New Century Reading

Turn Right at Machu Picchu

Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams is a hugely fun read. The author, an office-bound editor at various outdoor and adventure magazines, takes it into his head to retrace the steps of Hiram Bingham, the man who (allegedly) discovered Machu Picchu in 1911. So he hires a highly experienced and well-regarded guide and gets to work.

I love books about adventure. I don't know why; I have no desire to, say, climb a mountain or trek through Amazonian jungles. But I sure love to read about others who do. This book is right up my alley, then, but here's a surprising thing: unlike other adventure books I've read, which I've enjoyed but had no desire to emulate, Adams' account made me wish I could hire a personal trainer, get in shape, and then retrace his entire trip. That's quite an accomplishment on Adams' part. 

A great part of that is Adams' humorous, often self-deprecating tales of his own lack of experience. When he meets with guide John Leivers, Leivers talks dismissively of "martini explorers"--people who want to be adventurous but can't cope without the luxuries of life. Adams thinks with trepidation that, compared to Bingham or Leivers, he himself is a white wine spritzer explorer. But he's determined to suck it up and complete the journey.

Leivers himself is an interesting character, with plenty to say about the way people live today. He laments the days when travelers were really travelers, wanting to immerse themselves in a trip to Machu Picchu rather than viewing it as just another item to tick off the bucket list: "'It used to take three weeks to get people in the right frame of mind, to un-brainwash them. Now it would take three months just to get people's heads straightened out. A lot of times, with women especially, these trips would change their lives. They'd go back to London, quit their jobs and sack their awful boyfriends. It's a real problem now--people don't know how to enjoy life. They want hedonism, short-term thrills.'"

And so the tale goes, with chapters of Adams' adventures interspersed with historical highlights and controversies over Bingham's work. You know what this book is like? It's like the movie Julie & Julia, except that the Julie parts are as entertaining, if not more so, than the Julia parts.

Along the way, Adams meets some kids who have never heard of the U.S., but ask him if it's true that Michael Jackson is dead: "I tried, and failed, to come up with the Spanish words to say, 'The King of Pop will live forever in our hearts.' So I just nodded yes and tried to look sad."

While poking gentle fun at the Peruvian way of getting things done--in which time means nothing, and truth is hazy--Adams still manages to display a huge amount of respect for the people and the sites. The photos that accompany the book are far too few; I pored over them again and again and wished there were more.

Maybe...if I just got in better shape...and saved some money...

 

Blood, Bones & Butter

Subtitle: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir of her life is a wonderful read, in spite of the fact that it's far from perfect. She changes tenses frequently from past to present, I think in an effort to get the reader more fully involved in specific scenes (but ends up distracting them instead); there are some embarrassing typos (when one wishes to purchase high-end jewelry, I believe they go to Tiffany's, not Tiffanny's); some sections drag a bit and are repetitive.

But so what?

From the opening pages, which were published in similar form in the New Yorker not long ago, Hamilton completely sucked me in with her tales of childhood, an eccentric and large family living in a burned-out silk mill in Pennsylvania, her mother from France, a "housewife" with a six-burner stove and a food fanatic:

"Our mother had her own double-tiered, potbellied couscoussier, and she made tagines with preserved lemons and cardamom pods, pigeon pies with sultanas and pine nuts, painstakingly brushing each fragile layer of phyllo dough with melted butter using a special brush made of white duck feathers, which would neither leave loose bristles in the dough nor perforate it."

Her father was a creator of theatrical scenery and a big proponent of elaborately themed parties, including a spring party with whole lambs roasted over an outdoor pit dug by hand, periodically swabbed with a mixture of olive oil, rosemary, garlic, and lemons.

You'd think from this that Hamilton logically went into the chef's life immediately, but no. A messy divorce and some teenage wild years threw her off-track, and when she did return to the world of cooking, it was only to earn a necessary paycheck. And in order to do that, she entered the world of catering.

Note: if you read this book, you will never, ever, ever again consume a canape at a large wedding reception. You've been warned.

In between catering work, she spends some summers cooking at a kid's camp, meeting Mark Bittman when he comes to pick his daughter up and wants to compliment the cook.In another impulsive decision (she makes a lot of those), she packs up and heads to Europe, where she bums around on a very limited budget before dropping in on people her family knew, and who gave her the opportunity to work behind the scenes at a small French bar and a tiny, rustic cafe on a lesser-known Greek island.

