26 March 2009

The Sands of Time: Two books on Italy

This week I celebrated another birthday (in Italian it’s called a “compleanno” or “completed year”). According to the Beatles, when I’m 64 I’m “old.” Not so fast, say the Medicare bureaucrats.

On a sunny, chilly morning in March, Big River Beach below the town of Mendocino qualifies as one of the wonders of the world.

As I imprinted EarthShoe-like heel prints in soft sand down where river meets ocean and dogs go crazy to get off leash, I happened to ponder the phrase “sands of time,” Thanks to Google, I later discovered that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used the words in his poem “A Psalm of Life.”

It’s one of those rhymes that gave 19th century poetry a reputation for being way too uplifting and sincere. Longfellow wrote:

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime.
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

I’ve been reading two books this week, one that had been sitting on a shelf for at least five years when I happened to take a closer look, the other to be published in May.

“The Dark Heart of Italy” by Tobias Jones is subtitled “An incisive portrait of Europe’s most beautiful, most disconcerting country.” That would be Italy, of course.

Jones begins his take on contemporary Italy by describing his early encounter with the language, how it reveals character. The first chapter is titled Words, Words, Words.

“The more words I learnt... the more the country seemed not chaotic but incredibly hierarchical and formal. Even ‘ciao’ was a greeting, I discovered, derived from the word ‘schiavo,’ ‘slave.’ The cheery ‘ciao,’ Italy’s most famous word, originally implied subservience and order, as in ‘I am your slave.’”

Jones discusses political Italy, held in thrall by the much maligned but extremely powerful Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who, the saying goes, owns everything from Padre Nostro (Our Father, the Pope) to Cosa Nostra (Our Thing, the Mafia).

A much gentler but no less incisive portrait of Italy emerges from “La Bella Lingua” by Californian Dianne Hales. La Bella Lingua, or The Beautiful Language, was her ticket to the real Italy.

“... unlike Italophiles who trek through frescoed churches or restore rustic farmhouses, I chose to inhabit the language, as bawdy as it is beautiful, as zesty a linguistic stew as the peppery puttanesca sauce named for Italy’s notorious ladies of the night.”

Where Tobias Jones discovers the Italians’ undying cynicism about government and the rule of law, Dianna Hales finds a people trying to survive: “Through centuries of often brutal foreign domination, words remained all that Italy’s people could claim as their own” she says.

Art, music and poetry are on every Italian’s tongue. Hales tells the wartime story of an (anti-fascist) shepherd in Tuscany who “was ordered to shoot anyone who couldn’t identify himself without doubt as an Italian. One night he stopped a professor... after curfew without any identification documents. The (shepherd) asked the scholar to prove his identity by reciting the 17th canto of the ‘Inferno.’ (The professor) got to line 117 but couldn’t remember the rest.

“The shepherd finished the canto for him.”

The background of both writers is journalism. Each conducts interviews and research to find deeper layers of Italian culture customarily hidden from visitors. Taken together their visions, one much brighter than the other, paint a realistic and revealing portrait.

Tobias Jones quotes an Italian columnist: “In Italy, as in chemistry, nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed.”

Jones adds, “It seems there’s no crime or conviction sufficient to end an Italian politician’s career, no historical event which can’t be ‘smemorizzato,’ conveniently forgotten.”

At one poignant moment Jones encounters a former student. Learning about this forthcoming book, the student exclaims “You foreign journalists are so facetious and condescending. You only write about how terrible our country is.”

“But I’m only repeating what you all tell me. And it’s true, it is terrible.” The two sat in silence.

“He caught me looking at him and began to apologise. ‘Excuse me, Tobia,’ he said finally. ‘Excuse me. It’s just that Berlusconi brings so much shame upon our country, and you mustn’t add to that. You must write about the other sides of the country.’

“I will. I promise, Marco, that’s what I’ll write about next. And I didn’t mean it’s all terrible here. I love it here, it’s just that....

“ ‘It’s terrible.’ He nodded, smiling.”



NOTES:

“Sands of Time” from "A Psalm of Life," 1839, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 - 1882.

The sands of time are running out. - "Time is getting short; there will be little opportunity to do what you have to do unless you take the chance now. The phrase is often used with reference to one who has not much longer to live. The allusion is to the hourglass." From "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" revised by Adrian Room (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1999, Sixteenth Edition).

