Toby Ferris' SHORT LIFE IN A STRANGE WORLD: BIRTH TO DEATH IN 42 PANELS (narr by Jot Davies)

Jot Davies is one of those audio book narrators whose name on a project automatically makes that project a likely listen for me, but put him on something like Short Life in a Strange World: Birth to Death in 42 Panels, which turns out to be the answer to "what if John Berger and W.G. Sebald were merged into a literary/art historical Brundlefly (and also freakishly made the same allusions to the same cultural touchstones I'm thinking of right as I think of them!) and wrote a book about Breugel the Elder" and that becomes a dead certainty. 

Author Toby Ferris set about the project that gave rise to Short Life in a Strange World after being seized by a "mania for [Pieter] Breugel" as he mourned his recently dead father. Short narratives from that father's life are intertwined with biographical sketches of the author's trip to all of the museums and private collections that possess  definitively proven works of Breugel, and accounts of what is known of Breugel's own life as Ferris minutely observes Breugel's works and the settings in which they exist circa the early 21st century.

Along the way, Ferris winds up writing both lyrically and informatively (the lyricism greatly enhanced by Jot Davies' precise diction and rich and sonorous intonation) about diverse subjects such as the process by which paintings are restored nowadays versus in the 19th and 20th centuries, the aims and ambitions of medieval alchemists, the economic and cultural realities of life in what was, in Bruegel's time, the Spanish Netherlands, the arrangements of modern museums, the English phonetics pose to native speakers of Asian languages (that must have been particularly fun for Davies to narrate), and the occasional wilderness adventure undertaken in the company of Ferris' brother on the author's extended visit to the United States.*

Entertainingly, each chapter begins with a note about how much of the total "Bruegel Object", as calculated by a spreadsheet the author created as he first began contemplating this odd and lovely project, is discussed in that chapter.** From that starting point, Ferris can go in any direction as the imagery in each painting or group of paintings inspires speculation about the change of the seasons, the medieval understanding of death and new life, the difference between painting on wood versus canvas... anything goes, which is where the book most evokes W.G. "Rings of Saturn" Sebald for me and makes me wish Jot Davies could narrate that book someday.

What really stands out for me, though, is an odd little interval late in the book, the short but arresting 11th chapter, "Singularity." Here Ferris pauses to consider a sliver of the "Breugel Object" that has disappeared from public knowledge after being sold at Christie's early this century. This little roundel was a rather recent attribution after careful study with 21st century technology, this as much for its material faithfulness to Breugel's era as for its image, and so Ferris wrestles a bit with how much it should actually bother him that he has no way of seeing the original (the John Berger bit of the Bergbald Brundlefly). It's not part of the canon of classically-understood-to-be-Breugel, after all, and copies, made by one of Breugel's sons and by an engraver that somewhat altered the depicted image to make it more suitable as an engraving, are publicly held where he can see them. Ultimately, concluding that completism is an unrealistic and undue standard for him and his decidedly not academic approach to Breugel, Ferris decides to just let it be, man. After all, he's not trying to hunt down Breugel's drawings or misattributed works, etc, either. Framing matters. 

I, who have several uncompleted "survey all the things" type projects all over this here blog, respect this decision a whole lot, and take a kind of comfort in it, too. I may not get around to reading all of the Doctor Who novels or ever finish my cheeky and irreverent close study of Gene Wolfe's Solar Cycle, but that doesn't mean that what I've competed of these are worthless for not being 100% COMPLETE COMPLETE COMPLETE. I mean, people wouldn't bug me to resume them if they didn't like what I've done of them so far, right?

And so with this book. While Ferris may have drawn the target around where his arrow hit rather than hitting an objectively established mark, what came of his effort is a lovely meditation on life and death and art, on landscape and memory (hey, Simon Schama!), how material objects such as paintings get scattered around the world,  and on how it feels to be in the same room with a famous masterpiece in our age of image reproduction and reduction. 

What a delightful listen! I think, though, that if I were to read it again, I'd want to sit down with a hardcover edition. The audiobook had an accompanying PDF to allow the listener to examine images of the paintings under discussion, and of course there are any number of ways to look at art on the internet,  but looking at them on the tiny screen of my phone was not very satisfying. As with most art books, of which this is certainly one, the luxury of glossy full color reproductions of the art is highly to be preferred.

But hardcovers don't sound like Jot Davies. Decisions, decisions...

*This is how I wound up having an amusing Twitter conversation about bear spray and, er, used bear chow, with narrator Davies (quite forgetting that the author was still included in the reply chain after Davies had clued him in to my early praise of this book as I was getting started with enjoying it). Sometimes the internet is still a boon to mankind, even in this dumb decade.

