29 December 2011

The Pursuit of Italy

British historian David Gilmour’s latest book, The Pursuit of Italy: A History of A Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples is simply the best one-volume history of Italy, as well as a deeply entertaining argument against the idea of nationhood on that storied peninsula.

Books like this one usually are found on the back pages of university press catalogs, languishing in their stolid scholarship, published for experts, read only by experts. The fact that The Pursuit of Italy is published in Britain by Penguin and here by Farrar, Straus & Giroux speaks for its engaging readability and usefulness, and of course its potential saleability.

Italy is one of the top three most-visited European countries, for all the well-known reasons. Those who wonder why Italy is so contradictory, so multi-layered and difficult to understand, will love this book for the way it un-parses a convoluted story.

Beginning with the ancient Romans and continuing through last year, Sir David walks his readers through Italian history: debunking, demystifying, yet always in awe of the local magic.

Gilmour argues that Italy was founded on deception, patriotic myths and military aggression, and never truly unified – not deep down, not permanently.

When the Kingdom of Italy was formally proclaimed in March, 1860, suddenly everyone, north and south, became subjects of Piedmont, a small region in the north between Milan and Venice. Same monarch, Victor Emmanuel II, same capital (Turin), and the same Piedmont constitution for everyone. New name, however.

In his famous Italian novel The Leopard author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa notes the various plebiscites establishing Piedmont’s rule in Sicily were often impossibly unanimous Yes votes due to corruption and double dealing by the new authorities. Any nation begun on such obvious and dispiriting lies will never have much enthusiasm for the trappings of democracy. The southerners felt at the outset they were a conquered people, not equals in the new state.

Gilmour views the “real Italy” as “the one trampled on by the Risorgimento” (the nationalist uprising that created the country in the 1860s). He calls that movement a “drastic and insensitive imposition,” one that “tried to make its inhabitants less Italian and more like other peoples, to turn them into conquerors and colonialists.”

“United Italy never became the nation its founders had hoped for,” he writes. “A single region – either Tuscany or the Veneto – would rival every other country in the world in the quality of its art and the civilization of its past. But the parts have not added up to a coherent or identifiable whole... it is a disappointment... ‘a country that has never been as good as the sum of all her people.’”

The Pursuit of Italy is grounded in fact and an underlying love for the people who “have created much of the world’s greatest art, architecture and music, and have produced one of its finest cuisines, some of its most beautiful landscapes and many of its most stylish manufactures.”

Gilmour has been interviewed in Italy, and discussed in journals and newspapers. However, no Italian publisher to date has produced Gilmour’s book in Italian.

Modern Italians fear what some far right parties in Italy are pushing – racism, secession, hatred of immigrants. It seems to me the fear of falling back into fascism informs negative comments on Gilmour’s book.

Most Italians have not read this book, but they don’t like it much, anyway.


NOTES

Special thanks to sales representative Gigi Reinheimer for thinking of me when she comped this book last fall.

The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmour. Farrar, Straus and Giroux hard cover $32.50. ISBN 9780374283162. E Book $16.99 available for instant download from your local independent bookstore. SKU: rDQbi3sYBVIC.

The quote  ‘a country that has never been as good as the sum of all her people’ comes from Luigi Barzini, author of The Italians, a book I read many years ago. It is one of the liveliest dissections of the Italian spirit ever written.

New York Times Book Review on The Pursuit of Italy...


The following links are in Italian; Google can translate the text for you.

Italians on David Gilmour ... Italian interview with the author...  Corriere della Sera...
Saturno: inserto culturale de Il Fatto Quotidiano...

22 December 2011

Another Holiday, Whatever You Call It Mr Cranky Pants

 It is my task this morning to blend with the red and green: the red plaid socks and the green cookies.

Six years ago, on December 25, I wrote:

A friend of mine pointed out the nicest thing about the Christmas frenzy is that people are thinking about other people, and what gifts to give them.

The pushing and the shoving, the wrapping rush followed by the post office rush followed by the rush to get something for someone who sent you something but you didn't have something ready to give that someone...

We're doing all of this for our fellow humans, and, perhaps, to celebrate a birth.

I’ve written many things over the years, this time of year, but this is my favorite, from eleven years ago. Eleven years ago!

This is the season of wonder. Young children feel it immediately. Adults must be reminded.

Sunset in Mendocino was scorchingly magnificent. The sky lit up interior walls as if the ocean was on fire.

