Am I a snob?

 

Am I a snob? The short answer is yes. But since I am a snob, I will take advantage of my snobbish status and digress a little about my snobbishness, as snobs are supposed – or expected - to do.

Virginia Woolf’s definition in her excellent essay Am I a snob? Is:

The essence of snobbery is that you want to impress other people. The snob is a flutter-brained, hare-brained creature so little satisfied with his or her own standing that in order to consolidate it he or she is always flourishing a title or an honour in other people's faces so that they may believe, and help him to believe what he does not really believe - that he or she is somehow a person of importance.

As for myself, my snobbish has been mostly an intellectual snobbishness, not a social one – but I guess it could be considered also social, in the way everything we do is intended to affect our relation to others, so it has a social meaning, even if not related to class. Maybe it started because my parents were so intellectually brilliant so I, as their child, felt I had to prove my own intelligence to keep up to their standards. Also, being a skinny kid awful at sports and feeling awkward in an ugly and unattractive body, my intelligence and wit were my biggest assets. Anyway, my snobbishness helped me to cope.

One of the ways my snobbishness is shown is in my literary snobbishness. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and of course I always loved to appreciate the right books, the classics and the cool contemporary books, and fortunately I have been able to get a great pleasure from reading them. But I also enjoyed reading cheap comics and corny books like my grandmother’s favorite The Redbreast of the Mill. They became a kind of guilty pleasures, like enjoying the musical Cats or a few soaps on television. But then, aren’t intelligent people allowed these harmless dalliances in popular culture? One feels comforted to read the Bruce Chatwin’s account when he visited Nadezhda Mandeltsam and brought some thrillers, and he said something like “I hope they’re not literary works, I want real trash!”

I’m writing about this on account of a recent clash with my literary snobbishness. A few years ago, a dear friend gave me a book by Maria Teresa Horta, a fictionalized biography of the Marquesa de Alorna, an 18^th century Portuguese poetess. Well, Maria Teresa Horta is someone I’ve always laughed off as the kind of feminist that would burn bras in the 60s, and whose writing was, as a friend of mine described it, “very feminine, very open-legged”.  So I shelved the book, and didn’t think about it until recently, bored and having nothing better to read, I took it from the shelf and started reading it.

And then, I’m actually enjoying it! Yes, the writing is often corny, using the same images again and again, too many descriptions of dresses and jewelry. But the subject is quite interesting, and the book seems reasonably well researched. So I’m enjoying reading a Maria Teresa Horta book; how is that for a snob?

Rimini, di Pier Vittorio Tondelli

I read Pier Vittorio Tondelli's Separate Chambers many years ago, and loved it; later I read Altri Libertini and Pao Pao in French translation, also very good. So now, that I can read Italian more or less fluently, I bought Rimini in Milan.

It's a very good book, it reminded me somehow of a Robert Altman movie (maybe that's why the author said it was supposed to be like Nashville?), a turn pager, about the touristic boom in the 80s in the Italian Riviera. Reading it it really brought me back to the 80s. 

 

Berättelser ur min levnad, av Vilhelm Moberg

 I read the Emigrants saga a few years ago, and loved it. Last year, I found this book in the street bookmarket at Drottningsgata, and bought it. I was glad I did it. The Swedish was not too hard to understand with my limited knowledge of the language, and the essays are truly interesting and a great read. I particularly liked the ones about the books he read - a most heartfelt depiction of the pleasure and importance of reading - and about the writing of the Emigrants series.

Att skriva är ett sätt att leva. 

Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe

 

This is a wonderful book, maybe the best I've read about the African meet with the colonial powers. Beautifully written, from the perspective of an African, it doesn't portray Africans as hopeless victims, but as people like we are, caught in a clash of cultures and power. This is how we must think of Africans - not better or worse than us, just like us, wanting the sae things - family, dignity, self value. 

The importance of touch

 

Sometimes, a momentary ordinary experience makes one wonder, sets one thinking about things. 