**The insights he derives from this supremely nerdy creation of his are weird and amusing. For instance, by Ferris' calculations, 74% of the "Breugel Object" contains a depiction of people in crowds. As someone who spent four years taking all my meals with the famous "Timer" of Phish fame, Zyzzyx, keeper of the Phishstatistics page, I can't help loving attempts like this to quantify art's impact on us. 

Tim Butcher's THE TRIGGER: HUNTING THE ASSASSIN WHO BROUGHT THE WORLD TO WAR

Not since I first encountered Simon Schama's wonderful Landscape and Memory have I experienced a book that so powerfully evokes the power of place as Tim Butcher's The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin who Brought the World to War. For while the book is ostensibly concerned with Gavrilo Princip, whose murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 touched off the First World War, I would argue that the region itself -- the lands occupied by Princip's beloved "southern slavs" that would be united (more or less) as Yugoslavia for much of the 20th century -- is the real "trigger" for World War I and many subsequent conflicts.

It's Butcher's uniquely haunted perspective on the region that lets the brutal realities of the landscape eclipse the story of its most famous son. The result may disappoint seekers after a mere biography of Princip (but hey, details on the man's life are scant enough to where such seekers should be used to disappointment -- but should be delighted by Butcher's encounter, early in the book, with Princip's modern relatives, who cherish a sort of folk memory of their famous great-great uncle that is, as far as I know, all new-to-us material), but readers who can get over that small disappointment will still be rewarded by a remarkable book.

Butcher was a journalist on assignment in the Balkans during the horrific conflicts that broke out after the Warsaw Pact gave up the ghost and the nation of Yugoslavia (the name means essentially, southern Slavs, implying a union of same that might have been dear to Princip's heart, though one wonders what he'd think of Tito as a replacement for the Hapsburgs/Ottoman Turks/etc) dissolved into bloody ethnic conflict. As he follows Princip's journey from his poor and remote home village to Sarajevo, Belgrade and back to Sarajevo, Butcher can't help but recall how the vistas he encounters and the people he (re-) connects with in 2012 looked back in the 1990s, even as he tries to imagine his way back to the early 1910s.

This sounds like a recipe for maudlin mourning or peacenik preaching, but Butcher doesn't let either flavor spoil the dish. For every scene of survivor's guilt or tragic and harrowing story behind a destroyed building or a desecrated monument, there is a scene of enduring charm (Fishing with the Imams) or of newly adopted, moving and meaningful rituals (the march commemorating the escape of thousands of Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica).

The result is a difficult but rewarding read, and one I would recommend to absolutely anyone.

Paul Bowles' THEIR HEADS ARE GREEN AND THEIR HANDS ARE BLUE

Travel writing is really time travel writing, an attempt to capture place and time in a form that can be shared with those of us who weren't there, who  never can be there, who missed our chance. That this has always been the case is the chief, melancholy lesson to be learned from Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blue*, a collection of essays from Paul Bowles' extensive travels through the "non-Christian" world as it was in the mid-20th century.

In most cases, Bowles got there before globalization, before electricity and modern communications and other technology changed local lives forever in Sri Lanka (still called Ceylon when he was there), North Africa, South America*, the Middle East. Or he was there just as the changes were starting, as in southern India when he observes a pair of government officials pulling up at  his hotel with a keyring on which is the only existing key to the box that turns on the hotel's electricity, which is on only for the duration of the officials' lunch before it is shut off again. Which lunch Bowles declines to observe because he has rushed up to his room to enjoy 15 minutes with the fan on because southern India is really, really stiflingly hot and breezeless, even near the sea.

But of course it's in North Africa, where his most famous fiction is set, that Bowles is most interesting, and most aware of his secret status as a time traveler, or at least a person in some way at war with time as he tries to capture the feel of a place:

"...Writing about any part of Africa is a little like trying to draw a picture of a roller coaster in motion. You can say: It was thus and so, or, it is becoming this or that, but you risk making a misstatement if you say categorically that anything is, because likely as not you will open tomorrow's newspaper to discover that it has changed."

Hardly only North Africa, am I right? Hardly just in the 1960s, am I right? Plus ça change...

The best part of the collection is Bowles' musical mission through Morocco, "The Rif, To Music" in which he recounts his efforts, along with a few very interesting friends, to capture the unique music of several tribes before it gets contaminated by globalism. A sample of what he captured can be found here. There's more at the Libary of Congress' website, I think, but the government shutdown has made that impossible to verify. I shall be seeking it out, though!