In the bookstore we sounded the Sunset Alert, used only when exceptional winter displays are in danger of being missed. A few moments later thirty people were standing in clusters on the sidewalk, faces turned west, watching the sky bleed in technicolor. Coruscating blues and purples and oranges reflected off their sunglasses.

We gave the sunset our total attention. It was surprisingly quiet.

Scientists think spectacular sunsets are a function of increased air pollution, not angels. Whatever. When the universe calls out for attention that spectacularly, we watch.

The ancient Pacific Ocean ends a few feet from where I work all day. It washes up on the Mendocino cliffs. We hear, see and smell it, but no longer take notice of it unless we're surfing, fishing, or trying out a new pair of binoculars.

Sometimes I reflect that I live on a track not much wider than the one zoo animals lay down in their endless circuit between sleep and food. I drive home, to work, and back again, with little change year 'round.

On my five minute commute I pass a pond filled seasonally with wild geese, a blue heron, egrets, ducks, the occasional chicken, and a grazing cow or two. At Russian Gulch I crane to the right for a quick glimpse of the ocean.

As I turn in to Mendocino I have a moment to see if the tide is low, the ocean rough, the sky foggy or clear. On Main Street I smell the iodine from freshly stranded kelp if there's been a storm, and most days something delicious roasting over at the Moose Café.

For months at a time I have neglected to walk along the nearby headlands or climb down to one of the sandy beaches. I resolve to walk the headlands barefoot, more than once. I pledge to make time to chat with anyone, any time. I will watch the sun set.

I know a long-time saleswoman -- one of many -- whose job is driving to appointments all over northern California flogging books, greeting cards and calendars to retail stores. Each December she bakes small breads for every one of her buyers. This year her breads came in cranberry, pumpkin and lemon flavors.

Joselyn walks into my study, sleepy from a nap, chewing on some roasted peanuts. "If we're not careful, we'll eat all the bad things," she says, handing me some nuts. Then she laughs.

That’s what I wrote back then. This is what I’m writing now: The holidays can get old, if you let them. Mr Cranky Pants gets tired of the music, the colors, the insistent begging of monotheistic bell ringers.

But at the same time Mr Cranky Pants is happy to be alive, to be sharing, to be able to remember good times and look forward to more. What else can one ask, in fact?

Happy Holidays to You and Yours, No Matter Why, When and How You May or May Not Celebrate Whatever it Is You Do or Don’t Celebrate.

15 December 2011

It’s Not All Bad News. No it’s Not. Yes it Is. No it’s Not!

My gift to you this season – good news from the wobbly world of books.

“McGraw-Hill Education Cuts 550 Jobs” No, that’s not the good news.

Amazon Unveils $6 Million Annual ‘Fund’ To Entice Authors and Publishers into its Prime Lending Library.”  No, that’s not good news either. The $6 million fund “designed to woo publishers and authors to participate in the Kindle store,” requires them to give Amazon “at least” a 90-day exclusive access in the Kindle store.

Those who receive gifts of the Amazon Kindle and other E-Readers may not yet realize that in some cases, e-books are more expensive than their printed equivalents, the Wall Street Journal recently concluded. That won’t be good news for them.

Oh, and this one: Amazon is paying you up to $15 to shop in local stores, but use your smart portable device to buy what you like online. Paying you to do this. Not good, and pretty damn offensive to retailers who pay rents and local taxes while helping customers find things. That’s definitely awful.

One reader asked, “What has Amazon done for your community? Do they pay taxes? Sales tax? Give you donations? Support your kid's school raffles/teams/theater productions? Bring interesting authors for you to meet? Create a cultural and social center for you to meet like-minded folks? Let you use the bathroom in an emergency? Employ your kid in school internship programs? Bookstores and other independent businesses do all the above and more. We are your neighbors, your friends, your teachers, your babysitters -- is Amazon? Support your family. Support your neighbors, your town and community. Unless all you want in the future is a glowing screen for a friend, that is.”

Roxanne Coady, a bookseller in Connecticut, made the modest proposal that Amazon pay brick and mortar booksellers a finder’s fee for purchases made online by customers who live near actual bookstores.

In a related development, the US Justice Department as well as the European Union are looking into how e-book prices are set. There are anti-trust implications, and lawsuits, and it’s a tussle among Apple, and publishers, and Amazon, over money. One reader commented, “ePublishers and traditional publishers are fighting over who gets the biggest slice of the pie. How authors make a living, what people read and the social importance of literature are secondary matters.” And that’s not good.

