I wouldn't have met Piti if it hadn't been for a chichigua. To translate chichigua as a kite does not do justice to these beautiful creations of...
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“If you’re the devil, then it’s not me telling this story.” is the first line of this novel. The author’s credo is to write dangerously. The book’s contents are full of brutality, beauty, love, sex, death and life. Dense, rich, and vivid is the story of stories, the human-being tellings that unfold in this novel. Dazzling is probably the best adjective to describe the novel, since my mind feels like it’s looked directly at the sun while I’m reading about the moon.
The narrator is Shed, aka, Duivichi-un-Dua, a half-breed berdache (Indian word for 'holy man who fucks with men') who lives and whores at the Indian Head Hotel in not so Excellent, Idaho, a town nestled in the shadow of Not-Really-a-Mountain. Shed pursues killdeer, the concept of staying hidden and secret, and the tangled skeins of the story about who his father might be. "Being killdeer" allows Shed to engage in his hobby: scrutinizing.
Love and acceptance, the freedom to be who you are is what Ida Richelieu, the madam and owner of the shocking pink hotel who wears blue when she ovulates, believes in. “Oh, the humanity,” is one of her favorite sayings and one that encompasses what this book is about. Shed believes the green-eyed Dellwood Barker is his father. Dellwood may be more important than a father, he is a philosopher. He tells Shed the story of what it means to be alive. . . "Smoke and wind and fire are all things you can feel but can't touch. Memories and dreams are like that too. They're what this world is made up of. There's really only a very short time that we get hair and teeth and put on red cloth and have bones and skin and look out eyes. Not for long. Some folks longer than others. If you're lucky, you'll get to be the one who tells the story: how the eyes have seen, the hair has blown, the caress the skin has felt, how the bones have ached. What the human heart is like. How the devil called and we did not answer. How we answered."
Spanbauer has written a tale that exposes intolerance set against a pansexual West, unknown to Hollywood depictions. The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is a novel in which the characters (and the reader) are entangled in a struggle to find out the answer to the questions of what makes family, are there limits to love, and how does one set the self (after it’s been identified) free. Freedom is what the devil would deny us and this is a book that does battle with the devil.
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(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
Peter Carey, two-time Booker Prize winner and a nominee again in 2010, has written an improvisational "what-if" novel based on Alexis de Tocqueville. Olivier de Garmont ("Tocqueville") sets off with his reluctant side-kick and traveling companion, Parrot (aka John Larrit) to explore the New World.
Through their eyes, Carey recreates the young democracy and fledgling power, America of the mid 19th C., for us to discover at the same time as they do.
Olivier is the last heir of French aristocrats who kept their heads following the Revolution but fear for their son's safety under Napoleon. To protect him, they send him to America to undertake an examination of its penal system and the extraordinary idea behind it: that criminals can be reformed in prison. The mysterious one-armed Monsieur, the Marquis de Tilbot, a family friend, introduces Olivier to his protege-servant, Perroquet, or Parrot, a sublimely arrogant individual who trained as an engraver when he was apprenticed among a den of forgers in England, who were put out of business in a gory manner. The child Parrot fled into the woods, dodging Lord Devon's bullets.
Years later, Parrot and Olivier are United under the conspiratorial eye of Monsieur. After some arm twisting and manipulation, it is agreed that Olivier, accompanied by "secretary" Parrot, will set sail for America to write a book on prison reform, complete with engravings by Parrot, of course.
That Olivier and Parrot are opposite personalities, with nothing in common except their shared escapes from premature death, and that they are antagonistic yet dependent upon one another, drives the tale forward. Because of their antipathy, we see the new country from two points of view (not always from a positive aspect), and witness the changes in the heroes who labor under the influence of new American ideas and prosper among new American acquaintances.
Both men awaken, but in different ways and to differing resolutions: Olivier to the love of a particularly independent young American woman; Parrot to the bounteous prospects entrepreneurship offers, which he dreams will lift him into independence.
