Google Books and Google Libri

Here's a gold mine of quality information that not many use or even know about. Most people use Google as a search engine only, and only for its first part, the Web. And even then they often don't use advanced search to refine their queries. For shame!

But if you look at the classic Google page you will see various headings after "Web." One of these is Books (you'll have to look under the "more" link). This, as opposed to the Web search, will lead you exclusively to the texts of books and magazines, all of them scanned and digitalized by Google. So that what you have is a way to access published material, much of it recent and copyrighted, and bypass purely Web-generated content. Even now, the average quality of published material is superior to the average quality of Web material, so this is a significant advantage.

When you go to Google Books, you will see that some books (older books not under copyright) are available in their entirety. This is an excellent source for classics. You will find, for example, Machiavelli's Prince in English and Italian, and also Leopardi's poems. But of many other books, even very recent, there is a Preview available, often running even to a hundred or more pages. Using your search keywords, you will be able to find all sorts of info from books and magazines.

Some of the things you can find in Google Books: published recipes of all sorts, some of them by famous chefs and cookbook authors; reliable published travel information, often from magazines and well-known guidebooks; plenty of stuff on the Italian language from regular textbooks and grammars, including exercises; ample extracts from books or authors you're interested in- the equivalent of browsing in a bookstore.

To get to all this, what I usually do is a cross-sectional search. That is, I don't start from the book title or author, I start with relevant keywords e.g. "scampi alla busara recipe" or "Italian imperfect tense" or "Borromean islands." If you know Italian, you will of course input your keywords in Italian, or go to Italian Google (www.google.it) and find the link Libri. But even Google Libri has ample material in English, so that to restrict your results you should still use Italian keywords.

There are other useful features, such as sorting by date (most recent publications first) and a personalized library shelf where you can store your findings. Recently and inevitably, Google has monetized Books, so that you will also be able to buy e-books directly from the site.

Hemingway, drunk as a skunk

I just came upon this bizarre audio of Ernest Hemingway in today's Corriere. In it, Hemingway declaims a fanciful presentation of his upcoming book, Across the River and into the Trees, making role reversals and adding funny details such as the 18-year-old Colonel swimming off into the sunset from Venice to Chioggia. Hemingway shows himself to be a true americano, exhibiting the almost congenital inability of Americans to pronounce the Italian ch- as a k. Despite the noted example of "Chianti," with which I'm sure the author was (very) familiar.

The actual book has been trounced repeatedly by both critics and public over the years, but I think it's underrated. It is semi-autobiographical and based on the married Hemingway's love? infatuation? for the 18-year-old Venetian Adriana Ivancich. The story tells of a dying 50-year-old American colonel's last days in Venice and the lagoon. The colonel, like the author himself, had been in the region during the First World War, and notices the changes both in the world and in himself, none of them good.

While imperfect, I consider this essential for anyone who is really interested in "Ernesto," who called himself an "old Veneto boy." Those who know and love Venice will appreciate his true affection for the city, and the little scenes such as when the crusty, hardened officer goes to the Rialto market and carefully picks out what he wants, shucking an oyster along the way (if memory serves me). His pride in his knowledge of Venice is shown in the clip with the ironic statement that he will describe the city as soon as he consults his guidebook, the Baedeker.

Cesare Pavese and Constance Dowling

Last night I was watching a 40's film noir when I remembered that one of the actresses was involved in an unhappy way with writer Cesare Pavese, who later committed suicide, ostensibly because of her rejection. The movie was Black angel, and Constance Dowling plays a minor role as a serial blackmailer in LA who not too surprisingly gets bumped off.

Dowling later moved to Italy and got involved with Pavese. He wrote a very good poem with the chilling title Verra' la morte e avra' i tuoi occhi (death will come and it will have your eyes), which foreshadowed his suicide. You can find the original here and the translation by Geoffrey Brock here.

Pavese was a highly talented man who wrote memorable fiction, poetry, translated (including Moby Dick, and I've wanted to see this translation forever, but can't get my hands on it), and was instrumental in introducing American literature to Italy. His fiction, influenced by American writers, should not be difficult for advanced students of Italian. I personally found his diary, called Il mestiere di vivere, one of the most memorable books I've ever read.