“The Dark Heart of Italy” by Tobias Jones. North Point Press paperback $15. ISBN 0865477248.

Jones does not have his own web site, but GoodReads describes some of his books.

A Wikipedia stub on Jones.

“La Bella Lingua, My Love Affair with Italian, The World’s Most Enchanting Language” by Dianne Hales. Broadway Books hard cover $24.95. ISBN 9780767927697.

Dianne Hales’ website.

I’m friends with Dianne on Facebook, and she has a group there named La Bella Lingua. You could join and look her up, too.

19 March 2009

Spade & Archer, Archer & Spade

“(The fat man) sighed comfortably and said: ‘Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. And I’ll tell you right out that I’m a man who likes talking to a man that likes to talk.’”

What a line, what a moment. Here’s another:

“It only took a piece of skin off, but he still had the scar when I saw him. He rubbed it with his finger – well, affectionately – when he told me about it. He was scared stiff of course, he said, but he was more shocked than really frightened. He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works.”

Dashiell Hammett, at his smoky best, in “The Maltese Falcon.”’

Now listen to these lines:

“Spade leaned over a littered desk where a hulk-shouldered man in a woolen tweed suit was counting money into a green tin box.

“‘Stan Hagar around?’

“The money counter looked up. His nose had been bent to one side by a board or a brick. His face was heavy and needed a shave. It would always need a shave. His eyes were brown, dead.

“‘Who’s askin’?’

“‘Sam Spade. I want to see him on business.’”

That scene could easily be Hammett. It’s meant to read like Hammett, but it’s from a new book by veteran thriller writer Joe Gores, titled “Spade and Archer, The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.” Gores’ book is good, very good.

Joe Gores has the tough guy persona down, the persona pioneered by Dashiell Hammett in his short, two-decades long writing career. Hammett became famous for his West Coast tough guy adventures, and Gores studied and learned from the master. Gores lays down San Francisco places and streets thicker than fog on Broadway. He makes delicious re-use of Spade’s mannerisms. Where Hammett doesn’t supply details, Gores fills in like choppy water surging through the Golden Gate.

In an interview Gores said he wrote “Spade and Archer” after thinking about a comment a Hammett scholar once made about The Maltese Falcon. He called it “America’s first existential novel.”

“I thought yes, that’s exactly right: you don’t know anything about the past of these people: they just appear full-blown as if they sprang from the head of Zeus. So I became fascinated by that idea,” Gores told the interviewer. “Who is Spade, where did he come from, why he can essentially say to the fat man, ‘If you’d stayed away from me you would have been okay, but when you cross me then you have to deal with me now, because this is my town.”

Gores wrote a biography of Hammett some years ago, so a prequel to “The Maltese Falcon” must have come naturally. Gores’ novel is stuffed with authentic settings, amusing patter and scary bits. It inspired me to go out and read and reread a goodly pile of real Dashiell Hammett stories and novels. I bought a few, borrowed a few more, and immersed myself in another place and time in the city in which I grew up.

Hammett learned to pare down his tales to the minimum. Because they are so spare the reader may well imagine there’s more here than Hammett cares to share. Joe Gores fills it in somewhat, but never overshadows the original works. He just makes it a bit deeper and even more fun.

And he does it with style. Here are the final sentences of Joe Gores’ “Spade & Archer”:

“... Spade was smoking behind his desk when Effie Perine came in. He looked up at her.

“‘Yes, sweetheart?’

She finished shutting the door behind her, leaned against it, and said, ‘There’s a girl wants to see you. Her name’s Wonderly.’

“‘A customer?’”

“‘I guess so. You’ll want to see her anyway: she’s a knockout.’

“‘Shoo her in, darling,’ said Spade. ‘Shoo her in.’”

This moment is delightful for Hammett aficionados because Gores is quoting Hammett, ending his novel with exactly the words that begin “The Maltese Falcon.” It’s a great trick, a graceful handoff, seamless. Gores stands in the gumshoes of the master and holds his own.

Slice of life, bite of the knife. Danger on the streets, crime in high places. It’s all here, gritty stuff, no matter which master you choose to read.

“Shoo her in, darling,’ said Spade. ‘Shoo her in.’

NOTES:

“Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon” by Joe Gores. Knopf hard cover $24. ISBN 9780307264640.

“The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett. Vintage Crime/Knopf paperback $12.95. ISBN 0679722645. Really good garish cover, just right.

