Readings

When I’m not trying to orient myself to my new surroundings or talking with recruiters, I’ve been on a reading rampage. After all, I’ve got library cards for Santa Clara City, Santa Clara County (branches in Milpitas, Cupertino, Los Gatos and other municipalities) & San José. (San José, I have to say, has pathetic hours—none of their branches is open on Sunday. However, with a San José card you also have access to the San José State University library, which I’m looking forward to exploring.)

Because I’m finding this environmental adjustment process a bit challenging, I’m not going for books that strain my brain to any great degree. I have, in fact, ripped through about nine of Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti mysteries, with five more in my queue.

The Brunetti books (like other police procedurals set in real locations) are a window into the world of Venetian society. There’s nothing like a criminal investigation to get to the heart of political and social operations. And in Italy (I’ve read other procedurals set in different cities) the heart seems remarkably corrupt.

Which makes being what Raymond Chandler called an honorable man in pursuit of truth (because justice is frequently out of the question) an uphill climb.

So when you finish one of these novels, you sometimes need a bath.

But you read them for more than the crime—you read them for Venice, for the splattering of Italian words & phrases throughout, and for the meals.

I have to say, the Commissario may not always get his man, but his food and drink go a long way to compensate; they are straight out of heaven. Imagine a world where you go home for lunch, meeting your university professor wife and two children over three courses of dishes whose names roll off the tongue on delicious vowels and washed down with robust wines.

And then there’s dinner, with antipasti, pasta, main, salad and dessert, with wine and digestivo.

The thing about this is that you feel as though you should be accompanying the books with more than Trader Joe’s Asparagus Risotto and a few steamed shrimp. I’m even tempted to try grappa again, even though I think there’s a clause in the Geneva Convention that prohibits me ever swallowing it, as it blows the top of my head off.

You don’t feel like you need to pop down the pub for shepherd’s pie and a pint when you read English procedurals, but I assure you, you can’t read Leon (or any other writer of Italian crime fiction) without pining for penne pomodoro and a glass of Orvieto.

By way of breaking the chain of desire, I’m currently reading Hellraisers, The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed.

I first heard about it from an NPR interview with the author. I’m so glad I didn’t buy the book—I’ve used my Santa Clara County library card to get it for free. It’s annoying the spit out of me, primarily because the author is no writer. The focus is completely blokey, reveling in what lads these guys are. There’s no discipline in the narrative, and this buffoon has not even a passing acquaintance with the rules of punctuation.

(I’m not naming him—if you want to know who it is, go Google it.)

Also—he doesn’t use footnotes to cite sources and appears to have relied mostly on secondary sources. Except for a list of alleged interviews he claims to have had…with 29 men. Evidently no women were worth speaking to about this quartet. Or not worth acknowledging.

Further, in his rush to be arch, in telling a particular tale of Reed being a lad in Madrid, he calls him "Signor [sic] Reed". And repeatedly refers to appearances on The Johnny Carson TV Show, instead of Tonight.

I'm not even going to try to understand why he quotes sums of money acquired in Britain in US dollars, &and those in the US in British pounds. (Or why he talks of The Who making a "world tour, traveling through the UK and US".) But I did get a kick out of his attempts to toss in phrases that neither he nor his editor (if he had one, which I doubt; if he did, St. Martin's Press should be ashamed of themselves) understands. The one that particularly sticks in my mind is his crediting Reed with a penchant for "cocking a snoop at the establishment".

I'm not sure what the establishment would make of having a snoop cocked at them, or if they'd even notice since they'd be expecting a snook. But evidently this dope couldn't be bothered to look up the word he wanted, figuring that if he was close, none of his readers would twig to his ignorance.

I've got to say, also, that the litany of amounts and types of liquor are kind of exhausting. Unlike the Leon works, I'm not tempted to line up my five bottles of vodka and start slamming them back in emulation of O'Toole or Reed, two actors I've adored for years.

My last book report is Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? This is just depressing, not only because she led such a life of pushing people away from her, found it so hard to write, and was so bloody good. Like the hellraisers she was an alcoholic, but she never seemed to grab life by the throat the way they did.

But her exquisite poetry and prose is an impossible standard to measure what I produce.

I think I’ll have another glass of Pinot Grigio.