Giordano, The Solitude of prime numbers- review

Many people were probably first attracted to this novel by its intriguing title. And for once an unusual title isn't a gimmick to gain attention, but a meaningful albeit abstruse metaphor that holds up throughout the work. Actually it's what is known in literature as a "conceit," that is, an extended metaphor.

Our mathematically-inclined young author, who knows English well, may have been struck by the fact that in English "odd" can refer both to numbers not divisible by 2 and to things and especially people who are strange, who don't fit in. From there he may have elaborated the metaphor of prime numbers (divisible only by themselves and 1) as mathematical misfits, all prime numbers being odd numbers except for 2 (I looked it up). He further develops the idea by refining it to include twin primes, prime numbers that are separated by only one even number e.g. 17 and 19, but become increasingly rare as one counts upwards.

Are you getting the uncomfortable feeling that you're back in high school? Well, you won't if you read this novel. He carries all this off splendidly. Alice and Mattia are followed over the course of years from childhood to adulthood, and they are our twin primes. Both are scarred, literally and emotionally, by early events. Brilliant Mattia actually had a twin, who unlike him was mentally backward. His strong urge to belong, to not be odd, leads him to abandon her one day in the park so that he can go to a party as a "normal" person. The sister disappears forever without a trace, paradoxically leaving Mattia more odd and isolated than ever, as he isn't even paired with his biological twin anymore.

Can Mattia and Alice become two, which is a prime number but not odd? At the height of their relationship, budding photographer Alice has them dress as a married couple and takes a snapshot. But tragically, Giordano implies (correctly I think) that people who come together because of deficiencies or wounds are not coming together on a solid, healthy basis. The metaphor of the twin primes also cues us to the fact that they are necessarily apart. The subtle ending of the book does offer some glimmer, not of optimism, but of the idea that even deeply damaged people can go on, and like the crippled Alice, get up by herself, or like Mattia, see the dawn in a new country.

(In the photo, writer and physicist Paolo Giordano, looking very cute)

Coming up- a review of The solitude of prime numbers

Busy this week, but I have finally received my specially-ordered copy in Italian of Paolo Giordano's The Solitude of prime numbers, a big hit in Italy, and successful elsewhere, too. They've also made a movie from it that I haven't seen. I got the book through The Newton library, and if you live in the Boston area within the Minutemen Library network, you can read it free, too. As soon as I return it. I've gotten through almost half, and so far, so good.

I'll be reviewing it in a couple of days. Until then, here's a video of the author, who as you can see is cute and has slightly crazy hair as befits a boy genius.

Cideb- excellent foreign language materials

If I were a student of foreign languages, I would certainly make a small investment in the materials put out by this small, specialized Italian publisher, Cideb.

Of special interest are their series of graded readers (see one in the inset). Graded readers are very useful tools for those who are trying to master a language. They are specially composed in what is known as controlled language, which is appropriate to a certain skill level in terms of vocabulary and grammar. You start at your own level, then read as many little books as you like, then proceed to the next level, and so on. The aim is to get you to the top level, after which, like a little bird kicked out of the nest to fend for itself, you can attempt to read the natural language.

Cideb readers are very well-made, including their physical and graphic aspect. They come with an audio CD of the text, spoken by native speakers, including sound effects. There is a complete range of interesting exercises and activities to accompany the story. The prices are reasonable.

Materials are available in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.

Disclosure- I have no relation with the purveyors of any product or service reviewed on this blog, including the above products.

Valeria Parrella- For Grace Received

So I've finally gotten around to reading Valeria Parrella, whom I'd been meaning to check out for at least a year now. The difficulty always comes in obtaining materials in Italian. This time I went ahead and read the translation (which I hate to do), but fortunately it was a good translation (by Antony Shugaar, an author himself). The book is published in the States by Europa, which puts out a number of foreign authors in English.

Parrella is a Neapolitan woman (born in Torre del Greco, actually) who has become an established author and actress. The book For Grace Received grabbed me immediately, which is generally not the case with contemporary literature. It is a slim collection of four short stories, but it speaks the proverbial volumes about Naples today. Which is pretty much like Naples yesterday; possibly worse. For example, the old cigarette contraband has given way to drug dealing.