Eventually she became a chef at her own restaurant. Unlike so many star chefs, who begin at low levels in the kitchens of the great, Hamilton didn't work her way up the ranks; instead she acted on a whim when a restaurant space in her neighborhood became available, and decided she would do things her way, even if she didn't have the pedigree. The restaurant, Prune (a childhood nickname), was (is) a huge success, and from that point, Hamilton tells tales funny and touching about the difficulties of running a restaurant, meeting a man, getting married and having kids, and even why spending a month in Italy with your family-in-law every year can get old. Even the current locavore movement comes in for some tart commentary when faced with three weeks of limited choices in a small Italian town:

"In Leuca, there is nothing but eggplant. Local. Seasonal. Those are the words that turn everybody on these days. But twenty-one days of local eggplant season is torture.

"I think when people get all dreamy about local and seasonal, they are thinking of California, where you can get anything any time of year. But they are not referring to Santa Maria de Leuca, a small seaside town at the tip of the heel of the boot of Italy in the state of Puglia. And they are not imagining eating that way--local and seasonal--for twenty-one days straight. They know they can go get a platter of sushi at their local joint any night of the week. Maybe they are thinking of their week-long trip to Tuscany."

At times overly indulgent, at times maddening, Hamilton is never anything less that passionate about food, and this book made me long to hop a plane to New York and eat at her restaurant. The funny thing is, for all the imperfections, the best parts of the book really overrode the problematic parts for me, and I sailed along, not wanting it to end. Hamilton is all too human, and would perhaps roll her eyes at my thoughts on food and cooking, but by the end, I thought she'd be a great person to have a drink with.

 

Interview and giveaway!

Over on my other blog, I have an interview with Laurie Hertzel, author of the book News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist. Also on the other blog? A contest to win a signed copy of the book (and trust me, it's a great, fun read). Hop on over!

Love in a Time of Homeschooling

Continuing with this week's theme of "I don't usually read memoirs but...", I give you Laura Brodie's Love in a Time of Homeschooling. Again, I'd seen a review of this in the local newspaper and thought it sounded interesting. For the record, I've never homeschooled my kids and never will--not because I have anything against it, but truly? I'm the world's worst teacher. Be glad, be very glad, for the sake of your children, that I did not combine my English degree with a teaching certificate. I'm of the "Oh, for goodness sake, give it here and let me do it" school of teaching. Heck, I barely help my kids with homework for that very reason.

Anyway. Laura Brodie is the mother of three girls, the oldest of which marches to her own drummer and has trouble with school, leading Brodie to decide to do a year of homeschooling with her before sending her off to middle school. She thoroughly researches the idea and, with her daughter, comes up with a plan.

What makes this book an enjoyable read for even a non-homeschooler is the story of a mother and daughter spending a year in close quarters, and inevitably, not always abiding peacefully within the structure they created. Brodie is frank about what worked and what didn't, how many of her expectations were wrong, and what she learned about her daughter and about being a mother and, of course, being a homeschooler. I could completely relate to this piece of learning:

"Ah well--regret is a mother's perennial fate. There is always something that we should have done better, sooner, more lovingly."

It's a quick, interesting read. But part of me is troubled by putting her daughter's story out there when her daughter is still relatively young. Several times Brodie refers to the homeschooling year as "years ago," but really the homeschooling started in fall 2005--not all that long ago. It makes me, as a parent, feel a bit skeevy when reading personal details of a child's life, put out in this kind of national format, before the child is old enough to understand the scope and have some say.

That's not to say I don't sometimes tell tales about my kids on my blogs--I do. But for every anecdote I share, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds, of others that I don't, because I think it might embarrass them or subject them to teasing if their friends found out about it. I couldn't help but wonder if Brodie's daughter is going to undergo any teasing in high school this year because of her mother's book.

Maybe I'm just overthinking it. What do you think?

Marcus of Umbria

I don't generally read a lot of memoirs--just not my deal. Especially of the "oh woe is me my life is so very hard" type. Not that I don't believe them, they just start to sound the same to me after a while. But when I read a review of Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl about Love in my local newspaper, it intrigued me. It didn't sound all that "woe is me," nor did it sound like a cutesy dog-owner account.

So I got it from the library and devoured it in two days.

I guess you could say I liked it.

One note: the title is a little misleading. If you're expecting a book about a girl and her dog, this is not that book for the most part. Instead it's the author's journey from being bored in Manhattan to Italy, where she impulsively beds and then moves in with a handsome Italian gardener in a village of 200. Unsurprisingly, life in a small Italian village is not all she thought it would be. When she finds a neglected dog, she insists on taking it in, even though the locals view dogs as just another form of annoying animal and are shocked when she lets the dog live indoors with her.

"The villagers thought I was out of my mind. That dog, that girl and that dog. Dogs, in their opinions, were to be chained up or caged. They were creatures, like sheep and cows, that served a purpose for human beings: hunting partner, guard, truffle finder. They were not cuddly friends or substitutes for children; you were not to pour your savings into their comfort or purchase trinkets for them. They were beasts. Delle bestie."