Carey's latest novel reads like a Dickensian picaresque. It is a book rich in characterization, atmosphere, theme, and language; it is vigorous, brilliant, original, and superbly entertaining. It is a book I would read again and again, desert island or no, and one that I can recommend to readers without reservation.
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(3 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
Confess! One of the most delicious reasons we read is because once in a while a book is so good that we don't want it to end. Here is one of them.
Peter Carey, two-time Booker Prize winner and a nominee again this year, has written an improvisational "what-if" novel based on Alexis de Tocqueville. Olivier de Garmont (as Tocqueville) sets off with his reluctant side-kick and traveling companion, Parrot (aka John Larrit) to explore the New World. Through their eyes, Carey recreates the young democracy and fledgling power, America of the mid 19th C., for us to discover at the same time as they do.
Olivier is the last heir of French aristocrats who kept their heads following the Revolution but fear for their son's safety under Napoleon. To protect him, they send him to America to undertake an examination of the American penal system and the extraordinary idea behind it: that criminals can be reformed in prison. The mysterious one-armed Monsieur, the Marquis de Tilbot, a family friend, introduces Olivier to his protege-servant, Perroquet, or Parrot, a sublimely arrogant person trained as an engraver when he was apprenticed among a den of forgers in England who were put out of business in a gory manner. The child Parrot fled into the woods, dodging Lord Devon's bullets. United under the conspiratorial eye of Monsieur, it is agreed that Olivier and "secretary" Parrot will set sail for America to write a book on prison reform, complete with engravings.
That Olivier and Parrot are opposites, with nothing in common except their shared escapes from premature death, antagonistic yet dependent upon one another, drives the tale forward. Because of their antipathy, we see the new country from two points of view (not always from a positive aspect), and witness the changes in the heroes who labor under the influence of new American ideas and prosper among new American acquaintances. Both men awaken, but in different ways and to differing resolutions: Olivier to the love of a particularly independent young American woman; Parrot to the bounteous prospects of entrepreneurship that he dreams will lift him into independence.
Carey's latest novel reads like a Dickensian picaresque. It is a book rich in characterization, atmosphere, theme, and language; it is vigorous, brilliant, original, and superbly entertaining. A book I would read again and again, desert island or no, it's my selection to win the 2010 Man Booker Prize when it is announced Tuesday, October 12th.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(3 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)
An excellent follow-up to David Traill’s long and slowly unwinding biography of Schleimann ("Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit"), this little book packs a lot of meat on its bones. In 8 concise chapters, Gere traces the history of Mycenae, its roots in mythology, its fame in heroic Greece, its fall from what place in power it ever held to ghost town, its repeated excavation and the shifting assessment of its value and meaning by its investigators as they became less vested in visiting their foregone conclusions on the relics and more committed to letting the relics speak in their own voice.
Mysticism, religion, and politics from the earliest historical frame of reference to the succeeding ones all play a part in how Mycenae and its famous king, Agamemnon, have been understood through the ages. Nothing echoes the prejudices that mar understanding more so than Gere’s tracing of the swastika symbol and how its interpretation was perverted and distorted by the lens of current events as each “digger for truth” had his say.
In spite of the foibles of those men who marched through the Argolid, it is the humanity of the Mycenaeans and Bronze Age Greeks that leaves the strongest impression; the long dead early Greeks who invented the safety pin, are less the heroic and mythical super-humans that Schleimann wished them to be, and more the pragmatic, aesthetic, and political animals that today’s Greek citizen is.
Written in a way that suggests an Edwardian guidebook that might have been used by one of E M Forster's characters, if they had ventured beyond Italy, this precis of Mycenae is made accessible to the modern reader through various tourist devices: museum visits, excursions to Scleimann's tomb, a stay at Hotel Belle Helene (where one can purportedly sleep in the same bed that Schleimann once did) and, of course, treks to the ruins of Mycenae itself to gaze upon the Lion's Gate and the tholos tomb of Clytemnestra.
