One of the things I worried about before coming to Rome was the challenge of getting English books here. What I've found is that it's actually very easy to find books in English. Finding the exact ones you want, however, is difficult.
Right in my neighborhood, Trastevere, there are two English-language bookstores: Almost Corner, which sells new books (including both of mine--hooray), and the Open Door, which sells used. If I go downtown, I can also find English-language book sections in the big chain bookstores like Mel and Feltrinelli, though usually they only have books I've already read or books I'd never want to read, the latest in chick-lit or testosterone-driven thrillers. Otherwise, I can check out the library here at the Academy, or if I feel very patient, I can order books from amazon.uk, which seems to take about a month, by which time I'm interested in reading something else.
My problem is I can never predict what it is I'm going to want to read, and it's usually something that isn't readily available, for example, Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, or a story by an obscure Yiddish author.
Until recently I was doing fine with the books I'd brought with me: the indelible Mayor of Casterbridge by Hardy, a collection of essays and stories by my current obsession, E. M. Forster, which includes a breathtaking piece called "Inspiration." But lately I can't seem to stick with anything. I don't know if it's the book themselves or maybe just my mood.
For example, I tried picking up the new Michel Houellebecq novel, The Possibility of an Island, which I got in the UK edition. (I don't know why, but his books tend to come out there six months earlier than in America.) After about fifty pages, I had to put it down. In the past I've been an avid fan of his, but somehow the fourth time around, his voice, with all its lusty pessimism, simply feels tired. Maybe it's not any fault of the author's. It's just that the world is depressing enough these days. If I'm going to read five hundred pages about how we're going to hell in a handbasket, I'd like a little hope, the kind David Mitchell gave me in Cloud Atlas. Or, at least, something in the way of character other than world weary Parisians making crude ethnic jokes and having glorious jaded sex. And maybe, if it's not too much to ask, a moment of genuine feeling. Perhaps the biggest secret about Houellebecq is that he yearns to be a sentimentalist. When I look back on his last two books, what I remember most are the painful, pathetic scenes, a boy drowning his sorrows in endless bowls of Corn Flakes, the narrator of Platform giving up on Western Civilization after the end of a love affair that caught him by surprise.
Next I tried a slim novel in Italian called "Novecento" by Alessandro Barrico, who's a big cheese here. My Italian skills are still fairly weak, so it's hard for me to comment too much on this book, which is a novel in the form of a monologue which is actually supposed to be the treatment for a film. It was actually made into a film with Tim Roth, and is the story of a pianist who's born on a cruise ship and goes back and forth across the Atlantic and never gets off the ship. All very ironic and world-weary. Capitalism and show business are brutish and so forth. I put it down.
Now I'm working on a mammoth book called The Nazarene by Sholem Asch, a writer I admire greatly for his vision as well as his achievement in his book Three Cities, which I keep haranguing people to dig up. The Nazarene has a more interesting back story than Three Cities, but the part I've managed to get through can't compare in terms of brilliance. Published in 1939, during the height of Nazi atrocities in Germany, The Nazarene is an epic life of Jesus Christ written in Yiddish. You can imagine the response Asch got from the Jewish community when the book came out. The literary community, on the other hand, hailed the book as a great achievement. So far, I can't agree. The book opens fetchingly, with a daring conceit: a Jew in Poland goes to work as a translator for a rabid anti-Semite who reveals that he's actually a reincarnation of one of Christ's murderers. The relationship between these two is rich and intriguing. Too bad that after thirty pages, Asch chucks it entirely and instead relates the anti-Semite's "memories" of Christ in Imperial Judea. Suddenly the language and details of place and character that were so finely etched in the opening disappear. Instead we get the usual Roman carping about that nasty little colony of Judea that gives us so much trouble. If you've seen any movie along the lines of Ben-Hur, you get the idea.