Also notable is "Baptism of Solitude", in which Bowles confronts the immense silence of the Sahara desert, and which has left me with a tremendous longing to watch again Werner Herzog's extraordinary Fata Morgana, which thank goodness I own:



Now you probably want to as well, no?

I have a biography of Bowles on tap for later this winter, and plan to investigate his own musical compositions soon as well. Fascinating, fascinating man. But if one is really interested in this guy, on whom the character of Tom Frost in the film adaptation of William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (if not the book, exactly; it's been so long since I read that I can't remember if Tom Frost is explicitly named in the book) is based, this essay collection highlighting his strange love for the discomforts and inconveniences of travel, his pursuit of music and his awe at the variety his world still had to offer, is an indispensable read.

*The title is drawn from some wacky lines of poet Edward Lear's, meant to evoke the sense of genuine difference and novelty which travelers, if not tourists, usually seek when going abroad.

**Wherein he teaches us that "All Parrots Speak" and if that essay doesn't charm your socks off, you probably weren't wearing any.

100 Books 32 - Karen & Ray Gilden's TEA AND BEE'S MILK: OUR YEAR IN A TURKISH VILLAGE

Turkey is quite an interesting place, but as is the case with so many interesting places, at the rate I'm going I'll never manage to visit there. Hence my occasional random indulgence in some armchair travel.

Usually I put myself in the hands of someone I know and respect -- Robert D. Kaplan, say, or Paul Theroux. So how did I find these two odd, hipstery Oregonians for travel companions?

Funny you should ask. Really, it's George R.R. Martin's fault.

Ever notice that when you're up reading way, way, WAY past your bedtime that sometimes the print gets a bit blurry, even after you've tuned your Kindle's typeface setting to "legally blind"? It's the sort of thing that only happens when the book is very good indeed, as A Game of Thrones is, and so it did. As I read of the adventures of its many characters, somehow the name of Arya Stark swam into view as Freya Stark, and this reminded me that I had yet to read any of that remarkable woman's work. I had always meant to, though.

Ah, but as yet, Amazon really doesn't have any of her own writing available for the Kindle, which is where and how all my impulse book-buying takes place. A biography of her, yes (at an "agency model" price well above the normal $9.99, meaning I shunned it on principle. They can charge me more for a Kindle book when it is fully shareable on MY terms, not riddled with DRM, etc.), but by her? Tumbleweeds and cricket sounds.

But tossed in amidst the by/for/about Freya Stark Kindle offerings was Tea and Bee's Milk, a charming title, modestly priced and modern, and my impulsiveness clicked in.

What did I get for my $5.99 American? A mixed bag, but mostly of good things.

Karen and Ray Gilden are, as I said, Oregonians, hailing from the Portland/Eugene area, and come across in their book as people who would not be out of place in a sketch from the TV show Portlandia and its gentle satire of the earnest and often smug denizens of that part of the country. Ray is a bicycle fetishist, for instance; Karen a bit too fond of pointing out how off the beaten track they went when they decided to sell the house, ditch the kids and parents and spend a year doing nothing in Turkey.

Of course I'm a little jealous of the pair of them. That's only natural. I also dream, just a bit, of doing so myself, and maybe even writing a book about it. If/when I do so, though, I can't go to Göcek, Turkey, because it was in the process of becoming "touristy" even before the Gildens got there, and is now even better known for their having written about it. And of course an important part of hipster travel is being able to decry how the place you've discovered is being spoiled by its being discovered by others (but never oneself, oh no). Oh, those terrible others. But not us, of course. Everyone told us we were lovely, and we have no reason to disagree.

Eye-rolling aside, this book is much longer on charm than it is on smugness. Both Karen and Ray are talented writers and have a gift for highlighting the humor to be found in ordinary challenges like operating a Turkish washing machine, finding some oil to keep a bicycle in good repair in a tiny Turkish village, and figuring out when the ferry to Kos is actually going to leave. They also take a most amusing turn as restaurant reviewers for a newsletter they had once thought of starting and sending home to family and friends (but were soon too happily relaxed to continue with and so only published one issue). Their stories of meals here and there made my mouth water even as I smiled at the wit which which they described their settings and circumstances.

Like Troika before it, this was a short read but a pleasant one. As it will probably be the closest I get to a low-key Mediterranean idyll, I consider the brief time I spent swimming, biking and lazing about with the Gildens to have been well spent. Though I hope they never come Saratoga, WY, where I grew up, motto: "If you're in a hurry, you're in the wrong town." We already have enough tourists complaining that it's getting touristy.