I must begin by telling you what type of book 'Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay' by Benjamin Taylor is. It is not any of the things I have shelvI must begin by telling you what type of book 'Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay' by Benjamin Taylor is. It is not any of the things I have shelved it as, history, memoir, travel, though it contains elements of all of those things. It is old fashioned in many ways, and I think it is no coincidence that the one author Mr. Taylor dwells most lovingly on is the English writer Norman Douglas who is now forgotten except for the disapproval his personal life now attracts (please see my footnote *1 below). It reminds me of many 'travel/memoirs' I read as a teenager in the early 1970s. Most were published in the early 1960s or even 1950s but they were on the shelves of my local library and though I can remember many stories from them I can recall no titles or authors. There is only one such book that I can recall in detail 'The Stones of Florence' (1958) by Mary McCarthy and it will stand in for all those forgotten titles as a template of what 'Naples Declared' is.
'The Stones of Florence' by Mary McCarthy was a romp through five centuries of Florentine history and art seen through the personal perspective of the author's time living in and exploring the city. It was, like many of these types of books back then, a 'travel' book but not a book to aide a traveller. None of these books were meant to be 'guide books', the very idea of them being thought equivalent to a 'guidebook' would have appalled their authors. These books were an idiosyncratic boulebais of information designed to enlighten and entertain those who knew their classics, history and art but were unable to 'travel' the way authors of these books did. It was vicarious enjoyment of an ideal lifestyle they offered to their stuck at home readers.
That, in essence is what 'Naples Declared' is. The insertion of photographs of buildings, places and art works, is reminiscent of the lavishly illustrated edition of the 'Stones of Florence' in my father's library but in Taylor's book they are tiny and often frustrating. Nowadays that doesn't matter so much because it is so easy, when a place is mentioned like, for example, the Charterhouse of San Martino, to consult the internet and find wonderful photographs of the monks burial ground and the marble skulls that decorate their enclosure.
If Mr. Taylor's book has a failing it is that he keeps himself too much in reserve. We need more of his own input, feelings, observations and prejudices. Also the books relative brevity and scantity supporting references have allowed some inaccuracies to creep in. The Fritz Krupp scandal rose not so much from Krupp's activities in Capri but because he imported several Caprisian youths to Berlin were he had the cooperative management of the luxious Aldon Hotel 'employ' them so they would be on hand whenever he could escapr from Essen. As for Jacques d'Adelsward-Fersen he was a mediocre writer but why Mr. Taylor describes his 'boyfriend' Nino Caeserini as 'out-for-the-main-chance' is hard to understand because he was actually very loyal and supportive.
I enjoyed 'Naples Declared' for what it was and I would have liked more of it.
*1 Least anyone imagine I would find in his paedophiliac relationships justifications for such behavior now let me say I don't but retrospective condemnation without context or understanding pointless. To understand Douglas read 'Unspeakable: A Life Beyond Sexual Morality' by Rachel Hope Cleves (2020) or the earlier 'Norman Douglas: A Biography' by Mark Holloway....more
"The late Lionel Fleming, in his amusing 1965 memoir Head or Harp, was in like vein when describing his new job as CA bit of information on this book:
"The late Lionel Fleming, in his amusing 1965 memoir Head or Harp, was in like vein when describing his new job as Cork correspondent of The Irish Times. He found it strategically useful to identify himself as Bill rather than Lionel when he set about exploring a “world of which my parents and relatives cared to know nothing”, where apart from a few big businesses and solicitors, “the ‘superior’ Protestant element did not really matter very much at all”....more
As Goodreads says nothing about this novel I provide the synopsis from Google Books:
"The Estancia is the story of a young boy growing up in the upper As Goodreads says nothing about this novel I provide the synopsis from Google Books:
"The Estancia is the story of a young boy growing up in the upper classes of the Argentine in the 1950s, set against the turbulent backdrop of Peronist rule. Revealing a now vanished society of the families of the great houses of Buenos Aires, their fin-de-siècle lifestyle, and the estancias which fed them, it is an autobiographical novel based on the author's life.
"Narrated through the voice of Martín, a precocious. ten-year-old boy, it explores his intense and suffocating upbringing. After a childhood trapped and seduced in a domineering household of multiple mothers and an emotionally absent father, Martin believes he has finally escaped when taken on a cruise to Europe by his elderly great aunt. However, despite being freed from the steamy bathroom rituals of his family, the past continues to confront him and a secret surrounding his birth is revealed.
