Liquorice afternoon: Sunday Salon

Allsorts of books building up on my desk at the moment, and here, at Sunday Salon time, are four that are under way at the moment (I always read more than book at a time, often five or six!).

• Regis Debray's Against Venice, recommended by a blog reader as an antidote to the occasionally overwhelming hype about Venice.  Debray is one of those of overarching political-cultural intellectuals that only the French can really produce - supporting Che Guevara in Bolivia, then advising the Mitterand government in France, and now interested mainly in "mediology", the study of the transmission of signs in society.  Against Venice is a slight work, provocative and stimulating, and is a blast against the canonisation and excessive veneration of this city.  He sets out his stall early:  he says it is "[not] my fault that Western history has set the family jewel at the top of the Italian boot, glittering obscenely and tenaciously in the fold of the groin"!  For him, Venice is a drug, of which only the first trip is a good experience.  He makes a passionate case for prefering Naples: "Naples has a cheerful skeleton, with merry winking eye-sockets.  Venice fades the flesh, the honeymoon temple hastens the end of love".

• C S Forester's Lieutenant Hornblower.  The first of the full length Hornblower novels in some ways, as Midshipman Hornblower is really a collection of short stories strung together by a thinnish storyline.  Forester is the first, and still the best, of the naval storytellers - and some of his work is distinctly respectable, notably The Gun.  If it's good enough for Churchill, it's good enough for me!

• Primo Levi's The Wrench, which I have been reading because I mentioned cranes in a recent posts - the feathered kind, in Japanese prints - and these stories of an Italian workman, a skilled rigger of cranes and bridges came to mind.  These are wonderful stories, told by the rigger in the first person, about his work around the world, full of human detail about triumph and failure, and full of the warmth and pride of the man who builds things, rather than just talks about them.  I love Levi's writing, and this is one of his most compelling books, a kind of counterpoint to the wonderful stories based, very loosely, on chemistry in The Periodic Table.  I recommend all his work, but these two books are particularly accessible and entertaining.

•   Last week, I went to the Cranach exhibition at the Royal   Academy, which - though it was small and didn't include all the famous pictures I knew from around Europe - was very enjoyable and had several lovely gems - including nudes of Venus and Eve.  I bought the catalogue, and will spend the next few weeks occasionally flipping through it and reading a little here, admiring a painting there.  He lived around the turn of the C15-16th, working in Vienna around 1500.  He was a close friend of Martin Luther, and this exhibition contained many fine portraits, some of Luther himself, a number of nudes of various subjects - a rather new and daring departure for the German renaissance - and several beheadings, notably portrayals of Salome.  It's almost too late to see it, but go if you can.

Comments

[glo]

I haven't read Debray's book either but I guess he wanted the book to be voluntarily provocative. And it is the typical kind of an intellectual exercise that a typical French intellectual can produce.
Mitterrand on the contrary was a true passionate about Venice and went there as a private traveller very often over the years. I guess Debray probably heard of it and this must have helped growning his loathing for Venice. And not to mention the inevitable very bad aspects that such an overtouristy place carries along.

Re the sentence you quoted and Mr Cornflower's comment (below)
You have to imagine that the Italian boot is a whole leg and it is the left leg, then supposedly there must be a right leg (ie facial view and not side view). That said, I must now add that the French call "family jewels" (a plural indeed) the so-called tender parts of a man - it is rather slang-ish and familiar though... Although I haven't checked out the original text I believe that sentence is not only provocative but also very saucy, quite metaphorical and delighfully witty - a true intellectual exercise as I said before.
I wouldn't have mentioned that if someone else hadn't commented about that before but given that such an erudite debate has arisen, I had to have my say...
More seriously and from a more bookish perspective, I think the person who translated the book ought to have written a note about the meaning of that sentence... unless he/she didn't fully understand it or was too shy...

For those who are really eager to read more French essays about Venice, there are also those written by Philippe Sollers (a true Venice lover and another typical French intellectual) and "Venises" (a plural indeed) by Paul Morand.

[Mr Cornflower]

I haven't read Debray on Venice, but at the risk of being flippant, if Italy is a boot then Venice is on the wrong side for the groin. Perhaps rather the fold of a callipygous Friulian buttock?

[Dinah]

Hugely enjoyed your gallery of photos from Afganistan. The soviet tank in the snow especially graphic. Well done. I recently read Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader -- a delight. Suspended studio work -- I make pots -- for the duration while I blissed and read to the very last sentence and the last laugh.

[Peter the flautist]

I most enthusiastically support your recommendation of "The Periodic Table" by Levi. I wondered about going to see the Cranach, but I'm not really sure it is my sort of thing. Anyway I'm swamped with marking at the moment (which means I don't mind the horrible rain in London over the weekend).