I dislike the monument to Vittorio Emanuel II in Rome | celebrity chefs | almonds | shopping malls | pre-prepared meals | "working lunches" | strong winds | bitter fruit | italian operas | noise | shopping for shoes | having a haircut | yoga | bracelets | boats | long skirts | Berlusconi | strong coffee | the toes in the subjects painted by Botticelli | the smell of disinfectants | pink flowers | squirrels | cemented front yards | gps | Tony Blair | Dogu figurines | women wearing leggings without a skirt on | bull terriers | Barcelona | chocolate with nuts | Wedgwood's Jasper White on Pale Blue Porcelain | Live chickens | People speaking on bluetooth headsets | old plays adapted to a contemporary setting | guitar jazz other than gypsy swing | Rothko paintings hanging in brightly lit rooms | putting the liner bag inside the garbage bin | celtic music | when there's wet cardboard on the sidewalk | Schoenberg

***

Asked R. for help with the dislike list. He said "that's easy, you're always ranting about something" and then proceeded to remind me of my pet hates.

Merimée has been lately on my mind ever since I compiled a little guide (self-published on Lulu.com and everything!) for our summer roadtrip in the south of France and realized how much of our sightseeing was provided by his conservation efforts as a Inspector of Monuments. This led me to find more about Merimée and his life which in turn made me want to draw a relationship map of his lovers, friends and acquaintances. I'm pretty sure it would cover a huge part of 19th century France's intellectuals. And through Merimée's biography I discovered Guglielmo Libri. Reading "The life and times of Guglielmo Libri (1802-1869) : scientist, patriot, scholar, journalist, and thief : a nineteenth-century story" is like paging through a bookish thriller, the sort where you end up hoping the bad guy will get away with it - even though he is a book defacer and manuscript robber. In any case, Merimée did side with Libri and that's why he ended up in prison. It's also why Sotheby's has this particular sketch to sell since otherwise, Merimée seems to have been a law abiding citizen.

"Just fine", she said while she unfolded the Times Literary Supplement which was also in the mailbox.

(and to compensate for the lack of the odd Sempé cover, I'll buy a couple of the Phaidon albums)

C: That's a good one.
R: Didn't she die of radiation poisoning?

To think I am supposedly the cynical european in this couple.

******

I've been thinking that this obsession with cooking and chefs has to be related with that endangered species: the housewife. There was a time you'd learn how to cook with your grandmother or great aunt; they'd teach you the little tricks for the perfect steamed rice or how to skin a garlic clove in 1/2 a second. And they probably didn't even attend school. Now, you trust that some man (in most cases) knows all about that arcane science of cooking. It's a bit like all those books about child rearing. Everybody has been doing it for ages and humanity isn't, on average, getting any cleverer or less screwed up. So it is with cooking. There's no mystery.

*****

Just as the Queen does, I moved my birthday to the following Saturday because of a sore throat acquired while visiting the fatherland. Yet, I couldn't miss going to the LRB's 30th anniversary party/book sale that coincided with my own birthday. Got meself the new Max Weber biography.

*****

Also at the LRB, I attended a talk by John Bainville and John Gray about Simenon. It was entertaining in the way that listening in on a conversation by literate people around a table is but they couldn't claim to be experts in any case. The highlight of the evening was when during Q&A a Drunken-Zizek-on-a-bad-personal-hygiene-day-lookalike asked if Simenon wore a mustache or a beard because if he had slept with 3000 women he HAD to sport a beard since that's what women prefer. A reminder: Zizek has a beard and so did his lookalike.

*****

We went on a adventure of epic proportions to Paris. Which means a family trip involving 3 people over 60 and a 59 year old. They all behaved really well, got along well and were very un-fussy and would have been happy to have been fed sweet crêpes all day.

Mom in a Toulouse-Lautrec background at the Musée d'Orsay

*****

I need to get a book on Caillebotte. I don't think I was aware of the existence of this painting at the Orsay and, on entering the gallery, I was attracted to it as if it were a claudia-magnet.