So what's next? Well, I hate to sound like a wimp, but I think I'll just go back to re-reading E. M. Forster.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Thursday, December 01, 2005
More Rain, and Other Distractions
More rain. The weather here is becoming a joke that might be funnier if I didn't have to trudge through it. At least the general sogginess gives me an excuse to chain myself to my desk and chip away at my novel, which is moving steadily along. Still, the distraction of the Internet frequently proves irresistable, a link to the pageant of bread and circuses back home, at the heart of the American Empire.
Click, and I can now read a flattering profile of debut authoress Nicole Ritchie. Click, and I learn that a moderately entertaining, though slightly baggy bit of fluff called Prep is one of the best books of the year. Click, and I snicker over an amusing, ironic tribute to the inventor of Stove Top stuffing.
And all this is from the New York Times.
News from the American Academy? The author Oscar Hijuelos was supposed to have visited, but had to cancel at the last minute. We went on with the dinner in his honor without him. In a week or so Laurie Anderson is coming to give a talk. There have been many, many other talks and concerts and tours, a ceramic factory here, a classical ruin there, a sumptuous villa, a collection of drawings off-limits to the public. I could spend a year simply looking at it all. And it might be a profitable investment of my time, but I feel drawn to this book I'm working on. My characters have gotten themselves into deep, deep trouble, and it's up to me to find out what happens to them.
Down the hill, the alleys of Trastevere are decked out with Christmas tinsel and lights. Ornaments are expensive here, and people who put up trees seem to prefer plastic to real. Better for the environment, cheaper, and generally easier to deal with, I suppose. It's also the season for Rome's many, many churches to transform into concert halls. There's a chamber concert this Sunday that I'm planning to catch.
I'm beginning to get used to the buses here, which I used to avoid and still do if I can possibly walk. I've learned that flagging a driver down does no good if you are not standing directly under the sign indicating an official bus stop. Standing a few feet away is an invitation for the driver to ignore you completely and speed by, leaving you to stand in the wet and the cold, waiting another twenty minutes for another ride. In general, the drivers seem a bored, grumpy lot, unwilling to give cogent directions or wait a second longer than necessary for you to fight your way to the door to get off when it's your stop. A friend of mine, riding his bike, was recently hit by a bus that might have continued to squeeze the very life out of him had the passengers inside not risen up and cried out in protest.
The other thing I've learned about Rome is that generally there is some kind of miraculous sight behind every corner if you're patient and willing to explore a little. Generally this kind of miracle involves entering a church. For example, the Santa Maria degli Angeli, which Michelangelo carved out of the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, or the ordinary-looking San Pietro in Vincoli, where I met my new friend Matteo last week. (Matteo Bianchi is an extraordinary Italian author whose works deserve to be translated into English, and hopefully soon they will be.) "Do you know what's inside?" I asked him as we sat on the front steps. No, he'd never been. "Come on, then," I said, so we went in. There are two miracles inside the church of Saint Peter "in chains." First are the actual chains used to bind Saint Peter when he came to Rome. Don't bother wondering if they're real. Every relic in Italy is real. The other, true miracle in this church is Michelangelo's Moses, who sat pondering in the dark when we walked up to him. A crowd of tourists were peering into the shadows, trying to make him out, until I put fifty cents into the light machine and became a hero for half a minute.
Inevitably, miracles become tiresome, and in search of respite, I went with two friends to the Warner Village multiplex where a mob had gathered to watch the new Harry Potter movie. Though the first showing was at 3:10, the box office didn't open until 3, and a mob of Italians held a siege of the box office demanding tickets. At any given moment, the two ticket sellers were serving about ten arguing customers at once. A handsome "steward" named Claudio stood by in his official Warner uniform and calmly looked on. In Italy, there are always at least two people to do every job, one to do the work, and the other to watch. Inside the theater, you feel as though you might be in America, with the smell of popcorn and the overpriced drinks and candy. The only major differences are the VIP smoking lounge and a soft drink for sale called "Pepsi BOOM!"
My friends and I went to the theater showing the "original version" (aka, not dubbed) of the movie, found our seats, and waited for the lights to go down. After twenty-five minutes of ear-splitting commercials and previews, the lights came up and then down again, and then the movie began. And for a couple of hours, we lost ourselves in a fantasy of special effects, art direction, and a world in which every question has one answer.