"Accompanying him on his journey of self-discovery, this vividly described panorama of the old New World explores the demise of high society and the incarceration of anyone showing disrespect for the government. Interspersed with flashbacks of his ancestor Ramos Mejia, who lived among the Pampa Indians and settled in the first estancia lands of the region, it is a poignant memoir of a truly unique life."
I also provide the opening paragraph from the review by Jonathan Keates in the Literary Review in November 2018:
"This book is a nonesuch, a hybrid, the literary equivalent of ‘neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring’, and it’s all the better for that. We can engage with Martín Cullen’s The Estancia as a straightforward childhood memoir or as the kind of fiction which harnesses a traditional genre to produce a dreamlike elaboration on a more prosaic original. Although many of its episodes, characters and interchanges may remind us of other writers – the author is evidently a Proustian by conviction, but there’s also a pronounced flavour of Lampedusa’s The Leopard in Cullen’s strategic deployment of detail – the work achieves its own stylistic individuality in creating an echo chamber for a vanished world."
This novel has just stormed to the top of my to buy list - I hope it is at least on your TBR list....more
"Set in Romania, Austria and Germany between the last century's world wars, this is a novel of great beauty about men and the histories that define th"Set in Romania, Austria and Germany between the last century's world wars, this is a novel of great beauty about men and the histories that define them.
"In his 'memoirs' our narrator shows us glimpses of himself at different times. These fragments of memory tell the story of his life - his childhood hunting in the wild Bukovina; his youth in Bucharest; his friends and lovers in Vienna; his old age in Rome. But at the same time another, larger story emerges from the page. For as Europe lumbers inevitably towards war, our narrator explores the complex, frightening and ancient forces that shape our destiny and our history." From the back cover of the 1981 Picador paperback edition of this novel.
Some praise which the book received on publication:
'A minor masterpiece...It established the author as a successor to such writers as Schnitzler and Musil in a Central European tradition of civilised, ironic reflection.' The Times
'An extraordinary blend of bitter self-denigration and sweet recollection.' The New York Times
'A devastatingly beautiful chronicle of personal metamorphosis...daring and revelatory.' Chicago Sun Times
'Brilliant, ironic, deeply disturbing.' Newsweek
'Remarkable' The Australian
I have quoted all of the preceding because this is a book I love and I want others to love but I cannot imagine what I can say except to pile up superlatives, which I am happy to do, but I hope what I have quoted from more learned and worthy sources will be more effective. This is one of those books you must read but it is not a book everyone will love. Perhaps you need to be under the sway of the great diaspora of Mittel European writers to really fall in love with it. If the names Chernowitz and Bukovina immediately lead you to other novels then you will know what I mean.
I will conclude by saying how wonderful it is to see the many five star reviews this novel has received from Greek readers. Although I cannot read them it is good to be reminded that really great literature speaks to everyone no matter time nor place. We English language readers would do well to remember this....more
I would love to read this book if only for the chapter 'John Davis' a pseudonym for Angus Wilson who is describing the real life events behind his yetI would love to read this book if only for the chapter 'John Davis' a pseudonym for Angus Wilson who is describing the real life events behind his yet to be written novel Sandel....more
An odd little novel, but one dense in meanings most of which I am sure I have missed or not understood. The novel deals in part with the time the authAn odd little novel, but one dense in meanings most of which I am sure I have missed or not understood. The novel deals in part with the time the author spent at Moscow's Gorky institute at the time Pasternak was forced to reject the Nobel award and how the split between Albania's dictator Hoxha and the Soviet Union's Khrushchev over de-stalinization led to his exile from Moscow (territory covered in his previous novel 'The Death of the Eastern Gods') but deals also with a phone call between Pasternak and Stalin about Osip Mandelstam of which there are at least 13 different version that Kadare dissects.
