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	August 2006:: issue 34
	Books This Month 1. The Places in Between by Rory Stewart 2. Heat by Bill Buford 3. Confessions of a Memory Eater by Pagan Kennedy 4. Lost Cosmonaut by Daniel Kalder 5. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani 6. Pagan Holiday by Tony Perrottet 7. Transportation of Place by Andrea Robbins & Max Becher   Feature Book News Credits/About Us Escape This month we celebrate the art of absconding, with a selection of books that draw readers down paths less traveled. An anti-tourist scours lesser-visited, former Soviet states for non-adventures, while another writer is on a mission to visit the holiday hot spots of the Roman empire. Even more astonishing is Rory Stewart's memoir of walking across Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Escapism can have its tragic side, however, as with the wealthy but imperiled Finzi-Continis. Photographers Robbins and Becher capture the déjà vu of geographic and cultural displacements. The going gets weird as New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford signs his life away to Mario Batali as a kitchen slave, and, in a new novel, an aging professor becomes addicted to a drug that allows him to relive his fondest memories. Finally, a feature on new editions of the work of Little Nemo cartoonist Winsor McCay provides flights of fantasy that are totally armchair-accessible. - Toby Warner

When it comes to advice, no one has a bigger agenda than friends and family. Why not consult a stranger for help with life's problems? "Since You Asked" is about everything: relationships, careers, expressing your creative self, and getting the neighbor's cat to stop pooping in your garden. Advice and common sense. No judgments. "Since You Asked," only on Salon.com.

Nonfiction The Places in Between by Rory Stewart   Published: May 2006   Pages: 320   Publisher: Harvest Books   Links: Author site NYTBR review Author in Granta Stewart's The Prince of the Marshes   Synopsis Rory Stewart recounts his brazen on-foot trek across Afghanistan, from Herat to Kabul, after the fall of the Taliban. Review Writing a travel book is now practically as easy as buying a cheap plane ticket. This year has already ushered in tomes by a divinity student fumbling along Spain's Camino de Santiago, a journalist venturing into the earth's icy north, and a golfer who finds sporty nirvana in Mongolia. But many of today's first-time travel writers are surprisingly inexperienced — as either travelers or writers. Rory Stewart's first book, The Places in Between, is a welcome departure from the genre's lackadaisical approach to escapism. The author's account of his 36-day walk across post-Taliban Afghanistan is staggeringly well-researched, planned, and recounted. Stewart is a Scotsman, a self-described historian, and a diplomat by training. As he perseveres through the snow, from one village to the next, speaking Farsi or Dari and anticipating traditional Muslim hospitality, he interacts with landlords, soldiers, and farmers in a way that no average backpacker could. But he is also distinct among those in his field. While British embassy employees in Afghanistan are forbidden by their superiors to leave regularly patrolled zones, Stewart defies the rules of cautious bureaucrats to venture beyond "secure" areas. Questions as to the sanity of such an endeavor are inevitable, but Stewart (whose Afghani walk is just one segment of an epic hike across Asia) places his trek in an eloquent context: "Afghanistan was the missing section of my walk," he explains, "the place in between the deserts and the Himalayas, between Persian, Hellenic, and Hindu culture, between Islam and Buddhism, between mystical and militant Islam." Stewart often compares himself to Babur, the 16th century Mughal emperor who journeyed through the same territory. Other reviewers have suggested a host of other flattering comparisons, but Stewart's sobering determination to understand a famously hostile terrain and its people draws him closest to Tracks author Robyn Davidson, the woman who crossed a 1,700-mile stretch of Australian desert in the 1970s. Like Davidson, Stewart takes on his daunting trek as a personal challenge first and as a publicity stunt second. - Emily Stone back to top