Yesterday, as I was leaving the clinic, I ran across this old lady, who used to be a patient of mine a few years ago and I had not met in a long time. Even with the mandatory face masks, we recognized each other, and I said something like "Mrs C! How are you?" And she grabbed my arm saying something like "Doctor, how are you? I missed you!" 

I felt literally a shock - being touched, after all these months of not touching! I was surprised, it felt so awkward, but it was so spontaneous, and it felt so right. I haven't touched people in the last months on account of the pandemic, especially patients; I have just hugged my mother and my children, and just a few times. So somehow this set me wondering about the importance and meaning of touch.

Since the pandemic began, we avoid touching people. So when we touch, something that was so normal before, it feels awkward. It happened to me before, in March I met an old friend at his hospital where I went to do exam jury duty. We met at the elevator, and we happily shook hands, instinctively, before we could think of the pandemic restrictions. It felt a little awkward, but we didn't even think much about it, not touching hadn't yet become entrenched in our habits.

Sixth months later, I spent a short holiday in Italy, staying at my niece's boyfriend's house. By then, not touching had become the norm, both in Portugal and Italy, so, even if we had a wonderful time talking, sightseeing and socializing, we never touched each other. Then when we left, saying farewell, my niece's boyfriend reached out his hands and we shook them warmly and friendly - such a common gesture before, but now it felt like a special sign of trust and of a truly coined friendship. 

In October, a dear friend from Sweden visited Lisbon, we met foe diner and spent a good time together, but we didn't touch - now Swedes have this lovely habit of hugging (kram is the Swedish word), and I missed it. But covid-19 times oblige. 

So, how sad is it that I can count with the fingers of one hand the times I touched people in the last 9 months? Ours is a social species, that's how we evolved, and touching is an important part of it. So, on top of the economic losses, the disturbed health care, the interruption of socializing between friends and family, the loss of touching is another of the big losses we're enduring. Is it worthy? Should we really, on the excuse of sparing lives, give up on most things that make life worth living? And are we really sparing lives this way? 

Sad times indeed. 

Utopia for Realists - and how we can get there, by Ruger Bregman

 

This is a really good book. It makes a case for the universal income, the fifteen hour workweek and the abolishing of borders, in a most intelligent way. I think this is the way the left should go, solidarity. That's what we need, that's what's being leftist is all about.

A Guerra das Salamandras, de Karel Capek

 

I don't know how I had never heard about this book - it's excellent, a classic in its genre. Witty and cruelly funny, it satirizes capitalism, colonialism and human nature in a most implacable way. It's a timeless subject, and superbly dealt with. I highly recommend it.

A Fairly Honorable Defeat, by Iris Murdoch

 

This is a very good book, the second I read by Iris Murdoch (after The Sea, The Sea). It's most engaging from the beginning, so full of dialogue that it sounds almost like a play. But what superb dialogue! One cannot stop reading, feeling fascinated by the characters and their actions, and all the mind manipulations; even if sometimes farfetched, they always come as plausible. It's really a master's work. 

La Testa Perduta di Damasceno Monteiro, de Antonio Tabucchi

 I like Antonio Tabucchi's books, especially Afirma Pereira. This is another very good book, and I was happy to be able to read it in italian, in just 2 days. It was funny to read a book whose action is set in Portugal in italian, and it's a really good read. 

Passeggiate Africane, by Alberto Moravia

 

A very good travel book, beautifully written by a keen observer of nature and history. I particularly liked his non judgemental attitude, his depiction of Africa is engaging, respectful and witty. It made me remember issues like the apartheid, and it made me wishing to be in  Africa, to know it better, something I always wished but postponed. 

Black Boy, by Richard Wright

 

This is such a powerful book, it is often painful to read it. The story is a terrible account of what was like being black in the Jim Crow South, and the author writes beautifully and implacably. One can understand how racism is so embedded in the US culture, especially in the South, because this kind of values don't disappear in decades. 