Her work is engaging both because it exudes realness and because she is a skilled storyteller. The overall semi-hideous portrayal of Naples is lightened by black humor, as when illegal printers refer to the overflowing number of books they have around the shop as "Anne Franks," or when a man tells his refined, bourgeois married lover that her four-year-old daughter is probably already a drug runner for the Camorra, and wishes that she was still in diapers, because diapers come in handy for drug dealing.

Not all of the situations are specific to Naples, or the South. The story that gives the collection its title refers to the fact that the protagonist's mother lights a candle in church to thank the saints or whoever that her daughter (a summa cum laude grad) got a job in a shop, a job with benefits. Unemployment, underemployment and exploitation of the young is rampant in Italy. To top it off, our highly educated sales clerk is visited one day by her professor and thesis adviser, who had ripped off the second part of her thesis and published it under her own (the professor's) name. This, too, happens in Italy.

To sum up, Parrella seems to share the bitter opinion of her fellow Neapolitan, the great actor and playwright Edoardo De Filippo. In reference to the native city he knew so well and described in his works, he had one word to say: fujitevenne. Meaning "get the hell out." As he said this decades ago, Parrella's update on the situation of that beautiful city bears him out.

Recommended.

Wuzzup?

Wuzzup, mah homies? Wuz is what's up, that's what.

If you know Italian well and are into books, film, and other such cultural stuff this will definitely be your go-to place. The site is very rich and complete, insofar as a site can be complete for such a topic. Just take a peek at the resources on the left side of the home page, for example, under Web Utile. The online dictionary list will be useful even for those of you who are not yet proficient in the language, and includes absolute necessities such as the Italian-Ukrainian dictionary and the Italian-Piemontese dictionary (Piemontese and Ukrainian peeps- do not e-mail me to express disapproval of my irony, won't do any good).

I would not just check it out, I would bookmark it.

A poem for springtime

SPECCHIO

Ed ecco sul tronco

si rompono gemme:

un verde più nuovo dell’erba

che il cuore riposa:

il tronco pareva già morto,

piegato sul botro.

E tutto mi sa di miracolo;

e sono quell’acqua di nube

che oggi rispecchia nei fossi

più azzurro il suo pezzo di cielo,

quel verde che spacca la scorza

che pure stanotte non c'era.

Salvatore Quasimodo (kwah-ZEE-moh-doh)

My humble translation:

MIRROR

Here! On the trunk

the buds are breaking:

a green that is newer than grass

lightens the heart:

the trunk had seemed dead,

leaning over the ravine.

And everything appears as a miracle to me,

and I am that cloudwater

now reflecting in the ditches

its piece of sky more blue,

that green that bursts through the bark

yet was not there last night.

Ancora sul recente libro di Bill Emmott

La settimana scorsa ho scritto una piccola recensione, chiamiamola cosi', sul recente libro di Bill Emmott, Forza, Italia. L'autore ha mostrato di non aver gradito il mio piccolo post, e di non gradire me personalmente, nelle mail che mi ha mandato. Ha definito cio' che ho scritto come "diatribe", e alla faccia del sangue freddo inglese e dell'understatement, mi sembra che si sia incazzato di brutto e me ne voglia parecchio.

Questo mi ha spinto a dare un'occhiata piu' approfondita al testo per difendere la mia valutazione negativa.

Avevo scritto che la spinta iniziale, la guida al suo viaggio in Italia alla ricerca della Buona Italia, era come lui stesso ci dice, un'organizzazione che si chiama RENA (Rete per l'Eccellenza Nazionale). Questa viene definita da lui come "nata da poco" ed e' "un piccolo gruppo, con risorse limitate" (pagina 12). Da vera americana che si chiede sempre da dove arrivano i soldi, sono andata a cercare i sostenitori, e li ho trovati qua. Il primo sostenitore? Banca UniCredit. Vi sembra "un piccolo gruppo, con risorse limitate" quando il primo sponsor e' UniCredit? A me no.

E non finisce qui. Avevo gia' detto che andare a cercare la vera Italia usando un ente che ha lo scopo di diffondere l'eccellenza mi sembrava poco obiettivo. Poi vado a ritrovare alle pagine 150-156 che porta ad esempio della Buona Italia (categoria etica, metafisica per lui) ... la Banca UniCredit. Ma si puo'? Fa l'elogio di Alessandro Profumo, ex AD di UniCredit. Ma non e' stato licenziato l'autunno scorso Profumo? Non e' stato lui a dare una partecipazione del 7,6% della banca alla Libia? Non e' stato indagato per bancarotta l'AD del maggior azionista, Paolo Biasi?