Certainly one comes away from this book appreciating that the wide mouthed “Mask of Agamemnon” holds as much fascination for the inscrutability of Homeric heroes as do the enigmatic grinning Etruscan figures of early Romans, and the iconic smiling "Mona Lisa" of Renaissance women. It’s all in the curve of the lip.
"I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon," may be the world record for self-aggrandizing telegram messages. David Traill certainly must think so because he sets to work debunking the mostly self-created mythology surrounding Heinrich Schliemann, perhaps the most thoroughly self-made man who ever lived.
Dethroning the “greatest archaeologist of all time” and re-labeling him a “pathological liar” is what UC Davis classics professor, Traill, does in this thoroughly researched biography that draws on Schleimann’s letters, journals, and archaeological records. In his account, the autodidact, world-traveling master of languages, and retired business whizz who made millions from the Crimean War and the California gold fields is depicted as a greedy, lying, deceitful, conceited, groveling, manipulative, cheating, vain, even thieving criminal who salted his digs in order to produce the results he wanted. Quite a descent from the widely circulated and swallowed comprehension of Schliemann as a god-like Olympus-dwelling discoverer of Troy, Priam’s Treasure, and the Mask of Agamemnon (A fake? Traill implies so.).
Well, doesn’t all that conflict, that soup of frailty and ego, just make Schleimann more fascinating? Who is the real Schleimann -- the man set down in his own letters, journals, records, and publications, or Professor Traill's portrait of a world-class con-man? One thing is true, the world’s most famous “amateur” archaeologist worshiped the Homeric heroes, desired to be one himself in his chosen field, and saw to it that he was buried and memorialized like one in his temple-like Athenian tomb.
This is a great read and a must for people who are, like me, fascinated by Greek history. If you are, then Cathy Gere's The "Tomb of Agamemnon" is an excellent follow-up.
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The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer
E S Pittenger, September 28, 2011
“If you’re the devil, then it’s not me telling this story.” is the first line of this novel. The author’s credo is to write dangerously. The book’s contents are full of brutality, beauty, love, sex, death and life. Dense, rich, and vivid is the story of stories, the human-being tellings that unfold in this novel. Dazzling is probably the best adjective to describe the novel, since my mind feels like it’s looked directly at the sun while I’m reading about the moon.The narrator is Shed, aka, Duivichi-un-Dua, a half-breed berdache (Indian word for 'holy man who fucks with men') who lives and whores at the Indian Head Hotel in not so Excellent, Idaho, a town nestled in the shadow of Not-Really-a-Mountain. Shed pursues killdeer, the concept of staying hidden and secret, and the tangled skeins of the story about who his father might be. "Being killdeer" allows Shed to engage in his hobby: scrutinizing.
Love and acceptance, the freedom to be who you are is what Ida Richelieu, the madam and owner of the shocking pink hotel who wears blue when she ovulates, believes in. “Oh, the humanity,” is one of her favorite sayings and one that encompasses what this book is about. Shed believes the green-eyed Dellwood Barker is his father. Dellwood may be more important than a father, he is a philosopher. He tells Shed the story of what it means to be alive. . . "Smoke and wind and fire are all things you can feel but can't touch. Memories and dreams are like that too. They're what this world is made up of. There's really only a very short time that we get hair and teeth and put on red cloth and have bones and skin and look out eyes. Not for long. Some folks longer than others. If you're lucky, you'll get to be the one who tells the story: how the eyes have seen, the hair has blown, the caress the skin has felt, how the bones have ached. What the human heart is like. How the devil called and we did not answer. How we answered."
Spanbauer has written a tale that exposes intolerance set against a pansexual West, unknown to Hollywood depictions. The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is a novel in which the characters (and the reader) are entangled in a struggle to find out the answer to the questions of what makes family, are there limits to love, and how does one set the self (after it’s been identified) free. Freedom is what the devil would deny us and this is a book that does battle with the devil.