*****

I finally read "The Maltese Falcon". I was shocked: Spade is described as having pale brown hair. Hammett didn't have the prescience to imagine that Bogey would be the perfect Spade. All tough guys are dark skinned and dark haired. Everybody knows that.

*****

Sociologist David Riesman's 50's book "The Lonely Crowd" summarized in one sentence: "Most people don't know what they want from life until their neighbor gets it".

By the end of the nineteenth century, Florence was a key destination for cultured travellers from Europe and America. Writers such as Wilde, Rilke, and Mann, painters such as Degas and Klee, and, not least, the young art historian Aby Warburg and his wife, Mary, flocked to Florence to escape the encroachments of modern life at home and to revel in the city's rich artistic and cultural past. This beguiling book fuses narrative and ideas to consider how the encounter between modernism and Renaissance culture was experienced by both visitors to Florence and its inhabitants. Based on Aby Warburg's letters, diaries, and notebooks, on Italian and German archives and on conversations with E. H. Gombrich (director of the famous Institute Aby Warburg later founded), the book is an intimate guide to life in Florence and the theatres, restaurants, galleries and salons frequented by visiting cultural exiles. At the same time, the book paints an evocative picture of a city at the cusp of the modern age, adjusting to electricity and the motor car on one hand and to social unrest and a clash of cultures on the other. -- publisher's blurb

****

I want to sing the non-scholarly-bookish-art-amateur praise of Bernd Roeck's "Florence 1900" published by Yale UP. In fact, I liked it so much that I hate myself for already having finished reading it. And for not knowing enough German to read his other books.

It's highly scholarly and yet very readable. Permeated with valuable information - and interesting tidbits - you'll never find anywhere else because Roeck read the unpublished sources (including Aby Warburg's personal papers and a magazine 'Il Marzocco" that I'd kill to get my hands on - preferably translated and annotated). If there's a book that can vividly portray the zeitgeist of any particular era or place this is it.

*******

Meanwhile, I need to keep the links to all the interesting things (so many of them in the public domain!) I've learned via Roeck somewhere, so bear with me.

Leo S. Olschki, Florentine collector and bookseller of Renaissance books and prints.
Found a catalog of his ("Choix de livres anciens rares et curieux en vente à la librairie ancienne Leo S. Olschki (1907)" on archive.org from where this pre-darwinian drawing was taken from.

Charles Godfrey Leland's Etruscan Roman remains in popular tradition; (1892) should be entertaining since the information source for the work of this amateur ethnologist were italian "witches" who accepted money in return for the confirmation that secret worshiping of ancient gods and etruscan magic was still in use in Tuscany in modern times...

Jacob Burckhardt's "The Cicerone: An Art Guide to Painting in Italy. For the Use of Travellers and Students (1879)" is online! Burckhardt was seemingly against the "documenting" of history so it ends up being an entertaining collection of informed opinions. And it was the book everybody at that time used an arts oriented travel guide. Of it Nietzsche enthusiastically said: "It seems to me that one should wake up and fall asleep reading Burckhardt's Cicerone: there are few books that can so stimulate phantasy and prepare one for the conception of the artistic.

The aesthetic sensibilities of an age as seen through the writings about Botticelli in Anatole France's "Le Lys Rouge": "Darling, do you not know it is the custom of Florence to celebrate spring on the first day of May every year? Then you did not understand the meaning of Botticelli's picture consecrated to the Festival of Flowers. Formerly, darling, on the first day of May the entire city gave itself up to joy. Young girls, crowned with sweetbrier and other flowers, made a long cortege through the Corso, under arches, and sang choruses on the new grass. We shall do as they did. We shall dance in the garden."

In Zola's "Rome": "Narcisse for his part had not raised his eyes to the overpowering splendour of the ceiling. Wrapt in ecstasy, he did not allow his gaze to stray from one of the three frescoes of Botticelli. "Ah! Botticelli," he at last murmured; "in him you have the elegance and the grace of the mysterious; a profound feeling of sadness even in the midst of voluptuousness, a divination of the whole modern soul, with the most troublous charm that ever attended artist's work."

