mio amico che non si chiama Malnate, ma che si chiama Vincenzo Cicognani, il quale sta a Lugo, ha la faccia sudata quando discute ed e’ anche molto alto.”

(BREAK)

"Quindi da un lato, ognuno di questi personaggi ha un rapporto col vero oggettivo – e molti si sono offesi per questo – pero' da un altro lato sono tutte forme del sentimento di chi ha scritto questo romanzo, cioe’ effettivamente Micol c’est moi, il professor Ermanno c’est moi il ciabattino Rovigatti c’est moi, mio padre sono io."

(BREAK)

“Nel mio romanzo, insomma, ogni personaggio degno di questo nome e’ una forma del mio sentimento.”

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Louise Attaque - Du Nord Au Sud

Lost entry from my car journal -- Here and there

Oct 12, 2015

From the journal I keep in my car 

The babysitter calls me at work today and I hear his voice down the phone line, tiny, bewildered, “Mommy.” Then again, “Mommy.”

As if that were a whole sentence (and it is, I suppose).

Nothing's wrong.

It's just that I'm here and he's there.

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What I'm reading (literary schizophrenia)

I want to record life exactly as it happens. But that's not easy.

I mean, these days, you would need, in any given moment, to write down what you're thinking, what you're doing, the texts you're writing, the emails you're sending, the stories you're scrolling through online.

In fact, your reading life is probably like your real life. Mine is. I'm reading some books start to finish. Others I'm re-reading. Still others I'm skimming, almost like a few pages or a chapter packs the punch of a quick pick-me-up. 'Oh! I needed that dose of Hemingway.'

Okay, so here's 30 days in the life of Jeanne reading (books only).

Books read for Bennington:

Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Denis Johnson, Incognito Lounge (poetry)

Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son

Antonya Nelson, Female Trouble

Other books read:

David Gates, Jernigan

Alice McDermott, Charming Bill (re-read parts)
Antonio Tabucchi, Viaggi e altri viaggi (re-reading parts)

Also reading (for book reviews):

Viola Di Grado, Hollow Heart

Reading excerpts of:

Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

Started reading, then stopped:

Ben Lerner, 10:04

Books I've started to read and plan to finish:
Jane Austen, Emma