What makes this book different from what you might expect is the the author's clear-eyed reporting about her adventures. She doesn't sugarcoat them, or infuse them with overly harsh or sentimental hindsight. She's not condescending about the people she lived with; she may not agree with how they live their lives, but she doesn't treat them like second-class idiots. She also doesn't puff herself up to a martyr-ish status, or if she does, she's clear about her own role in how she came to be that way. One of the things I liked best about the book is that she's clear from the beginning that the love affair with the Italian does not end in happily ever after. Instead of dragging you through a forced suspense, she allows you to watch how the story unfolds without any eye-rolling melodrama.

If I had one complaint, I would have asked for more of Marcus the dog. Yet the ending--and no, it doesn't play out like Marley and Me--left me with a big ol' lump in my throat and a deep sense of satisfaction. Whoever Justine van der Leun is, I'd love to sit down with her and shoot the breeze about life with dogs. 

Oh, and Italian gardeners.

Passenger to Teheran

During the 15/15/15 Project, I read Vita Sackville-West's beautiful and brief book, Twelve Days in Persia. I noted then that I wanted to read more of her travel writing, when I wasn't quite as rushed as I was at that point. The time had come: I checked out Passenger to Teheran from the library.

Note: I did not have the above copy. I had a lovely old hardcopy, with a print date of 1927. Talk about a trip down memory lane. Here's how the book was stamped:

Minneapolis Athenaeum? Who knew?

Also, remember old-timey library markings?

Remember when librarians had to mark each book this way? Even inside the book, info had to notated by hand:

Fitting, really, because this is a very old-fashioned travel story about ways of life that no longer exist. Sackville-West was an amazing writer, very connected to the details around her, whether beautiful or horrific. She also had a wry sense of humor, as she gets right to business in the opening chapter:

"Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong. Not only do we not want to hear it verbally, but we do not want--we do not really want, not if we are to achieve a degree of honesty greater than that within the reach of most civilised beings--to hear it by letter either. Possibly this is because there is something intrinsically wrong about letters. For one thing they are not instantaneous."

Right away you realize, if you didn't already know, this book was written long before wifi, email, texting, and Skype.

Sackville-West traveled what was a most arduous journey to Persia, going through Egypt and Iraq first, before arriving at her destination for a lengthy stay. While there, she apparently never gave up any opportunity to explore more deeply. She was far from being a "travel bore"; she rolled her eyes at other Europeans who preferred to clique together and tsk-tsk over the lack of British amenities, and instead sought out ways to see Persia from all angles, even if it meant interminable days on horseback or driving cars over obstacle-laden roads. The black-and-white photos she took illustrate her journey starkly, and there are lots of them. She traveled into small villages that barely recognize a car, and she was on hand for the crowning of the new Shah. Finally, her visit to Persia ended, and her return to Britain took a somewhat calamitous route through Russia and a strike- and protest-ridden Poland.

Granted, Sackville-West certainly had the means and the aristocratic background to attempt this sort of journey, but even so, it must have been incredibly courageous for her to take on an adventure like this. On the return, her plans are dashed by chaos in Poland, but by attaching herself to a retinue of Germans, she makes her way as far as Berlin, where she rests briefly and visits a restaurant where the staff, looking at her disheveled appearance, gave off a sense of mistrust. Not willing to let that slight go by unnoticed, she "revenged myself on them by sending for the head waiter, ordering the best dinner and the most expensive wine, and by distributing enormous tips out of my wad of American notes."

I can't help but think she would have been a hell of a lot of fun to travel with--unafraid, curious, and able to go with the flow.

Now, off to the library again, to see if they have any other of her travel memoirs.

The 15/15/15 Project--day 11

Since today's book is by a Minnesota author, I put this post on my Minnesota blog.

The 15/15/15 Project--day 4

"For a long time I believed that it would be impossible to make a book out of these experiences; I could see no shape in them, no pleasing curve; nothing but a series of anti-climaxes, and too much repetition of what I had done, and written down, before...Was it for this that I had gone footsore, cold, hot, wet, hungry? climbed up, and scrambled down? covered all those miles? looked at all the goats? Surely not...How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone...I look back as through a telescope, and see, in the little bright circle of the glass, moving flocks and ruined cities."

For day 4, I made it--barely--through Vita Sackville-West's lovely Twelve Days in Persia. I say "barely" because it was a race to the end, and I'm not sure if it's because a 137-page book is my upper limit on a weekday, or if it's because this was such an enjoyable travelogue that I wanted to slow down and linger.

Sackville-West is, of course, a member of the Bloomsbury group along with Virginia Woolf, and I've been curious about her ever since my disastrous experience reading Orlando. When I saw another blogger (sorry, I've forgotten who, although I'd love to give credit) talk about this beautiful book, I thought it would be a nice addition to the 15/15/15 Project. And indeed it was. The lines quoted above are from the opening, after which she takes us directly into her experience spending 12 days hiking, donkey-riding, and camping through the most remote parts of Persia.

