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July 12, 2009
There must be a name for those perception errors in which we incur when, after finding out about something previously unknown, that same something seems to pop out everywhere afterward.
I had never seen people surfing on a river before the last two weeks (in Munich, in the English garden and it did indeed look like a lot of fun) and suddenly the NYT Travel section has a piece about it and how it all started in Germany and there seem to be more and more "standing waves" surfing in land locked places.
Likewise, just a couple of weeks ago I was strolling the streets of Trieste and admiring the antique bookshop previously owned by Umberto Saba. I had even compiled a little personal cultural guide to the city and had it printed on lulu.com - very nerdy I know - which included some of Saba's poetry among the literature references. And now I find the TLS has a piece on him and on his upcoming book, the first translation into english of his work.
*****
Great finds:
Two Maigret novels in a bouquiniste in Uzés, Provence for 1 euro each. "Maigret hésite" and "Maigret et l'homme tout seul". This last one with a lame denouement but I have to admit I read them mostly for the food. Somebody needs to compile a book with the menus of food and drink Maigret goes through each adventure. My favorite bits are when Maigret gets caught up in work and calls home to say he's not coming to dinner. He invariable asks his wife what was she cooking and invariably gets sad he'll miss that meal.
"Dans son esprit, tandis qu'il dégustait l'andouillete juteuse et croustillante, accompagnée de pommes frites qui ne sentaient pas le graillon..."
"Ils en étaient au dessert. Ils avaient bu, avec les rougets grillés, un Pouilly fumé dont le parfum flottait encore autour d'eux."
"Trieste: Un'identitá di frontiera" by Angelo Ara and Claudio Magris from the nice bookshop at Castelo Miramare. My favourite type of non-fiction literature. What makes a regional or national character, the culture of a place and its people dissected preferably by a self-obsessed native. Or two.
Vies Imaginaires, Marcel Schwob. Bought at the excellent bookshop Goulard in Aix. I own a portuguese translation but it's somewhere in my storage boxes and there's nothing like the real thing.
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The New Yorker has been disappointing lately. Hardly find anything I want to read these days. Too much Malcolm Gladwell type pop sociology based on anecdotes; too much profiling of romance writers and other celebrities of dubious interest and movie reviews I don't care for. The tipping point - aha, a pun - was Gladwell's review of Chris Anderson's Free. I was led to believe that book was a pointless exercise in platitudes and in which the author didn't even bother to reference his sources properly transcribing chunks of wikipedia articles and all. If that's New Yorker worthy...
But not all is lost. My Lapham Quarterly arrived. And it's the most wonderful thing ever. Add to it the TLS and either the LRB or NYRB and I'll be damned if I renew my New Yorker subscription.
Posted by claudia