(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
E S Pittenger, January 1, 2011
Peter Carey, two-time Booker Prize winner and a nominee again in 2010, has written an improvisational "what-if" novel based on Alexis de Tocqueville. Olivier de Garmont ("Tocqueville") sets off with his reluctant side-kick and traveling companion, Parrot (aka John Larrit) to explore the New World.Through their eyes, Carey recreates the young democracy and fledgling power, America of the mid 19th C., for us to discover at the same time as they do.
Olivier is the last heir of French aristocrats who kept their heads following the Revolution but fear for their son's safety under Napoleon. To protect him, they send him to America to undertake an examination of its penal system and the extraordinary idea behind it: that criminals can be reformed in prison. The mysterious one-armed Monsieur, the Marquis de Tilbot, a family friend, introduces Olivier to his protege-servant, Perroquet, or Parrot, a sublimely arrogant individual who trained as an engraver when he was apprenticed among a den of forgers in England, who were put out of business in a gory manner. The child Parrot fled into the woods, dodging Lord Devon's bullets.
Years later, Parrot and Olivier are United under the conspiratorial eye of Monsieur. After some arm twisting and manipulation, it is agreed that Olivier, accompanied by "secretary" Parrot, will set sail for America to write a book on prison reform, complete with engravings by Parrot, of course.
That Olivier and Parrot are opposite personalities, with nothing in common except their shared escapes from premature death, and that they are antagonistic yet dependent upon one another, drives the tale forward. Because of their antipathy, we see the new country from two points of view (not always from a positive aspect), and witness the changes in the heroes who labor under the influence of new American ideas and prosper among new American acquaintances.
Both men awaken, but in different ways and to differing resolutions: Olivier to the love of a particularly independent young American woman; Parrot to the bounteous prospects entrepreneurship offers, which he dreams will lift him into independence.
Carey's latest novel reads like a Dickensian picaresque. It is a book rich in characterization, atmosphere, theme, and language; it is vigorous, brilliant, original, and superbly entertaining. It is a book I would read again and again, desert island or no, and one that I can recommend to readers without reservation.
(3 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
E S Pittenger, September 28, 2010
Confess! One of the most delicious reasons we read is because once in a while a book is so good that we don't want it to end. Here is one of them.Peter Carey, two-time Booker Prize winner and a nominee again this year, has written an improvisational "what-if" novel based on Alexis de Tocqueville. Olivier de Garmont (as Tocqueville) sets off with his reluctant side-kick and traveling companion, Parrot (aka John Larrit) to explore the New World. Through their eyes, Carey recreates the young democracy and fledgling power, America of the mid 19th C., for us to discover at the same time as they do.
Olivier is the last heir of French aristocrats who kept their heads following the Revolution but fear for their son's safety under Napoleon. To protect him, they send him to America to undertake an examination of the American penal system and the extraordinary idea behind it: that criminals can be reformed in prison. The mysterious one-armed Monsieur, the Marquis de Tilbot, a family friend, introduces Olivier to his protege-servant, Perroquet, or Parrot, a sublimely arrogant person trained as an engraver when he was apprenticed among a den of forgers in England who were put out of business in a gory manner. The child Parrot fled into the woods, dodging Lord Devon's bullets. United under the conspiratorial eye of Monsieur, it is agreed that Olivier and "secretary" Parrot will set sail for America to write a book on prison reform, complete with engravings.
That Olivier and Parrot are opposites, with nothing in common except their shared escapes from premature death, antagonistic yet dependent upon one another, drives the tale forward. Because of their antipathy, we see the new country from two points of view (not always from a positive aspect), and witness the changes in the heroes who labor under the influence of new American ideas and prosper among new American acquaintances. Both men awaken, but in different ways and to differing resolutions: Olivier to the love of a particularly independent young American woman; Parrot to the bounteous prospects of entrepreneurship that he dreams will lift him into independence.