She was a gifted travel writer--I can almost feel myself part of her journey, the good parts and bad (and she makes no bones about the fact it was a physically demanding trip, nor does she spare the reader some of the more ugly sights). But overall, her sense of wonder and history (which I, as an American raised in schools that really didn't give a rip about the Middle East, am sadly lacking) over what she sees and experiences shines through.

As does more than a little bit of British snobbery. Towards the end of the book, she proposes that Persia be set aside as a utopia, kept isolated so as not to be spoiled. She notes that in order to fully create that utopia, some things would have to change, including teaching Persians basic hygiene (so as not to suffer from cholera and typhus by drinking water used to wash corpses), but she then goes on to suggest that the best way to keep the utopia functioning would be to prevent the lower classes from being educated. They can't want what they don't know, is her point; I'd disagree, but that is her belief, from her status in life, in her point of history. Without a doubt she'd set herself up on the upper end of the hierarchy, and of course she'd be exempt from remaining isolated, but she'd have the rest of the country held within itself to suit her needs. Ah, the needs of the elite.

But still, the book is a joy to read. Her writing is clear and lovely, and sometimes wry: "Those who have seen it, know that the beauty of a pastoral life is largely a literary convention. The truth is that nature is as hard a taskmaster as civilization, and that realities under such conditions are very bare facts indeed."

From the perspective of a reader in 2010, the final chapters, where she reaches civilization again in the form of monstrously large oil fields, has more than a twinge of hindsight. She creates a portrait of nature vs. machine that seems so innocent and naive, given what we know about the rise in power of oil nations and the problems it's caused internationally.

While I wish I had read this more slowly, I see she has another book called Passenger to Teheran. Perhaps I'll pick that up after the Project is done, and I can linger more with it.

One last note: the edition I read, linked to above, was published in 2009 by Tauris Parke Paperbacks. This is a lovely imprint, with a beautiful cover, and the text is produced in what looks like a font that would have been used in its original printing in 1928. I'd never heard of this publisher before, but it may become one that I look for more often.

An Anne Frank online festival

Fellow book addict PoMoGolightly and I have hatched a reading plan. Inspired by the upcoming new production of The Diary of Anne Frank and last year's publication of the wonderful Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife by Francine Prose, we decided to go on an Anne Frank binge. Join us! I've read the Prose book, and it's fantastic, and of course the Diaries are always worth revisiting. Check out our "reading" site here.

Rumor has it that we may read other books together too...

Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles

In these days of memoir-as-suspect-literary-form, it’s interesting and downright exciting to read Kate Braverman’s memoir, Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles. Braverman is not a writer who tiptoes around her topics; her novels Lithium for Medea and The Incantation of Frida K are revelations for readers, works by an author who experiments not at all self-consciously, but wildly successfully, with the written form.

The same is true of her memoir. Rather than a chronological “so this is my life” approach, Braverman’s book is a series of essays, told mostly—but not always—from her point of view. In her swirling, hypnotic language, she reviews her years of life in Los Angeles, growing up in less-than-desirable neighborhoods, a youth that could have driven many others into lives of failure and despair. And yet, in spite of the hardships, Braverman survives, thrives, and eventually moves to the east coast with her family. Her essay about moving east, to a home that provides privacy and history and reestablishes the nature of family, seems like the ideal escape—yet a few years later, disillusioned by the collapse of the mythic view of her new life, Braverman and her husband return to the west coast.

But Braverman doesn’t tell her story just from her viewpoint. Two essays are told by other family members, and one is told via an interview with Marilyn Monroe. The family voices are brassy, aggressive, and bitterly funny, as shown by the excerpt from “Uncle Irving’s Advice:”

“They couldn’t invent a past with a single exception to impoverishment. I used to ask, ‘Do we have anyone of distinction in our family? A rabbi? A doctor? A learned man or woman anywhere in our family tree?’ No. ‘How about a guy who owned a store with leather goods? He sold shoes and boots, maybe?’ No. Just centuries of people with genetic trauma, curled up in rocky crevices of the Carpathian Mountains, waiting to get raped, looted, hung, drawn and quartered, imprisoned, conscripted, and tortured. I’ll tell you how poor these people were. They thought a candle and a potato was a good time.”

The in-your-face voice and narrative construction leads to the conclusion that memoir at its best is less concerned with literal facts—no matter what current controversies might say—and more concerned with emotional facts. Braverman’s interpretation of her family background, of her life in LA, of who Marilyn Monroe really was, says as much, if not more, about her as a person and a writer than a straightforward retelling of facts could ever do. And it makes for much more enjoyable reading.