Other ways to read Hammett:

“Nightmare Town: Stories” by Dashiell Hammett. Vintage paperback $14.95. ISBN 0375701028. From the publisher: This collection of 20 long-unavailable stories from the author of "The Maltese Falcon" includes classic noir styles that Hammett made famous.

“Dashiell Hammett: Complete Novels.” Library of America Hardcover $35. ISBN 1883011671. Lovely heirloom/definitive edition.

Pretty much everything Hammett wrote, even a play or two, his letters, and more, is in print or easily available on the used book market.

From the book jacket: “Joe Gores, formerly a private eye, is the author of sixteen other novels, including “Hammett” (out of print) which won Japan’s Falcon Award (what else?). He has received three Edgar Awards, one of only two authors to win in three separate categories: Best First Novel, Best Short Story, and Best Episode in a TV Series.”

Most of Joe Gores’ other books are out of print but easy to find used. He is usually published in mass market size, and this kind of book goes in and out of print rapidly.

To get a more contemporary, non-Hammett taste of Gores’ writing, you might try this:

“Glass Tiger” (an Otto Penzler Book). Harvest Books paperback $14. ISBN 0156032740. From the publisher: “In this fast-paced thriller, ex-Ranger Brendan Thorne is tapped by the FBI to stop a legendary Vietnam sniper from killing the recently elected president of the United States.”

12 March 2009

Never Tell a Lie; Never Swat a Fly

Last week we established that a good number of people in Britain will lie about which books they’ve read. People here lie, too, but we don’t have a readers’ survey to prove it.

The next day a local bookseller handed me a copy of Pierre Bayard’s book “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.” In his overeducated yet witty way Monsieur Bayard unpeels the deeper layers of meaning.

He claims “Reading is first and foremost non-reading. Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong readers, the act of picking up and opening a book masks the counter gesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntary act of NOT picking up and NOT opening all the other books in the universe.”

You may remember the TV show Cosmos with late astronomer Carl Sagan. At one point Sagan strolls along vast stacks of books in a stage-set library, pointing out the mathematical impossibility of living long enough to read the books in even one well-stocked library.

In “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read” Professor Bayard makes the case that simply understanding where a book fits into the overall culture may be just as important as having actually read the book.

“For instance, he writes, “I’ve never ‘read’ Joyce’s ‘Ulysses,’ and it’s quite plausible that I never will. This means that I feel perfectly comfortable when ‘Ulysses’ comes up in conversation, because I can situate it with relative precision in relation to other books... And as a result, I often find myself alluding to Joyce without the slightest anxiety.”

This startling insight from an author who is a professor of French literature at the University of Paris, a psychoanalyst, and author of many other books.

Bookseller Paul Takushi in Sacramento wrote: “Hi Tony. The only books I claim to have read, but have not (at least, not the ENTIRE book), are most of whatever’s on the current bestseller list and books for author events. I lie about bestsellers in order to make the sale to people I don’t know and will never meet again...

“...I never lie within earshot of co-workers, store regulars, friends, or family because they’ll just turn to that customer and expose me...

“When I (used to tell customers) I hadn’t read a certain title, the look of horror... or disgust on their faces made me feel insecure and inadequate about being a bookseller. But c’mon! You couldn’t read every dang book in the store anyway...

Paul continued, “I (once attended)... an education session at a (booksellers’ convention).

“(The speaker told the booksellers), ‘When customers come in looking for a book on a certain subject, pick one off the shelf, put it in their hands, and tell them that the book is the best book in the store on that subject, even if you’ve never read it. When... they ask you if it’s any good, just say yes...

“A bookseller in the audience immediately piped up: ‘But don’t you think that lying to your customers is bad for your business in the long run?’

“(The speaker) replied, ‘Oh yes, of course... BUT, only if that person finds out that you lied to them. AND, you’re not going to just hand them crap, right? I mean, it’s YOUR store – there IS no crap in it, right?

Paul’s letter continues, “...I sat there stunned. Then I began to see the somewhat twisted logic in what he was saying... Half the audience thought he was a total ass. The other half sat there like me, thinking, ‘Hmmm...’ ”

“Don’t worry Tony,” Paul concluded. “I would never lie to you.”


NOTES:

“How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read” by Pierre Bayard with a foreword by Francine Prose. Bloomsbury hard cover $19.95. ISBN 9781596914698. The $14 paperback will be published in September, 2009. This book is witty in a subtle, cumulative way. Highly recommended.