Nonfiction Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford   Published: May 2006   Pages: 304   Publisher: Knopf   Links: Guardian interview New Yorker interview NYTBR review Heat excerpt Buford's Among the Thugs   Synopsis In the thrall of Mario Batali, a littérateur quits his day job for a baptism by fire in the art of Italian cooking. Review With a popular TV show and a successful New York restaurant empire, Mario Batali is probably the most famous chef in America who actually matters to the rest of the food world (Bam! Back at you, Emeril). This explains why Bill Buford's wife freaked when he invited Batali — whom Buford, an enthusiastic amateur cook, admired but had never met — to a birthday dinner he was hosting for a mutual friend, Jay McInerney. As Heat opens, Batali arrives laden with Italian booze and a raw slab of pig lard he has cured himself; Buford awakens the next morning with a hangover and a mission: to become a kitchen slave at Babbo, the Batali crown jewel and the only three-star Italian restaurant in New York. Buford's journey begins in January 2002 in the prep kitchen, chopping carrots and boning duck. Given his age (late forties) and lack of experience, his colleagues at Babbo regard him initially as an interloper — which he is, in effect, showing up when he's not too busy being the fiction editor of the New Yorker, and taking a spot from a culinary school intern. It's all the more remarkable, therefore, that we find him two years later promoted to line cook, manning the grill and pasta stations, having quit his day job for the heat of one of the city's busiest kitchens. After proving himself at Babbo, Buford heads to Tuscany — as Batali did before him — and what started as a continuing-education course becomes a graduate degree program, as Buford learns pasta with Batali's own teacher and then apprentices himself to the world's most famous butcher. Heat is a travelogue, a memoir of a very lucky (and well-connected) man's sojourn to find the roots of Italian cooking — and an outlet for his passion. It gives an insider's view of the kitchen; like Kitchen Confidential, it's a foodie's wet dream. But it's something more, too: Buford's focus is as much on the food and its origins as it is on the people who make it. In this sense, the book is also a manifesto: for slow food, for the old ways, and for dedication to a craft. - Chris Lamb back to top

Fiction Confessions of a Memory Eater by Pagan Kennedy   Published: June 2006   Pages: 248   Publisher: Leapfrog Press   Links: Author Site Boston Phoenix Interview Kennedy's 'Zine   Synopsis Desperate to reverse his emotional descent into middle age, a history professor pops a bittersweet cocktail of memory pills, Xanax, and nostalgia. Review Pagan Kennedy, a '90s 'zine queen turned novelist, ventures into a surreal genre of time travel, addiction, and midlife crises in her new novel. Seeded in the social and pharmacological influences of Thomas De Quincey's poppies, Confessions of a Memory Eater succeeds in being both a quick, suspenseful read and a more thoughtful probe into what exactly we fear we lose with age. Win Duncan, a 40-year-old history professor in New Hampshire, has lost the spark of his youth, the love of his wife, and the chance at earning tenure at Mercy College. Defeated and settling in for old age, Win gets a call from an old friend and troublemaker, Phil Litminov, who offers Win the chance to go back. Litminov's mode of time travel is a little, brown pill, lovingly dubbed "Mem," which Win uses to revel in the glory of his younger selves. Win steers himself through his first blowjob, the long-forgotten pride of being admired by his wife, and his old Columbia haunts — the moments when he believed that the world was his for the taking. While the trips are euphoric, they leave him nearly paralyzed with grief and regret, and almost unable to survive in the present day. Like De Quincey, Win sets out to write a book that simulates the experience of taking his drug of choice, effectively drawing the reader into a nostalgic trance of real and re-crafted memories. If Mem grants Win the chance to viscerally re-enter the past, Confessions of a Memory Eater nudges readers to explore their own troves of memory and compare the person who lived them to the person who remembers them. - McKay McFadden back to top Nonfiction Lost Cosmonaut by Daniel Kalder   Published: August 2006   Pages: 288   Publisher: Scribner   Links: Author site Guardian interview The Sunday Times review   Synopsis An intrepid anti-tourist explores the remote republics of the former Soviet Union and finds... nothing. Review Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El, and Udmurtia. They sound like countries out of a Conan comic or planets Captain Kirk might have visited. But they are very much real, and Daniel Kalder has visited them — chiefly because they have "no representation in the Western imagination." You'll learn that the capital city of Tatarstan was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in 1552; Kalmykia's president, who was recently re-elected as the head of the International Chess Federation, believes he was abducted by aliens; some natives of Mari El's Yoshkar Ola still worship trees; and the inventor of the AK-47 hails from Udmurtia. Kalder's travelogue is an odd book. It begins with a manifesto that concerns the behavior of "anti-tourists" (if the words "four-star," "first-class," or "fanny pack" are part of your travel experience, you're definitely not an anti-tourist). The book is riddled with black-and-white photographs bearing captions such as "The Secret History of the World #15, 611" and subtitles such as "An Irritating Interlude to Build Suspense" — of which there is very little. Admittedly, Lost Cosmonaut is, on occasion, boring, but it's meant to be. Kalder refuses to invent or enhance his experiences. If the highlight of an evening in, say, Elista is a crap meal in the Sputnik Café, that's exactly what he describes. Extreme journalism it's not, but it just might be the perfect book to take with you on your next trip. Most travelers will be grateful that they're not in one of the "noplaces" that Kalder so lovingly describes; but perhaps some travelers, inspired by this anti-tourist manifesto, will stray from their hotels, wander off the grid, and discover something completely ordinary. - Jim Ruland back to top