No, perche' a sua volta (da direttore di The Economist) Emmott fu Il Grande Fustigatore di Silvio Berlusconi (che non ammiro per niente, sia chiaro), inadatto a guidare l'Italia per i suoi conflitti d'interesse. E Bill Emmott ci scrive un libro guidato da un'organizzazione che prende soldi da UniCredit? E poi loda UniCredit? E ammette anche di essere stato pagato da UniCredit per presiedere al convegno e presentare il suo studio "da osservatore indipendente" (pagine 154-155). Ma vogliamo scherzare? Ti pagano per fare l'osservatore indipendente. Ma in quale universo. Da quale pulpito.

Non sto neanche a dire delle volte che Emmott si compiace dell'ospitalita' e dei servizi gratuiti ricevuti da varie persone/enti del paese che dovrebbe valutare. Fra cui RENA (pagina 12-13: "mi hanno perfino scortato, guidando per centinaia di chilometri, nutrendomi con ottimo cibo, ottimo vino...".) E lo dice anche. Recentemente, nel mio paese, gli Stati Uniti, la potente lobby medica ha cercato di auto-regolarsi e mettere fine ai conflitti d'interesse fra medici e sponsor (le ricchissime ditte farmaceutiche), che fornivano pasti, oggetti, e vacanze pagate ai medici. Emmott le capisce queste cose?

La credibilita' del libro, gia' scarsa di suo, ne esce ancora peggio. Forse l'unico effetto positivo per gli italiani sarebbe ironicamente di constatare che non sono certo gli unici con qualche perplessita' etica.

Bill Emmott- Forza, Italia- a review

Bill Emmott, ex-director of the British weekly The Economist, has recently fallen under the spell of Italy, like so many of us before him. Unlike us, he's gone and written a book about it. Strangely, the book written by him, an Englishman, and read by me, an American, is in Italian (a translation). It hasn't been published in English yet.

Emmott admits to not having a lot of expertise regarding Italy, nor to a mastery of that lovely language, nor to having lived there. But this isn't going to stop him.

First of all, after telling us that he is a boring economist, he states that Italy's problem is philosophical, a battle between Good Italy and Bad Italy. Who's going to prevail? To find out, he relies on an organization named RENA (Rete per l'Eccellenza Nazionale), a sort of consortium of Italian groups and individuals dedicated to excellence. This is not playing fair, and in philosophy is known as begging the question. How many instances of Bad Italy are you going to find by asking an organization that focuses on excellence, which means superlative goodness?

Having informed us of the epic battle, he deluges us with facts and figures. He also bases his opinions on interviews with politicians, entrepreneurs and other movers and shakers. Does he expect leading politicians and entrepreneurs to tell a foreigner who is important in the media and who is writing a book about Italy that Italy is going to hell? Maybe that way he can further weaken Italy's credibility vis-a-vis other countries and discourage investments and purchase of Italian products.

There are many positive facets of Italy and many admirable Italians. What would you expect from one of the richest, most advanced countries of the world? It's obvious that there must be someone opposing the Mafia, someone innovating, someone holding out against the odds. But are they in the majority? Are they the wave of the future? He doesn't demonstrate this.

I think it's a fool's game to predict the future, but I can tell you that if Emmott had spoken to the man or woman in the street, he would have heard a very different story. This is the central flaw of the book. The average Italian is not optimistic about the future of his country, nor am I. There's a reason I don't live there anymore.

The original ending of Pinocchio

Today's edition of La Repubblica informs us of the important fact that the original Pinocchio did not have a happy ending. In fact, it wasn't even called Pinocchio, but Storia di un Burattino (the story of a puppet), and it first appeared serially in a children's publication called Il Giornale per i Bambini (the children's newspaper). In it, Pinocchio is actually hanged to a tree at the end of the tale by the perfidious Cat with the help of the despicable Fox.

How Collodi (the Florentine Carlo Lorenzini) thought this was an acceptable ending for a children's story is a mystery. Although classic children's literature is filled with gruesomeness. But usually there is a happy ending after the gruesomeness. Perhaps it was insufficient knowledge of the wee folk, being that Collodi was both male and unmarried. What happened is that the Children wrote their Newspaper and told the author to change it. And he did, after which the book form contained the ending where Pinocchio repents of his sins like a good Catholic puppet, becomes a real boy and lives happily ever after with Geppetto.