Susan in Maine wrote:

"Out of curiosity, I went to those hundred books and I've actually read 51 of them; don't ask whether I remember the content of all of the books I've read however. It did strike me that there were a surprising number of Terry Pratchett titles. I haven't read any of Terry Pratchett (that I recall). As to the 10 you've listed in your "column," alas, only 4. Fun observations. In passing, I don't recall that in my youth, seeming smarter to attract a mate, at least for women, was encouraged...."

Jane in Mendocino wrote:

Hello Tony!

Concerning “How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read” by Pierre Bayard...

If you haven't read Proust, this book can help you out. If you have read Proust, you will love this book. It is very funny, culturally astute, and it will inspire you to read -- at least I was inspired. It is truly a book for those who love books.

It's not just about literature & our shared experiences with literature -- there's a fair amount of other stuff going on. It's a book that you can dip into again & again.

05 March 2009

Today is World Book Day and I'm Not Lying About That

In the news: “Most Britons have lied about the books they’ve read.”

Now, you could let that statement “lie” there and die a genteel death. Or you could ponder the implications.

The news report is more about what people say about books than the books themselves. It hit a nerve worldwide, at least in the English-speaking world, which is the only world I can read well. The story was reprinted in dozens of locations, including the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Scotsman, the BBC, even by Stuff, which calls itself “New Zealand’s leading news, sport and entertainment website.”

The news that a majority of Britons will lie about what they read resulted from an online survey in conjunction with World Book Day, asking online readers if they have ever told someone they had read a book when they had not. About two-thirds admitted lying from time to time.

If you’d like to test yourself, and your honesty about your reading, here are the ten titles in the survey, ranked from most lied about to least lied about. How many of these do you SAY you’ve read?

1. 1984 - George Orwell (42%)
2. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (31%)
3. Ulysses - James Joyce (25%)
4. The Bible (24%)
5. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (16%)
6. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking (15%)
7. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (14%)
8. In Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust (9%)
9. Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama (6%)
10. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins (6%)

Forty-two per cent of the surveyed readers admitted they said they had read “1984" when in fact they had not. One third lied about “War and Peace” down to only six per cent who lied about “The Selfish Gene.” Maybe the selfish gene controls an honesty switch in the cerebral cortex. Maybe the book is hard to lie about because scientific-minded readers know when you’re faking it.

The survey was conducted online in January and February, and there were 1342 responses. A spokesman for Britain’s National Literacy Trust concluded that people avoid the truth sometimes in order to seem more intelligent to potential mates.

“Research that we have done suggests that the reason people lied was to make themselves appear more sexually attractive," he said. "People like to be seen to be readers. It makes them look good. They said they were prepared to lie about what they'd read to impress people, particularly when it came to potential partners."

Recently on Facebook, a friend of mine, a real friend, not just a Facebook friend, asked people to take a different quiz first devised by the BBC. She posted a list of 100 famous and popular books and asked her friends to indicate how many we’ve all read.

Her personal count of books consumed was a whopping 58 out of 100, a staggeringly high number. After that other survey, the one where people lied about what they’d read, it’s difficult to take her results at face value. But I do. She’s my friend.

She noted that many of her personal “greats” weren’t even on the list, which would of course have made her score even higher. The BBC’s list of 100 books includes “Pride & Prejudice,” and “The Lord of the Rings” as well as “Catch 22" “The Da Vinci Code” and “Hamlet.”

Other friends chalked scores ranging from a low of 32 up to a respectable 54. I was the friend who scored the unimpressive 32. Am I less well read, than everyone else (answer: yes) or more honest? It’s a difficult question to ask, and impossible to know for sure.

I will return to that list and try to figure out if I lied anywhere. Did I really read “Catch-22" or only see the movie? No, it was assigned in school, so I must have read it. On the other hand “The Wind in the Willows” was read TO me. Does that count?

Such surveys of course are fairly silly. But it’s fascinating to know what others like to read, or say they have read, or indeed have lied about reading.

Maybe once you told a potential mate you knew Tolstoy. She assumed you had read Tolstoy, maybe “War & Peace,” twice. All you meant was you knew Tolstoy, as in you’d heard of him somewhere. I hope the two of you are happy.


NOTES:

“Stuff” on lying about books

The BBC 100

And they’ve ALWAYS lied...