Fiction The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani   Published: 2005, reprint   Pages: 246   Publisher: Everyman's Library   Links: Author Bio   Synopsis In this highly historical novel, on the eve of WWII, a family of wealthy Italians bury their heads in the sand and deny the future, playing tennis in the garden even as the noose tightens around them. Review Jews have been kicked out of one place or another since the Garden of Eden. However, for the Finzi-Continis, a very wealthy Jewish family living in 1930s Italy, that history of persecution is useless as a predictor of their impending doom at the hands of Mussolini. Their eponymous garden is hemmed in by large stone walls, isolated from the goyim, and falsely insulated from the crescendo of danger. The tennis court, nestled in the very center of the family's sprawling Ferrara estate, serves as the narrative and physical locus of the story. It is there that the narrator, a young, middle-class Ferrarese Jew, falls in love with the gorgeous Micol Finzi-Contini. And it is there that the Finzi-Continis try to retain their grasp on a normality that is rapidly disappearing. We know from the prologue that the Finzi-Continis will share the fate of 7,500 other Italian Jews. The story is a flashback, set off by a graveyard reverie as the narrator passes Etruscan tombs years after the war. And although their end is clear, we too are as eager as the narrator to escape the future for the comfort of a status quo of leisurely tennis matches and long lunches. Alberto and Micol Finzi-Contini are the sort of delicate, well-mannered creatures all parents wish their progeny to be. It's easy to see why the narrator falls so hard for Micol: she's beautiful, witty, ironic, inconstant, rich, and flirty. After she invites him to join their informal tennis club, he becomes enamored. Although their romance is tepid at best, for the narrator, Micol is the great love of his life. His vaguely ridiculous romantic flailing about is painfully familiar to all of us, but the pathos of the affair comes from the way the older narrator relates the winding tale with such ironic equipoise. As Italy's racial segregation laws force the Jews to retreat from public life, the Finzi-Continis are one step ahead, blissfully playing a game of tennis on familiar terrain, seeking refuge in what they know. - Joshua David Stein back to top

Nonfiction Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists by Tony Perrottet   Published: 2003 (reprint)   Pages: 416   Publisher: Random House   Links: Book site Author site Author interview Perrottet's The Naked Olympics   Synopsis The author travels across the eastern Mediterranean with his pregnant girlfriend, determined to replicate the experiences of the ancient Roman tourists. Review When Australian-born travel writer Tony Perrottet came across the world's oldest surviving visitors' guide, the Description of Greece, in the New York Public Library, he reflected that, while he and his girlfriend had traveled around the world in pursuit of novel adventures and extreme sports, they had never "done" the Mediterranean. As the first civilization with an intricate series of high-quality roads and the assurance of peaceful travel across (reasonably) wide swaths of the planet, ancient Romans had all the right luxuries in place to become the original tourists. Carrying a backpack of ancient texts and a highway map printed on a 20-foot scroll, Perrotet and his pregnant girlfriend set off to follow in the sandal-prints of Romans on holiday — before children would alter their own lives dramatically. Originally published as Route 66 AD, Perrottet's Pagan Holiday follows the author and his girlfriend from Rome down through Italy, around the Mediterranean, and down the Nile to end their journey at Philae — the Nile island that was sacred to Isis and that was the last civilized post in the Roman Empire. This attempt to re-create an itinerary from a thousand years ago runs obvious risks. While portions of the journey are still very relevant and popular, others turn out to be either dangerous and barbaric or simply banal: Rome is still a beautiful city overrun with tourists seeking eternal experiences, the pyramids at Giza are awash in enough amenities to ensure a Disney World-like experience, but in a scene reminiscent of Sheltering Sky, the author gets stuck at an alcohol-fueled, three-day Nubian wedding in the Egyptian wilderness. And many more sites are simply irrelevant today: Alexandria, the capital of ancient Egypt, sees few tourists these days because the ancient portions of the city are underwater. Perrottet provides a peculiar fusion of the historic grand tour as practiced by foppish 18th-century aristocrats and the extreme vacations taken by Americans who share the author's age and interests. As the author compares his trip to both the ancient journey and to contemporary tourism, the reader gets the sense that it's not the vacation spot so much as the act of packing up and hitting the road — the timeless attempt to break with the ordinary — that matters. - Daniel Luzer back to top