Neapolitans and coffee

A reader, a British woman living in Naples, has written in response to my recent post on coffee, causing me to realize what an unforgivably Northern-centric orientation I gave this important subject. She states that in her area they will not down the beverage in one gulp- at least three. Unkind persons in the North might say that this is because Southerners take three times as long to do anything.

To make amends I present a famous scene from my beloved Eduardo De Filippo, the Neapolitan playwright and actor. Toward the beginning of his play Questi fantasmi (These Ghosts), he is having his coffee on the balcony after a nap (what would the people up North say?) and chatting with a neighbor. The incredible emphasis on coffee preparation will show the real reason Italians consider the coffee from Naples special. The secret is apparently the Neapolitan, and not the water, as is often stated. At one time the water from Serino was thought to account for the wonderful brew, but that water no longer reaches Neapolitan households, and it's probably polluted now anyway. Eduardo says that he does not allow his young wife to make the coffee, he has to make it with his own hands. He even roasts it himself, until it becomes the color of a "monk's cape."

A real paean to coffee. Almost makes me want to renounce my renunciation of it. Almost. But I am now going to make myself some ... green tea.

For more on Naples and coffee, see this site (in Italian) dedicated to the subject.

The original Romeo and Juliet

In honor of the upcoming Saint Valentine's day, let us take a look at the Italian source of the most famous lovers in history, Romeo and Juliet. By the way, the saint by the name of Valentine was a Roman martyr, but the connection between the name-day of Saint Valentine (February 14) and a day for lovers is uncertain.

As I was saying. Shakespeare borrowed more than one plot from other sources, which takes nothing away from his greatness, of course. However, the most common foreign setting for his plays was Italy, giving rise to all sorts of speculation about his travel and his knowledge of that fair country. Some have gone so far as to maintain that Shakespeare did not write the plays, but this is too stupid for me to go into, so I'll just skip it.

First of all, you should know that the Italians call the fabled pair Giulietta e Romeo (jool-YET-tah eh roh-MEH-oh), always in that order. The story of the two was set forth in a short prose work by an unhappy nobleman from Vicenza, Luigi da Porto (1485-1529). He composed it while at the family's villa in Montorso Vicentino, stating unromantically that its purpose was to warn people off from the dangers of love. He writes that he is merely setting down a well-known tale, as told to him by a man from Verona. The setting is also in Verona, as are the characters. Montorso is near Vicenza, off the road that goes to Verona.

I just finished reading Da Porto's original, and it is strikingly similar to the Shakespeare play. However, Will did embellish and lengthen it (not to mention improve it by a factor of a million). To further complicate matters, an even older version of the story was apparently penned earlier by a Masuccio Salernitano, a Southerner, as his name would indicate. His lovers had completely different names. Not complicated enough? The surnames of Romeo and Juliet, respectively, are given by Luigi da Porto as Montecchi (Montague) and Cappelletti (Capulet). However, these names were already associated centuries earlier with warring factions, as cited by Dante in the Purgatorio. The version by Masuccio is quite dissimilar from the Bard's play, and does not contain the surnames of Montecchi and Cappelletti.

Add to this the fact that from Da Porto's villa one could see the castle of Montecchio (similar to the name Montecchi) (see above), now known locally as Romeo's castle (I've been there), and this leads me to believe that we should credit the obscure man from Vicenza as the "father" of the star-crossed lovers. It seems to me that a combination of his life experience, his setting near the castle of that name, and a reading of the names of Montecchi and Cappelletti as feuding factions in Dante led him to concoct the story in the form later adopted by Shakespeare through English translations. But I make no claim to scholarly rigor.

Carlo Emilio Gadda, locavore and foodie

Gadda was not only a locavore and foodie waaaayy back in the day (the fifties), he was also an engineer and one of the most prominent Italian writers of the twentieth century. Let me just say that he did not write the way you would expect an engineer to write. As proof, I will translate an excerpt from his recipe for risotto alla milanese (he was from Milan), published in the company magazine of Eni, Italy's giant petrochemical enterprise. Original text first.