Diaries, volume 1, 1939-1960, by Christopher Isherwood

 

After hearing and reading about him for so many years, I only recently actually read something by Christopher Isherwood - The Berlin Stories, which is such a wonderful book it made me want to read more of his work. Being related to Bloomsbury and the American post-WWII scene, I was curious to read his diaries. 

And I liked it; he led an interesting life and was friends with lots of interesting people, from Auden and Greta Garbo to Aldous Huxley and Ivan Moffatt. But I was hoping for more, somehow it feels like he's too restrained, he records his life somewhat shallowly, maybe because he repeatedly says he's keeping the journal as a form of discipline. Then there is his attitude concerning religion, which as a stark atheist I cannot relate to, even if his stand is the one I can accept - never proselizing, and not denying life's pleasures or complexities. Guess it was a way to deal with his inner demons and depressions, and if it worked for him one cannot really criticise it, but still. 

Anyway, it's beautifully written, and it's a great depiction of the life in Hollywood in the post war years. And I still want to read more of Isherwood, I think his novels will be more engaging than his diaries. 

Gli Amori Difficili, by Italo Calvino

This is such a wonderful book I don't think I can write a proper review. I always loved Calvino's books, and this was the first one I read in Italian - thanks to Matteo B. Bianchi's books not being translated, I started reading Italian, which has been a source of immense joy. Such a beautiful language! There were a lot of words whose meaning I didn't know, but I knew enough - and I'm learning - to read it fluently.

It's a collection of short stories, and they're so good one wishes they would never end so one could keep the pleasure of reading them forever. Not many authors are able to write such good short stories - Maupassant and Chekhov are a few of them. Calvino manages to describe feelings and situations so perfectly, and one can read a number of layered meanings. La Formica Argentina, for instance, is just perfect. But all the stories are excellent. They made me want to reread the Calvino books I loved.

Marco, by Saleem Haddad

Marco is a wonderfully beautiful short film by Saleem Haddad, the author of the excellent boo <i>Guapa. It's moving, sometimes heartbreaking, beautifully shot and featuring outstanding acting. And it's so important to tell the tales of the refugees, to remind how they are people like us, with stories and families and feelings. I cannot but highly recommend watching it.

Generations of Love - Extensions, by Matteo B. Bianchi

Reading this book is pure delight. I had loved Generations of Love a few years ago, and I enjoyed so much more the extended version now, for several reasons. And one of them was undoubtedly being able to read it in Italian - tired to wait for a translation, I read the author's book Maria Accanto (also delightfully funny) in Italian, and I found it was not that hard to understand, so I bought this one last December in Rome. Italian is a wonderful language, it makes one feel good just to hear its music in one's mind.

The book is a gem of coming of age literature, and the added chapters are excellent, some of them - like the ones dealing with the narrator's granny and parents - positively hilarious (I actually laughed out loud in the train while reading them).

So, another reason I loved to read it was that I became much more comfortable with my Italian; so not only am I starting to read 'tina, the magazine edited by Matteo Bianchi, as I'm starting a Calvino book (one of my favourite Italian writers).

Soalheira

I've been lately immersed in the 19th century church registries of Soalheira, a village in Beira Baixa from where some of my ancestors are from - my greatgrandmother and her mother-in-law. The registries don't differ much from those of Alcains, my other ancestral village - an appalling number of children's deaths, about 80% of the burial registries, and the usual amount of weddings and baptisms, of a few dozen families (there were about 800 to 900 inhabitants at the time).

I've been to Soalheira a few weeks ago; it's another village in the interior, with its 18th century church and lots of houses on sale. The sad reality of Portugal's country, away from the tourist spots. The cemetery is fro the middle 20th century, so couldn't find any of my ancestors there - but the surnames were mostly the same.

How were these people's lives, what were like the owner's of these names from the parish registers? Probably not that different fro our own, even if they didn't leave any records.

Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans, by Plutarch

What a wonderful read! Plutarch's Lives show us how human nature didn't change a bit since antiquity, how human goals, flaws and greatness have been really the same always. The writing is beautiful, we really feel engaged in those men's lives, and I ended up wishing there were more lives described, like Augustus' or Nero's. His account is so extremely vivid, it seems strange how this was written so many centuries ago. This is why I do love to read history books, they are such a help to understanding human nature.

Shtisel

This is a wonderful series, the kind I hadn’t watched for a long time. A sweet sitcom, extremely well acted, about a family of Haredim (ultra orthodox) Jews living in Jerusalem. Unlike other series, like Unorthodox, that focus on the differences between us (the Western world society) and this people, this series focuses on the similarities between us. And it really succeeds – these people care about family, love, their children, etc. It reminded me of the Cairo trilogy books by Naguib Mahfouz, in the way it brings a different and strange culture, to us Westerners, close to us. People are after all so much the same everywhere, in their problems and wishes.
It was also very nice to listen to Hebrew, and it made me go back to Duolingo to try to learn the language.

Cleanness, by Garth Greenwell

Another wonderful book by Garth Greenwell. The writing is exquisitely beautiful, and he really can dig in our deepest feelings - of desire, shame, awkwardness, joy. I feel awed at his capacity to convey our deepest feelings, at how he probes our human nature, enacting them in short stories with no need of lecturing, the stories themselves and the way he tells them are quite enough. He's the best writer about desire since Proust. And he's also the best writer of sexual scenes I know of, better than D.H. Lawrence and Edmund White. It's not easy to depict sex, but he manages it beautifully. I highly recommend this book, as all writing by Garth.

The Professor's House, by Willa Cather

Willa Cather was a name I was familiar with for a long time, but I had never felt the wish to read anything by her; maybe because if her name, that somehow evoked in my mind an idea of light, "pink", literature, or because I really didn't know anything about her, being out of the major literary circles of her time.

And then I read a few Facebook posts by Garth Greenwell highly praising her books, and since I highly regard his literary taste (his opinions made me already discover several very good authors, like Iris Murdoch), I decided to give her a try, with The Professor's House.

Once again, I was not disappointed. It's an excellent book - the writing beautifully elegant, the characters engaging and real, the story somewhat melancholic but at the same time sweetly optimistic, dealing with life's achievements and what this notion really means. Always relevant issues, never out of date - and after all, human nature has not changed for centuries, or even millennia, so a really good author is always actual.

He had no more thought of suicide than he had thought of embezzling. He had always regarded it as a grave social misdemeanor – except when it occurred in very evil times, as a form of protest. Yet when he was confronted by accidental extinction, he had felt no will to resist, but had let chance take its way, as it had done with him so often.

He had never learned to live without delight. And he would have to learn to, just as, in a Prohibition country, he supposed he would have to learn to live without sherry.

In great misfortunes, people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love – if once one has ever fallen in.

A man has got only so much in him; when it’s gone he slumps. Even the first Napoleon did.

So, it was a great find, and I'm sure I'll read more of her books.

The namesake's notebook

While searching for what we should keep from my late grandmother’s house, I came upon a most lucky find – my greatgrandfather’s notebook, which my grandmother had mentioned to me several times but I thought was lost for decades.

And what a wonderful find it was! Even in a bad shape, missing a number of pages, it’s still a remarkable document, spanning 50 years, from 1887 to 1937, of my greatgrandfather’s life, still easably readable in his elegant handwriting and old-fashioned ortography.
I don’t understand why the order of the entries is so haphazard, the first from 1899, the last from 1888, and jumping back and forth all the time – I wonder how did he fill it? Anyway, he took notes about a number of different things – like family events (births, deaths, marriages), community events (floods, fires, new priests), and accounts (money loans, he did quite a number of those). And also lots of recipes for several different ailments.



