BOOKPATHS

Gone bookpathing….  Bookpaths will return on October 1, 2007.

"To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company." -- Andre Gide

 

 

Bookpath: France (and travels)

Claude Monet: Life and Art, by Paul Hayes Tucker (New Haven, Connecticut : Yale University Press, 1995)

Claude Monet: Life and Art, by Paul Hayes Tucker masterfully connects Monet’s art with the people, historical events and, above all, the places that inspired him.

“These kinds of comments should make us realize that Monet’s sites and subjects were critical to his art, that they were carefully considered, and that they were laden with meaning, for himself and his audience.” – from Claude Monet: Life and Art, by Paul Hayes Tucker

Venice, Italy

Roma Tearne writes about Venice’s ability to constantly inspire writing and art.

“After I delivered my first novel to my publishers, I went back to Venice in search of locations for a film about the unseen city. Flying over the folds of the Italian Alps, through a break in the clouds, the channels in the lagoon appeared startlingly beautiful, and marked by delicate dark green furrows; pencil lines on water. Early-morning boats moved languidly and the air, when we landed, was sea-fresh and sweet.” – from “In Search of the Unseen Venice,” by Roma Tearne, The Times

Istanbul, Turkey

Orhan Pamuk remembers youthful visits to the barber shops of Istanbul.

“For until very recently, each coffee house and barber shop in the city served (like the dolmuses, the shared taxis, of my childhood) as places where news, legends and rampant rumours, outright lies and tales of wrath and resistance were fabricated and enriched to undermine the pronouncements of religious leaders and the state, thus paving the way for rumours of plots against them, while in the neighbourhoods surrounding mosques, churches and markets, and in the villages along the Bosphorus, each served also as a local newspaper.” – from “Short Back and Asides,” by Orhan Pamuk, The Guardian

Zadie Smith “recalls her emotional first reading” of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

“Hurston is essential universal reading because she is neither self-conscious nor restricted. Raised in the real Eatonville, Florida, an all-black town, this unique experience went some way to making Hurston the writer she was. She grew up a fully human being, unaware that she was meant to consider herself a minority, an other, an exotic, or something depleted in rights, talents, desires and expectations.” – from “What Does Soulful Mean?” by Zadie Smith, The Guardian