" per il brodo, un lesso di manzo con carote-sedani, venuti tutti e tre dalla pianura padana, non un toro pensionato, di animo e di corna balcaniche: per lo zafferano consiglio Carlo Erba Milano in boccette sigillate: si tratterà di dieci dodici, al massimo quindici, lire a persona: mezza sigaretta.

Non ingannare gli dei, non obliare Asclepio, non tradire i familiari, né gli ospiti che Giove Xenio protegge, per contendere alla Carlo Erba il suo ragionevole guadagno. No! Per il burro, in mancanza di Lodi potranno sovvenire Melegnano, Casalbuttano, Soresina, Melzo, Casalpusterlengo, tutta la bassa milanese al disotto della zona delle risorgive, dal Ticino all'Adda e insino a Crema e Cremona. Alla margarina dico no! E al burro che ha il sapore delle saponette: no!"

" for the stock, boiled beef with carrots and celery, all three from the Po Valley, not a retired bull, with a Balkan spirit and horns: for the saffron I suggest Carlo Erba Milan in sealed vials: this will run you ten twelve, at most fifteen lire per person: half a cigarette.

Do not deceive the gods, do not forget Asclepius, do not betray your family, nor the guests protected by Jove Xenios, in order to deprive Carlo Erba of its reasonable profit. No! For the butter, in the absence of Lodi one can substitute Melegnano, Casalbuttano, Soresina, Melzo, Casalpusterlengo, the entire area south of Milan beyond the springs, from the Ticino to the Adda, to Crema and Cremona. To margarine I say no! And to butter that tastes like a bar of soap: no!"

The place names he lists are all small towns south of Milan, known for their dairy production. He even insists (with subtle anti-capitalist irony) on using saffron bought from a large local company, Carlo Erba, imported from Abruzzo. None of that Spanish stuff! Another way to look at it was that he was perhaps influenced by Mussolini's notion of autarchia, or economic self-sufficiency.

For the full text of the original recipe published in 1959, click here.

Autobiografia in cinque brevi capitoli

Traduco la nota poesia di Portia Nelson in italiano.

I

Cammino per una strada.

C'e un grande buco nel marciapiede.

Cado dentro.

Sono persa... sono impotente.

Non e' colpa mia.

Ci metto un secolo ad uscirne.

II

Cammino per la stessa strada.

C'e' un grande buco nel marciapiede.

Faccio finta di non vederlo.

Cado dentro ancora.

Non riesco a credere che sono nel posto di prima

ma non e' colpa mia.

Ci vuole ancora un sacco di tempo ad uscirne.

III

Cammino per la stessa strada.

C'e un grande buco nel marciapiede.

Vedo che c'e'.

Ci cado dentro lo stesso... ormai e' un'abitudine.

Gli occhi sono aperti

so dove mi trovo.

E' colpa mia.

Ne esco subito.

IV

Cammino per la stessa strada.

C'e' un grande buco nel marciapiede.

Lo aggiro.

V

Cammino per un'altra strada.

Montanari: Cheese, pears, and history- a review

Last year I wrote a post about this enigmatic Italian proverb: Al contadino non far sapere quanto e' buono il formaggio con le pere. Don't let the farmer (or peasant) know how good cheese is with pears. At the time, I referred to the interpretation by distinguished food historian Massimo Montanari that I had found on the Web from second-hand sources. But now his book is available in the US as Cheese, pears, and history in a proverb, and I was able to examine the argument behind his interpretation. An interpretation I still disagree with.

Yes, Montanari wrote an entire book on this one little proverb, albeit a little book of 88 pages (excluding references.) The very fact that a scholar and specialist is writing an entire book to explain the meaning of a proverb (and a well-known one at that) from his own culture is already odd. Odd because proverbs are undeniably an expression of the popular voice. And this is where my reasoning differs from Montanari's. He maintains that the proverb was an injunction by the upper classes to disallow the pairing of upper-class pears and lower-class cheese, a sort of propaganda for class privilege and stratification.

Proverbs are obviously a part of the oral tradition, and the upper classes propagated their knowledge by the written, not the oral, form. Literacy was rare and discouraged for this very reason. An exception may be the Bible, whose maxims became popular, but were originally passed on in an unwritten manner by literate priests in their (oral) homilies, or visually through paintings, or by plays.