Another person added, “Independent(s) (bookstores) are the life raft, but some publishers don't believe that. Yet, when outlets -- or ‘showrooms’ as bookstores are called -- go, and readers can't find what they want, so will sales. The sales pie will shrink to become more like a muffin or moon pie.” That wouldn’t be good.

It’s not all bad news. Yes it is. No it isn’t. The American Booksellers Association, which works on behalf of independent bookstores nationwide, reported its members had sales increases in November, while book sales as a whole – read sales in chain stores and discount outlets – were significantly down. That is good news.

In recent months we’ve seen a number of small bookstores open, and only a few close down. And that certainly is good news.

Among the new store announcements: La Casa Azul will open next Spring in East Harlem, New York. The Maple Street Bookshop in New Orleans is opening two more branches there. Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame will open his new bookstore, Common Good Books, in April at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota. The I Love Books Bookstore has opened in Kingsport, Tennessee, and owner T. Glen Moody shared a wonderful observation with a local reporter:

“This is the bookstore of the 50s and 60s, but it is also the bookstore of the future. The time of the big box bookstore has come and gone. The new model is the small, local bookstore where customer service is key.”

To that thought I can only say – wow. It is a mixed bag out there. The world of books and publishing is not only wobbly, it’s in turmoil, world-wide. Do your part. Read more books. Even buy a few, if you can afford it.

08 December 2011

When a Bookstore Was Just a Bookstore, and a Phone Was Just a Phone

The eight Hawaiian islands rise magnificently from a warm blue sea 2,390 miles and five hours from the coast of California. They are beautiful, peaceful, isolated, struggling with problems both environmental and human, but also beautiful, peaceful, and isolated.

On this visit we packed at least 25 pounds of books, causing – by their weight alone – the islands to further slip under the pounding Pacific. We observed that many readers have converted to Kindles and E-Readers of various kinds, thus reducing the cost of checking overweight suitcases.

In action the Kindle from Amazon looked dull and gray, like my hair; the IPad bright and shiny, like my hair used to look. One user told me gray E-Ink is easier to read than a full-color screen, but I wouldn’t know, not having read from either for hours on end.

Too many island visitors look to Amazon as their first choice in books and electronic reading. This is a sad mistake, for a number of reasons, but in Hawaii it’s sort of understandable.

We visited Talk Story Bookstore, “The Western-Most Bookstore in the United States!” on Hanapepe Road in Hanapepe, Kauai (“Welcome to Hanapepe – Hawaii’s Biggest Little Town”). It’s run by Ed and Cynthia Justus. Ed was away, serving on the County Council. Cynthia was there. Periodically she called out to customers lost in the stacks: “Hello There! Aloha! We have lots of sections here, just ask if you need anything!” and we wandered about, looking for mindless spy novels to add to our collection of mindless spy novels.

At Talk Story authors are divided by sex: Female writers to the left, by the windows, male writers to the right. On their website Cynthia explains, “The reason why is every day someone comes in and asks, ‘Do you have a book by....’ and they go, ‘I don’t remember the author’s name, but he,’ or ‘I don’t remember the name of the author, but she,’ and now we’ve got 50 per cent, and we’re able to sell them a book.”

I had to wonder what they did with names like Georges Sand, or Dusty Rhodes, or Robin, Whitney, Storm, Piper, Montana, Kai, Avery – male? female? How would you know?

Talk Story is not only the westernmost bookstore on Kauai, it’s the only-est one, too. Over the years other small bookstores, new and used, have dropped away. This year the last remaining store, Borders Books & Music, disappeared into bankruptcy after 16 years on the island. This left a large empty building at the Kukui Grove Center in Lihue, and unemployed about 40 booksellers.

Talk Story bought up some Borders shelving, making their crowded store even more crammed. It was poetically perfect recycling, and we applaud them for their initiative and their obvious success. Talk Story is a community gathering spot and a venue for musical events that take place on the sidewalk just outside.

It was island superstores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble that drove out the smaller independents. When the giants decide to close, it’s not easy for smaller stores to come back.

We walked around in the warm, moist air, fantasizing about starting a new books bookstore on Kauai. We would fill it full of the latest and bestest and hire only the smartest booksellers.

And when people walked around our store taking smartphone photos of books they planned to buy later online, we’d sigh, and murmur Aloha! and dream of the days when a bookstore was just a bookstore, and a phone was just a phone.


NOTES:

Talk Story Bookstore