People in the quattrocento preferred Gozzoli to Castagno. "the affably conciliatory was preferred to the emotionally impressive" as Aby Warburg put it.

Isolde Kurz's Die Humanisten. Lost manuscripts and monks à la Umberto Eco.

Vernon Lee's "Renaissance fancies and studies (1896)".

Bernard Berenson's essays and catalogues. "Among US collectors of the early 1900s, Berenson was regarded as the pre-eminent authority on Renaissance art. His verdict of authenticity increased a painting's value. While his approach remained controversial among European art historians and connaisseurs, he played a pivotal role as an advisor to several important American art collectors, such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, who needed help in navigating the complex and treacherous market of newly fashionable Renaissance art. In this respect Berenson's influence was enormous, while his 5% commission made him a wealthy man." -- from wikipedia

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.

******

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.

Duh.

*****

11 Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
12 Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?
13 But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.
14 Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
15 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable.
16 And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?

*****

Which makes me think that if these were the people closest to him and were supposed to spread his word they can't have done that a good a job, can they?

I understand parables are a helpful rhetoric device but you have to know your audience better than that.

*****

(comparing passports - forgot to bring reading material for the flight)

The Portuguese Passports
First page has an illustration of a scene from a 500 year old poem glorifying the feats of the Portuguese explorers. The illustration features naked ladies which means that immigration officers in sexually repressed countries usually say "Hmmm, I'll have to take a closer look at this in my office before stamping it. I'll be right back." The naked ladies are a Goddess and her companions who, by swimming alongside it, save a Portuguese ship from the enemy. As in, "Christ! We're lucky the tide turned!". So much for confidence on their sea faring skills.

The American Passport
It's the pocket version of those unbearable motivational posters + cowboy movies cliche imagery. Whenever an american is abroad and is feeling overwhelmed by, say, the portuguese pessimism or general european cynicism, he/she can get a boost in their can-do attitude by opening the passport in a random page and reading some of the inspirational quotes printed above old wild west drawings. You know, stuff like "It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win" next to a cactus in a desert.

*****

C: The latest news is that 28 notable economists say that all the big public investment projects should be re-evaluated - as in stopped. You know, the high speed train connecting us to Spain and the rest of Europe, the new and hopefully bigger airport, more highways...
R: Uh? Yeah, isolation will solve all your problems.

******

Trying to get to the check in area in Lisbon Airport. For some unknown reason, you have to cross a security barrier to get to it.
C: Hmm. Check-in counters are in there right?
Security: Yes. You need your ticket in order to get through.
C: My what?
Security: You know, proof you're on a flight today.
C: Well, I won't get that until I check in.
Security: But when you booked it you must have been given a ticket.
C: It's an electronic ticket.
Security: Yes, where's your print out of it?
C: It's an electronic ticket. The point is to not have to print out anything. I show up at the check-in counter, hand them my ID and they give me my boarding pass.
(meanwhile a hundred portuguese people better informed about this silliness and with no love for trees go by me waving around their sheets of paper and being let in)
C (sorry she was too lazy to check in online): Look, I have a flight in 1.5 hours and I need to check in.
Security (condescending): Oh well, ok, but I shouldn't let you. Next time, print your electronic ticket.
C (I'll be damned if I ever check in here ever again): Uh...sure.

*****
First installment here.

*************

...you are an editor at faber & faber and you have a lot of really great reviews and endorsements by significant publications and authors (like the TLS and Pritchett) on this volume of Flannery O'Connor's Short Stories. Do you REALLY want to print an endorsement by Dean Koontz on a prominent position in the cover? Because if you did this when you were sober and in full control of your mental capacities, I'll probably avoid editions of your books in the future. Please don't sell out like that again.

Can't wait to read what Danielle Steel has to say about the new Ishiguro. Not.

Funeral Games, Joe Orton