To illustrate his point that proverbs can come from authorities and not the popular voice, the author asks rhetorically, "is 'one swallow does not make a summer' not perhaps a quotation from Aristotle?" But wait a second: the fact that the saying is found in Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) does not prove that it is a quotation from Aristotle; it is more likely that Aristotle was quoting a proverb to prove his point, and as everyone knows, a proverb needs no attribution. The translation has quotation marks, but the original Greek would not have quotation marks (they did not exist in ancient Greek). Does Montanari seriously think that this saying came down through more than two millennia because people in different cultures were reading the Nicomachean Ethics?

So, the proverb remains an enigma. And the biggest enigma is how a saying people don't really understand anymore continues to be known and repeated. As the tradition of proverbs is an oral tradition (with some written compilations, of course) it will be difficult to understand how this happened.

(In the photo, Seckel pears. I had a delicious Seckel pear and cheese pastry at this weekend's Boston Local Food festival- I wonder what would have happened if I had quoted the saying to some of the farmers...)

Vittorini's lentils

Sicilians and lentils go way back. And I do mean way.

Diogenes, the Cynic philosopher, was observed by Aristippus, a courtier of the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse (present-day Siracusa, in Southern Sicily) preparing lentils. Aristippus told him that if he would just learn to flatter Dionysius, he wouldn't have to eat lentils. But our man Diogenes rebutted: if you would learn to eat lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysius.

Words that should resonate with all of us, in the present social and economic climate.

Fast forward to another Syracusan, writer Elio Vittorini (1908-1966). I've been reading his Conversazione in Sicilia. At the same time, as a reader of the Briciole blog, I thought I would submit a recipe based on his description of a lentil recipe the narrator fondly remembered from his childhood, that he recounted while talking to his mother. Made from lentils, onions, dried tomatoes and fresh rosemary.

Well. I tried it. But the results were not noteworthy. Edible, but not memorable. Why?

This is a bit like Marcel Proust's famous madeleine cookie. Wrapped up in the highly specific memory (not to say neurophysiology) of the individual. It's not the criterion of science, whereby its validity is gauged by reproducibility. The passage in Vittorini is highly dependent, as he says himself, on the tastes of the narrator's own boyhood. And thus subjective. Not to mention that his appetite was heightened by two important things, for Italians of the recent past. One: hunger and scarcity; two: the strong association (as brought out in the passage) of food and the maternal figure.

(In the photo, from the Steiner archive, Vittorini looking like he's just had a bunch of lentils and vino at his mom's place)

Update, 9/22- the above-mentioned Briciole blog has published its summary for its latest Novel Food event, a virtual cook-off in which bloggers cook from recipes or food allusions found in novels. Check it out.

Baricco, Silk- a review

Yes I know, this book has been out for quite some time (since 1999, I believe) but I hadn't read it until now. The thing is that I generally refuse to read books, fiction in particular, in a language I know, when the book is translated. This is particularly true for Italian.

So. I just got hold of a bunch of books in the original, courtesy of the Newton Public Library here in the Boston area. Bostonians: you too can get 'em if you live in the area covered by the Minuteman Library Network. Just order 'em online through the catalog on their site and have them delivered to your branch.

As I was saying. This is the first work of fiction I've read by Alessandro Baricco, a very successful author and cultural figure, for lack of a better term. So I got three or four of his novels and started with Silk. It's a little thing, about 100 pages in the Bur paperback edition, and many of those pages have white spaces. OK, out with it, Eggplant. I was quite disappointed.

Stylistically, the novella is fairly original, reading something like an extended prose poem, or series of prose poems. I like prose poems; I like Baudelaire and Leopardi. But I didn't like this. The plot involves one Herve' Joncour, a young silkworm merchant who travels from France to the newly-opened Japan in the mid-19th century to get the eggs for the silk factories of his town. Herve' is married to a lovely lady, but like countless other men, is not fully appreciative of his wife. He meets a young woman in Japan who "does not have Oriental eyes," and falls in love. The wife is on to him. He eventually returns to the roost (also like countless other men), but after a shortish while the wife is taken with a "brain fever," something that happened rather too often in the 19th century, and dies, of course. There is a plot twist toward the end involving a purportedly erotic letter he receives in Japanese. I did not find the letter erotic, I found it intrusive and mildly embarrassing.