But I think the novel is more an exegesis on the role of the writer in dictatorial society (there are also references to Pushkin and emperor Nicholas I and Tolstoy and Nicholas II and ultimately Kadare's role? responsibility? guilt? as the favoured literary star of Hoxha's Albania. I think Kadare may be exorcising his own ghosts (he recounts his own first telephone conversation with Hoxha) and feelings of culpability? I am not sure. Nor would I dare to stand in any form of judgement over Kadare, never mind Pasternak, for 'failings' in situations I have never faced, even though I don't really believe in him I still believe in 'There but for the grace of god go I'.
But I may be entirely wrong - this novel is richly complicated in the meaning of its language and reading it in English I can't help wondering how much I miss - there is a whole part that involves what Kadare said in his mediocre Russian to a colleague speaks to him at times in 18th century and then 16th century Albanian. Without criticising the translator (on what basis can I!) it is hard not to think that subtleties are being lost. This is particularly true when Kadare discusses translation Pushkin 'Monument' in which in the first line
"I raised a monument to myself not made by hand."
is, he thinks clumsy because the word 'nyerukotvorniy' meaning not made by hand is untranslatable but Kadare fails to explain that it is the Russian word for the Greek orthodox idea of Acheiropoieta icons not made by human hands but which are miraculously created. The problem of why this meaning is ignored is complicated because it is part of conversation in Moscow in 1961 when religious subtleties of orthodox religious thought were possibly unknown to Kadare as someone from a Muslim heritage and in it might be that the religious dimensions of Pushkin's allegories weren't discussed. But it is odd that when reporting the conversation in the present he doesn't explain things, or maybe he doesn't think they need to be explained.
All of the above may mean nothing, maybe it is just a novel about a phone call Stalin made to Pasternak, but I don't think so. The dissection of the 13 versions of the phone call are, for me, the least engaging part of the work. To me the elliptical look at writers and rulers and where the power lies is the most interesting part - particularly the sidelight on Gorky and Lenin and then Stalin and how that may or may not throw light on Mandelstam and Stalin.
It is a book of many levels but is ultimately too opaque for my taste....more
My problems with this book began as soon as I realised that it wasn't fiction and that there was a famous/notorious 19th century French explorer/archeMy problems with this book began as soon as I realised that it wasn't fiction and that there was a famous/notorious 19th century French explorer/archeologist/grave robber named Charles Wiener, that there is a Musee du Quai Branly which contains items collected by Wiener who also wrote an account of his travels in Peru and Bolivia. Wiener is now remembered for 'not' discovering Machu Picchu but providing the map and information which probably helped the American Hiram Bingham to 'discover' the site. But this isn't a book about Charles Wiener but the author, who may or may not be descended from Charles Wiener, and her complicated emotional, family, sexual, political and racial issues and how they are, or maybe not, tied to her putative great great grandfather and imperialist/racist/eugenicist policies of 19th century Europe.
So what do I make of clear evidence that the author has elided (at its politest) or possibly lied or distorted (at the most honest) the facts about Charles Wiener's life? In the light of this how do I respond to what she tells of her and her family's histories as well as about those of her husband and female lover? Is it all true?
I realise that even asking these questions probably reflect my age - but I grew up separating fact and fiction - that fiction was often based on the author's life experience was a given - but since the advent of TV personality book clubs in the 1990s and their ability to move large numbers of books, particularly those that could be presented as 'true' - there has been an increasing tendency to write memoir fiction. But I ask again how do I respond to it? A novel about someone's complicated family history and current relationships can be judged as good or bad as literature or story telling. But 'memoir' removes the story from the realm of criticism because it is 'true'. If I find Ms. Wiener story of her polyamorous 'family' unbelievable or boring how can I say that without betraying my own emotional/cultural heritage from my schoolboy reading of Yeats who said:
"I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
Although less blatant than J.T. LeRoy the deceit of Ms Wiener, and other writers, is the same. They are wrapping their 'literature' in a cloak of 'truth' which readers are only allowed to accept.
Having said this I can't resist pointing out that Ms. Wiener includes information of the various human zoos that were popular well into the mid twentieth century with a pedantic earnestness that suggests that all her readers will be ignorant of this phenomena as she seems to have been.
Also, although Ms. Wiener spends a great deal of time on her 'indian' features as opposed to the 'white' ones of other Peruvians and Spaniards she lives amongst, including her girlfriend, it is odd that she never discusses that at the US border, or within the USA, everyone with 'Hispanic' background or name is considered non white and a marriage with any non hispanic white person interracial. But then Ms. Wiener has a curiously 'Eurocentric' view of racism, colonialism and empire. Her paradigm doesn't recognise Ottoman or Japanese colonialism never mind the complex prejudices between other countries such as China and Vietnam or Cambodia and Thailand.