Art Transportation of Place by Andrea Robbins & Max Becher   Published: April 2006   Pages: 155   Publisher: Aperture   Links: Photographers' site Book Site Light Work exhibition   Synopsis Through documentary photography, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher examine geographic and cultural displacements, ranging from Germans dressed as Native Americans to the New York skyline in Las Vegas. Review When Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci arrived in the New World in 1499, he came upon huts constructed on stilts along the shore. Recalling his home country, he dubbed the settlement Little Venice, or what is now better known as Venezuela. This geographic swapping is an example of what photographers Andrea Robbins and Max Becher call "the transportation of place" in their recent book of that name. While the husband-and-wife duo do not focus on 15th-century colonialism, the legacy of imperialism is apparent in many of their investigations. In Namibia, they photograph the German-style churches and shops built between 1884 and 1916, and in Cuba they document the 1930s buildings modeled after New York's Wall Street and the US Capitol. The photographers' work evinces a cultural and geographic déjà vu, in which the traveler seems to have backtracked or somehow wound up somewhere incomprehensible — in a Shangri-La or Atlantis. Their best-known series, "German Indians," presents German citizens obsessed with Native Americans. Dressed in feathered headdresses and lounging in teepees, the participants often mix styles of various tribes, upsetting any notion of authenticity or originality. The group of full-length portraits and headshots — reminiscent of the ethnographic photos by Edward S. Curtis — are at once sincere and goofball. Often using distant vantage points and working in series, Robbins and Becher evoke the style of "new topographics" photographers like Lewis Baltz (Max Becher is the son of another photography couple, the influential Bernd and Hilla Becher). Unlike that of their predecessors, the pair's work is rife with wit and humor. It's hard to ignore the quixotic aspects of American-style strip malls in France, or towns in Michigan and Washington that have transformed their downtown districts into Old World city centers to attract tourism. Transportation of Place brings to light not just the global homogenization that threatens every country, but also the nuanced and complex history that is common to all. - Christopher Y. Lew back to top