Carey's latest novel reads like a Dickensian picaresque. It is a book rich in characterization, atmosphere, theme, and language; it is vigorous, brilliant, original, and superbly entertaining. A book I would read again and again, desert island or no, it's my selection to win the 2010 Man Booker Prize when it is announced Tuesday, October 12th.
(3 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)
Tomb of Agamemnon by Cathy Gere
E S Pittenger, July 14, 2010
An excellent follow-up to David Traill’s long and slowly unwinding biography of Schleimann ("Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit"), this little book packs a lot of meat on its bones. In 8 concise chapters, Gere traces the history of Mycenae, its roots in mythology, its fame in heroic Greece, its fall from what place in power it ever held to ghost town, its repeated excavation and the shifting assessment of its value and meaning by its investigators as they became less vested in visiting their foregone conclusions on the relics and more committed to letting the relics speak in their own voice.Mysticism, religion, and politics from the earliest historical frame of reference to the succeeding ones all play a part in how Mycenae and its famous king, Agamemnon, have been understood through the ages. Nothing echoes the prejudices that mar understanding more so than Gere’s tracing of the swastika symbol and how its interpretation was perverted and distorted by the lens of current events as each “digger for truth” had his say.
In spite of the foibles of those men who marched through the Argolid, it is the humanity of the Mycenaeans and Bronze Age Greeks that leaves the strongest impression; the long dead early Greeks who invented the safety pin, are less the heroic and mythical super-humans that Schleimann wished them to be, and more the pragmatic, aesthetic, and political animals that today’s Greek citizen is.
Written in a way that suggests an Edwardian guidebook that might have been used by one of E M Forster's characters, if they had ventured beyond Italy, this precis of Mycenae is made accessible to the modern reader through various tourist devices: museum visits, excursions to Scleimann's tomb, a stay at Hotel Belle Helene (where one can purportedly sleep in the same bed that Schleimann once did) and, of course, treks to the ruins of Mycenae itself to gaze upon the Lion's Gate and the tholos tomb of Clytemnestra.
Certainly one comes away from this book appreciating that the wide mouthed “Mask of Agamemnon” holds as much fascination for the inscrutability of Homeric heroes as do the enigmatic grinning Etruscan figures of early Romans, and the iconic smiling "Mona Lisa" of Renaissance women. It’s all in the curve of the lip.
Schliemann of Troy :treasure and deceit by David A Traill
E S Pittenger, July 14, 2010
"I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon," may be the world record for self-aggrandizing telegram messages. David Traill certainly must think so because he sets to work debunking the mostly self-created mythology surrounding Heinrich Schliemann, perhaps the most thoroughly self-made man who ever lived.Dethroning the “greatest archaeologist of all time” and re-labeling him a “pathological liar” is what UC Davis classics professor, Traill, does in this thoroughly researched biography that draws on Schleimann’s letters, journals, and archaeological records. In his account, the autodidact, world-traveling master of languages, and retired business whizz who made millions from the Crimean War and the California gold fields is depicted as a greedy, lying, deceitful, conceited, groveling, manipulative, cheating, vain, even thieving criminal who salted his digs in order to produce the results he wanted. Quite a descent from the widely circulated and swallowed comprehension of Schliemann as a god-like Olympus-dwelling discoverer of Troy, Priam’s Treasure, and the Mask of Agamemnon (A fake? Traill implies so.).
Well, doesn’t all that conflict, that soup of frailty and ego, just make Schleimann more fascinating? Who is the real Schleimann -- the man set down in his own letters, journals, records, and publications, or Professor Traill's portrait of a world-class con-man? One thing is true, the world’s most famous “amateur” archaeologist worshiped the Homeric heroes, desired to be one himself in his chosen field, and saw to it that he was buried and memorialized like one in his temple-like Athenian tomb.
This is a great read and a must for people who are, like me, fascinated by Greek history. If you are, then Cathy Gere's The "Tomb of Agamemnon" is an excellent follow-up.
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