Finally she attributes to Charles Wiener and 19th century Eugenicists the invention of racial categories such as cuarteron and requinteron when in fact they are French translations of hispanic terms invented and used throughout the Spanish and Portuguese American empires for 'Casta' categorization of differing degrees of 'mixed' blood - though in fact in the time of the Spanish and Portuguese empires the categories had really no legal standing or use but was most often a term for a type of painting (I am grossly simplifying a very complex subject but far less than Ms. Wiener does by pretending it doesn't exist).
I have given the book one star but I have shelved it as unable-to-rate because that is what I truly think because I do not think it is an honest book....more
This is an absolutely enchanting book of short stories from Jim Flannigan one of those prominent counter cultural figures from the 1960's who never paThis is an absolutely enchanting book of short stories from Jim Flannigan one of those prominent counter cultural figures from the 1960's who never parlayed their activism in radical cause into mainstream success. In other words he never sold out (the tiny bit of biographical information I have found on the internet follows my review.
'Don the Burp' is only sixty five pages in my edition and all the stories are very short and are described thus by the author:
'These are stories are told in the sitting-over-a-few-beers tradition I grew up with. They are spoken, tape recorded, transcribed and edited. Most names have been changed. While all the important, sometimes even preposterous, details are true...All occur in Cleveland, Ohio, mis-1960's'
The result is a work minimalist genius in conjuring up the Cleveland of his childhood and youth and he does with a superb touch that puts the sprawling evocations of pre 1967 riot Detroit by Jeffrey Eugenides in 'Middlesex' into the category of 'tried' (although to be fair Eugenides was not describing lived experience in his novel). These very short, short stories reminded me of the work of Damon Runyon or Guy de Maupassant. I was about to start using words like pointallists but decided I couldn't be sure what I meant by it in literary terms. But these spare evocations of well, the USA, before the 1960s changed everything but more importantly before the 1970s buried and then commodified, cashed in on and corrupted or debased every shred of optimism and desire for change the 60's held dear.
All of which is probably too portentous for these lovely, powerful, funny and moving stories. Unfortunately it is a book that is only available second hand at incredibly high prices (well over £150+ is not unusual which is a lot for a paperback of less than seventy pages. Unfortunately it is not on sites such as the Internet Archive (at least not as of April 2024 - I've checked) so the only way to read it is to buy or borrow a copy. All I can say is that it is possible, though it takes luck, to find reasonably priced copies on obscure sites, that is how I got my copy, and I am so glad I did, it is definitely one of my favourite books and happiest purchases of 2024.
A real little work of art.
Biographical information from:
1. Digital Voices from the Downtown Scene (below):
"Raymond Dobbins (b. 1947, Cleveland), a playwright and videographer, has been a central presence in New York’s downtown / queer / underground theater scene. He was also involved in the anti-Vietnam war, labor movement, and gay liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Dobbins was a founding member of the film collective Queer Blue Light/Gay Liberation Video and wrote scripts for the Bloolips, the Hot Peaches and the Jazz Passengers. He also authored three pieces of now iconic underground gay literature, Don the Burp and Other Stories (under the pseudonym Jim Flannigan) (1980), Minette: Recollections of a Part Time Lady (1979), and Stonewall Romances: A Tenth Anniversary Celebration (1979), a photo novella about the Stonewall uprising."
and
2. Yiddishcup:
"Ray Dobbins (a.k.a. Jim Flannigan), the author of Don the Burp and Other Stories, was an ex-Clevelander in New York, who lived in the East Village near a Village Voice critic. Dobbins showed Harvey Pekar’s early comic books to critic Robert Christgau and his wife, Carola Dibbell, and she wrote up Harvey for the Voice, Dec. 31, 1979..."
These are the only substantial bits of biographical information I have found on the internet. The 'Digital Voices from Downtown' also has a recording of Jim Flannigan talking about his participation in the Stonewall Riots. The Yiddishcup mention is within a much larger piece on the comic book artist Harvey Peckar....more
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