Tag: art and books

A month in Siena bt Hisham Matar

~ winstonsdad ~ 1 Comment

A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar

Art memoir

Source – Personal copy

I not sure quite when I heard about this book, I think I had seen it mentioned here and there, and then either a podcast or such mentioned a bit more about it, and I just knew this would be a book that I would love, as it mixes both Memoir and art in one. It was a book I just had to get one day, and that rarely happens, especially when it wasn’t a book in translation. However, it shows Hisham Matar travelling to Siena and how, when he was much younger, he had connected with a series of paintings from the Sienese school of painting as a 19-year-old, after discovering that his father had been kidnapped. He had found solace over the following year after his father’s kidnapping. So when he gets the chance to visit Siena himself for a month, he has the opportunity to write this as a meditation on art, love, life, and grief.

That first night in Siena I had a dream that I was directing a feature film in a city by the sea. I had gathered the crew by the main promenade at the edge of the unknown city to shoot an important scene. I could feel the presence of the big metropolis behind me. The sea was deep and voluminous, its surface rippled. There was nothing interrupting its horizon. I thought of taking a swim and the next moment I found myself undressing. No one seemed to mind. I climbed on to the short wall and dived. As soon as 1 was under water I regretted my action. I had not even checked if there were steps out. What if I cannot find a way to get back on dry land? When I rose to the surface and looked back, I saw that I had drifted far out to sea. The city was now the horizon. My rapid heartbeat was not only in my ears but seemed to run all the way down into the depths and fill them. I felt as if I were wasting away, leaking into the water.

His first night of the month

The book is one of those books that is hard to pigeonhole, as it isn’t just about art, it isn’t just travel, and it isn’t just a memoir. The book is a little bit of all these when Hisham takes the chance to have a month in Siena and remembers the years before, when he spent a lot of time in London looking at the paintings from the Sienese school. He is also there, writing the memoir of the events around his father’s disappearance during the Gaddafi regime. The book captures him as he discovers Siena, a walled city that resembles a maze, as he wanders the streets and meets people over time. He connects the past, recalling his loss of his father, the comfort, and the pictures he saw all those years ago, and is now reconnecting to the art as he talks about several paintings, which are illustrated in full colour in the book. He also has Italian classes whilst in the city. He connects his everyday life to the historic paintings of the town. As I say, this is a book that needs to be read.

I continued walking towards the new end, or the end I now could see. When I reached there I could touch the olive trees on the other side of the low wall. They were young and silver in the light. I could have easily climbed over and stood among them, but for some reason I did not. I imagined bringing friends here. I pictured not telling them where we were heading, engaging them instead in a conversation about a completely different topic so as to have them stumble upon the cemetery very much as I just did, not out of the wish to unsettle them, but rather to share with them the same sense of discovery. Then I thought what a terrible idea that was.

His Daily walk around the city

How do we deal with loss and grief? We all have our own ways. For me, I enter what I call my autopilot setting. When anything happens, I have a life that is a little routine-led, and so I just carry on. I wish I were like Hisham and could find solace in art or even in. Music, this is his journey into his own past, many years later, as he looks again at these medieval pictures. Seeing echoes of when he looked before, but also connecting them to now and to his present as he walks the town every day, the other person in the book is this city, Siena, the twists and turns, the people he meets going about their daily lives, like the shop owner and his Italian teacher. But above all, it is about the loss of his father and the way these paintings had been his way out all those years ago. I’m pleased I heard about this book, as it was one of those books that  I feel most people will get something from.

 

 

Suicide by Édouard Levé

~ winstonsdad ~ 6 Comments

SUICIDE-edouard-Leve (1)

Suicide by Édouard Levé

French Fiction

Translator – Jan Steyn

Source – personnel copy on Kindle

Édouard Levé is a writer I wanted to read for a while ,one of his earlier books appeared on the BTBA the american equivalent of the IFFP  .He was a self taught artist ,who after visiting India became a photograph ,he published  a good number of books of his photographs and laterly he wrote four books in the last four years of his life ,this being his last book for ten days after handing in the manuscript for this book  Édouard Levé himself committed suicide ,this makes this book one that leaves you as the reader questioning was it ,is it a final note on himself ?

You used to read dictionaries like other people read novels .Each entry is a character ,you’d say ,who might be encountered on some other page. Plots many of them would form during any random reading.The story changes according to the order in which the entries are read.

from the first section and alsomaybe how you could read this book .

Well that said this book has an unusual style ,I felt the first of the two sections was like an epilogue ,we see a friend looking back twenty year after a close friend committed suicide ,these remembrance ,afterthought ,what happened next are short to the point .We see a man’s life told in what happened after he died ,his friend tries to piece together the point that he decide to do the deed and the points that lead to the dead and also the outcome of the dead .What is the lasting effect of one death to suicide on those around him ?As I say the book in a way seems about-face because the second section is composed of poems ,lines written by the man himself in the time leading up to his suicide .But for me this work as I had one fixed idea on the first section the second person point of view ,with the strong use of you every passage has “you” at the end of it ,almost accusing as in why did you ? But also enquiring you as opposed to me why did you ?.

Traps seduce me

Liars fool me

Informers horrify me

 

The baroque sickens me

The Gothic chills me

Novels enlighten me

 

Red irritates me

Black moves me

White calms me

The second section is very much the man’s point of view on life as you see .

 

This book showed what can be great when someone from a different artistic field moves into writing .There is a strong sense of the abstract ,as much as we feel we know this man ,we don’t ,we know he is married ,but don’t know where he came from what he is like other than the scare facts we are given .Also Édouard Levé keen eye for detail ,from his other artistic field is evident ,keenly observed little gems ,such as a gesture ,an eye for the here and now of what happened .I also felt the book could be seen as two case the first the case why he shouldn’t have committed the suicide even thou he did ,his friend saying your life was this that and the other ,what you did ok some of it wrong ,but on the other hand  some of it was good .The other half the second section is the case for why he did it from his own words, I was this ,I was that .Almost like the Damon Hirst piece lets eat outdoors today ,where we see a fly born on rotting meat and then fly into second half of the piece to ultimately die in an electric fly killer .This concept of two halves rings true in this book .An earlier book of his yet to be translated has caught my eye a book describe 500 books not written but he would like to write almost a crossover into conceptual art .This is what I feel this is as much as a work of fiction it is a work of art to complex to paint or photographs one man’s life the reason why and the suicide but able to be caught in words .Of course I imagine for years to come the main discussion will be on his own suicide and the timing of the book it is hard to avoid this as it is so timely ,but if he hadn’t would it been viewed as more of a conceptual art piece as a book one odes wonder .

Have you read Édouard Levé?