OK: here is what I think it "means." In a world tragically dominated by war-like conditions and (rather too often) outright war, love, which should be the opposite of war as suggested by the old hippie slogans, could be the antidote to this sorry state of affairs. But it's not. And one of the reasons is that we are always hankering after the Other, which in this case is the girl in Japan who is actually (semi-spoiler!) just a manifestation of his wife, and that's why she doesn't have "Oriental eyes." But Herve' doesn't realize that. Or maybe he does, too late, and that's why he puts "helas" (French for "alas") on her tombstone. Got it? The nature of the letter also bears out this interpretation, but I won't go into that because it would be a real spoiler, and I don't want to be mean.

As for the life-as-war aspects, you will see it in the fighting that happens in Japan during the time-frame of the work, and in the early mentions of Abraham Lincoln fighting a Civil War the end of which "he would never live to see" (actually he did, if you consider Lee's surrender at Appomattox the end of the war) and Flaubert's writing of Salammbo, another novel with an exotic setting (this time featuring the Punic Wars and Carthage) which I have not read and am not going to read despite the fact that I was a French minor. So there.

Baricco is a man of real, genuine intellectual and cultural vitality, not to mention talent, and thus needs to be reckoned with. But unfortunately he gets carried away by his sincere admiration of the Big Guys e.g. Melville, Conrad, even ole Homer. To the point he thinks he's in their league. And this may be a tiny bit cruel, but he's not. He's just derivative. Well, not just, but too derivative. I don't know what makes a book or a movie work, but this doesn't. It could have, but it doesn't, at least not for me. Lots of people like it. Baricco, who was a philosophy student (as I was, also) may think he can graft Really Big Ideas onto a work of fiction, like Melville and Conrad, but he can't. Not in this work, anyway.

So. His problem is this sort of epic overreaching. By wanting to be great, he fails to be even good (enough.) I've started in on Ocean sea, and so far it appears to be unreadable (which is not a flaw that Silk has, au contraire.) Maybe I'll slosh along (appropriately watery metaphor), or maybe I'll jump ship. Or maybe I'll read Moby Dick a fourth time, still in awe after all these years that it was produced by a thirty-year-old with little education to speak of ("for a whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.") I'll keep you posted.

(In the picture, Alessandro, who is not up there with Joseph and Herman, alas)

Gentilcore- Pomodoro!- review

Author David Gentilcore is a historian who has written an enjoyable and highly readable account of the rise to glory of the tomato in Italy. A sort of rags to riches veggiography of what the Italians now (sometimes) call oro rosso, or "red gold."

As Gentilcore recounts, our ruddy hero was initially despised by aristocracy and populace alike. His explanation of why the tomato was originally disliked and avoided is not entirely convincing, apart from the fact that all foreign foodstuffs take time to assimilate, and some never do. The association with the eggplant and the nightshade family weighed against it, as these were perceived to be toxic (and most of them aren't, as I am myself an eggplant and very wholesome). There are two considerations I would put forward- the first, that the tomato as initially brought from the New World was no great shakes; the fact that it was probably yellow (d'oro, golden) may mean that it was quite different in taste. Second- the Italians are notoriously xenophobic where food is concerned. Gentilcore notes that maize (our American corn) was readily adopted by them (some of them). Yes, but only in its processed form as cornmeal, as in polenta. To this day, Italians do not eat corn as a vegetable. Italians will not eat corn kernels, and particularly corn on the cob. My best guess is that the improvement in the tomato over the years, coupled with the hunger of the population, especially in the South, broke down resistance to it. It also goes exceedingly well with pasta, bread, and pizza, although all of these preceded the introduction of the tomato to Italy.

The book is both credible from the academic standpoint (published by the prestigious Columbia University Press) and a good read. It takes us through the centuries from the tomato's first appearance on European shores, and follows its progress until the present, a sort of history of Italy from a tomato's-eye-view. All sorts of recipes are included, and there were so many interesting facts and allusions to people, writers, artists, movies and so on, that I kept several tabs open on my netbook browser while I was reading, to look things up and further my knowledge. An example: I'd like to try to reproduce the lentils with sun-dried tomato dish he cites from Vittorini's Conversation in Sicily. If I do, I'll post it here.

Recommended.