FEATURE Escape to Slumberland   To make the acquaintance of Winsor McCay, you'll need to find a well-padded, high-backed armchair, an oversized pillow, and a comfy blanket. Once you're settled in, lift (or ask a friend to lift) Sunday Press Books' massive, 16-by-21-inch volume, Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Spendid Sundays! onto your lap. Open, and dive in. Here you'll find the best of McCay's most famous strip, restored for the first time to the original newspaper size. From page one it's clear that you're not merely in the presence of something special — you are inside of it. In this format, Nemo's surreal, mind-bending adventures in Slumberland spread out before and around you: propped open, the book walls out the real world. McCay combines incredibly detailed illustrations with manipulations of frame — his trademark elongations, contractions, and sweeping cinematic arrangements. This edition's generous proportions allow these techniques to put on a breathtaking show. Enormous and delicate mushroom trees teeter a bit more precariously; their falls seem longer, their collapses heavier. A great gilded hall, turning sideways and upside down like a funhouse, becomes truly head-spinning. The hulk of a giant elephant towers far above, and you nearly have to tilt back your head and look up the page. Unlike many other Nemo reproductions (which feel puny by comparison) Sunday Press has taken care to avoid the wrong kind of color correction, delivering historically truer hues on a beautiful matte stock. The result is the best reproduction yet of what Nemo really looked like in the New York Herald, on a turn-of-the-century Sunday morning breakfast table. There seems to have been nearly universal critical acclaim for this large-format edition. Along with the resurgence of interest in Nemo, however, there's been a upswing of curiosity about the life and work of his creator. McCay has always been a cult idol among cartoonists and writers — with a current crop of fans that includes Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, Garry Trudeau, and Chris Ware. To satisfy those with more biographical tastes, enter John Canemaker's Winsor McCay: His Life and Art. Canemaker, an animator, animation historian, and recent Oscar-winner, provides a vividly illustrated, highly knowledgeable exploration of the whole of McCay's work. He begins with the early political cartoons and considers other well-known strips such as "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend" before delving into McCay's animation and even his vaudevillian "lightning sketch" performances. Along with offering sharp, critical analyses of these various art works, Canemaker also shares keen insights into McCay's influences and motivations, as well as an enjoyable biographical tour of his life. Now, one might chalk up all this current fascination with McCay to the recent centennial of Little Nemo (which first appeared in 1905). Or could it be that these days people are simply aching for escape, and perhaps finding it, momentarily, in a little boy's dreams? - Stephen Dougherty back to top BOOK NEWS A few notable bits of recent book news. Green books (NY Times) Would you pay a dollar more for a recycled, carbon-neutral book? Forgive me Father, for I have slanged (Buzzle) North Carolina public schools ban a dictionary of slang as part of a Christian campaign to encourage school book bans. Garcia Marquez's hometown siesta (Guardian) Apathy scuppers a vote to change the name of the novelist's birthplace of Aracataca to Macondo. Pen vs. Sword (The Nation) The Nation explores the bloody crossroads of literature and politics. Pipe up (Time) Lev Grossman asks: who's the voice of Generation Y? The answer, thankfully, might be nobody. Dear Oprah (BBC) After nearly four decades out of print, Harper Lee writes Oprah about how she became a reader. Soft Skull goes AWOL (Publisher's Weekly) The Brooklyn publishing house launches a political campaign called Softskull Samizdat. back to top

	CREDITS Editors Toby Warner Mark Mangan Paul Laster Jocelyn K. Glei McKay McFadden Nick Merritt Chris Gage Editors-at-Large Larry Weissman Sean McDonald Contributors Stephen Dougherty Gena Hamshaw Chris Lamb Christopher Y. Lew McKay McFadden Daniel Luzer Jim Ruland Joshua David Stein Emily Stone Production & Design Anjuli Ayer Jessica Bauer-Greene Morgan Croney Sascha Lewis Cover Art Andrea Robbins & Max Becher "Suitcase" (detail), 1998 from Transportation of Place Chromogenic photograph 30 3/8 x 35 1/8 in. © Andrea Robbins & Max Becher/Aperture Foundation   ABOUT US Boldtype is a monthly, email-based review of books published by Flavorpill Productions. Our mission is to cover five to seven books each month that are worth reading. No money is accepted from any publishers, writers, reviewers, or marketing or PR companies. MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS Every month, Boldtype presents one exclusive media partner. Click for more information about advertising opportunities on Boldtype and across all Flavorpill publications. FEEDBACK We welcome any and all feedback — comments, criticism, and even effusive praise. To reach the staff at Boldtype, please email us at editor. SUBMISSIONS If you have a book that you would like us to consider for review, please send an email to books or mail a copy here: Boldtype c/o Flavorpill Productions 594 Broadway, Suite 1212 New York, NY 10012 Our other email magazines: A twice-monthly email magazine highlighting the latest in electronic music — including news, reviews, and original features An email magazine covering a handpicked selection of music, art, and cultural events — delivered each Tuesday afternoon A twice-monthly fashion report providing an insider's view on trends emerging from Paris, London, New York, and around the world A twice-monthly email magazine covering art, design, and architecture with profiles, news, and reviews of international shows
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