Click, and I can now read a flattering profile of debut authoress Nicole Ritchie. Click, and I learn that a moderately entertaining, though slightly baggy bit of fluff called Prep is one of the best books of the year. Click, and I snicker over an amusing, ironic tribute to the inventor of Stove Top stuffing.
And all this is from the New York Times.
News from the American Academy? The author Oscar Hijuelos was supposed to have visited, but had to cancel at the last minute. We went on with the dinner in his honor without him. In a week or so Laurie Anderson is coming to give a talk. There have been many, many other talks and concerts and tours, a ceramic factory here, a classical ruin there, a sumptuous villa, a collection of drawings off-limits to the public. I could spend a year simply looking at it all. And it might be a profitable investment of my time, but I feel drawn to this book I'm working on. My characters have gotten themselves into deep, deep trouble, and it's up to me to find out what happens to them.
Down the hill, the alleys of Trastevere are decked out with Christmas tinsel and lights. Ornaments are expensive here, and people who put up trees seem to prefer plastic to real. Better for the environment, cheaper, and generally easier to deal with, I suppose. It's also the season for Rome's many, many churches to transform into concert halls. There's a chamber concert this Sunday that I'm planning to catch.
I'm beginning to get used to the buses here, which I used to avoid and still do if I can possibly walk. I've learned that flagging a driver down does no good if you are not standing directly under the sign indicating an official bus stop. Standing a few feet away is an invitation for the driver to ignore you completely and speed by, leaving you to stand in the wet and the cold, waiting another twenty minutes for another ride. In general, the drivers seem a bored, grumpy lot, unwilling to give cogent directions or wait a second longer than necessary for you to fight your way to the door to get off when it's your stop. A friend of mine, riding his bike, was recently hit by a bus that might have continued to squeeze the very life out of him had the passengers inside not risen up and cried out in protest.
The other thing I've learned about Rome is that generally there is some kind of miraculous sight behind every corner if you're patient and willing to explore a little. Generally this kind of miracle involves entering a church. For example, the Santa Maria degli Angeli, which Michelangelo carved out of the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, or the ordinary-looking San Pietro in Vincoli, where I met my new friend Matteo last week. (Matteo Bianchi is an extraordinary Italian author whose works deserve to be translated into English, and hopefully soon they will be.) "Do you know what's inside?" I asked him as we sat on the front steps. No, he'd never been. "Come on, then," I said, so we went in. There are two miracles inside the church of Saint Peter "in chains." First are the actual chains used to bind Saint Peter when he came to Rome. Don't bother wondering if they're real. Every relic in Italy is real. The other, true miracle in this church is Michelangelo's Moses, who sat pondering in the dark when we walked up to him. A crowd of tourists were peering into the shadows, trying to make him out, until I put fifty cents into the light machine and became a hero for half a minute.
Inevitably, miracles become tiresome, and in search of respite, I went with two friends to the Warner Village multiplex where a mob had gathered to watch the new Harry Potter movie. Though the first showing was at 3:10, the box office didn't open until 3, and a mob of Italians held a siege of the box office demanding tickets. At any given moment, the two ticket sellers were serving about ten arguing customers at once. A handsome "steward" named Claudio stood by in his official Warner uniform and calmly looked on. In Italy, there are always at least two people to do every job, one to do the work, and the other to watch. Inside the theater, you feel as though you might be in America, with the smell of popcorn and the overpriced drinks and candy. The only major differences are the VIP smoking lounge and a soft drink for sale called "Pepsi BOOM!"
My friends and I went to the theater showing the "original version" (aka, not dubbed) of the movie, found our seats, and waited for the lights to go down. After twenty-five minutes of ear-splitting commercials and previews, the lights came up and then down again, and then the movie began. And for a couple of hours, we lost ourselves in a fantasy of special effects, art direction, and a world in which every question has one answer.
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