The money lending records take a lot of space – as my uncle cunningly observed, he was not only a barber / surgeon / doctor but also a kind of banker, sometimes charging quite high interest rates.
Anyway, the notebook confirms what a remarkable character he was, My greatgrandfasther, my namesake, who was such an important influence in my family, and on his village too – he was still remembered in my youth by many folk, by fixing a broken bone, draining an abscess, lending money.
I’m so happy to have found his notebook, I always kind of thought of myself as his heir… I never met him, but still I keep his portrait, and most of all his memory as handed over to me by his daughter, my grandmother, who was herself such a pivotal influence in my life.

Laterna Magica, av Ingmar Bergman

I love Ingmar Bergman's movies, and I liked his book Den Goda Viljan very much. So, I was looking forward to read Laterna Magica, and I was not disappointed. It's a wonderful memoir; Bergman has a sensitive and intelligent mind, he analyses his life experiences, from family and work, in a most candid and interesting way. One has an understanding of his life and the origins of his movies, besides lots of interesting anecdotes about actors, directors, etc, from Greta Garbo to Charlie Chaplin.

His writing is elegant and engaging, I'm glad I was able to read it in Swedish.

Death's End, by Cixin Liu

Thus ends the trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past, one of the best science fiction works I ever read, on a par with Asimov or Ursula Le Guin. In this third book, Cixin Liu shows his remarkable talent for story-telling and an incredible imagination and insight based in our preset scientific knowledge. It manages to tackle so many important and existential issues, and still to e a page turner - an uncommon achievement. I can but highly recommend this trilogy.

Euthanasia

My country is presently discussing the passing of a law allowing euthanasia, and as always with touchy issues, al demagogy and self-righteousness is running amok. The media are as usually in these cases stoking the flames of intolerance and radicalism, which makes me sick. But of course euthanasia is a serious issue, and I feel like I should as well give my opinion.
I’ve been a physician for 30 years, and treating very sick patients, with a great deal of suffering. And what I have watched is that the overwhelming majority don’t want to die. They don’t want to suffer. And often, when they’re in great suffering at the end of their lives, they ask to be left alone, to just die in peace.
And that’s what I think is the main problem – the insistence on futile care when people are dying, driven by our culture of “doing everything possible” and the families and caretakers’ sense of guilt. That’s really the big problem with terminally ill patients.
That said, I think euthanasia should be approved and regulated for the few people that request it. But most of all, I think we should question futile care, and let people die from their illnesses when we cannot make them better.

Viagens, de Olga Tokarczuk

I had never heard about Olga Tokarczuk until she won the Nobel last year; I was curious when a friend said she was reading Viagens and that it was a "strange" book; she lent it to me after she finished, and I'm glad to have read it. I didn't find it strange at all, I found it fabulous, and was happy to discover such a great writer.

I absolutely love this kind of book. It's a collection of short stories, essays and random thought, all connected by a common theme - travelling, both around the world and inside the mind, an insatiably curious mind, gifted with a keen sense of observation and always haunted by the eternal questions "what am I doing here?", "what's on people's minds?", "what / who are we really?". It reminded me of Chatwin for the love of travelling and details like the wunderkammers (thinking of The Songlines and many of his essays); it reminded me of Marguerite Yourcenar's Zénon, for his endless curiosity about the outer and inner world.

The writing is beautiful and elegant - at least it looks so in the translation, which reconciled me with translating after a terrible experience with a Donna Tartt book; the stories succeed each other smoothly like a modern Sherazade telling engaging tales.

So I highly recommend this book to all my friends, I'm sure they will love it.

The Dark Forest, by Cixin Liu

An excellent sequel to the outstanding The Three Body Problem - I'm really enjoying this series. The plot is extremely clever, the characters engaging, and the scientific base most sound - sometimes I have to reread a passage struggling with my basic knowledge of astro-physics, but it always seems plausible. I felt childishly happy to have guessed the Wallfacer Luo Ji's strategy, I remembered a great book by Asimov I read many years ago, The Gods Themselves, where a similar ruse was used. I wonder if it inspired Cixin Liu? He's a reader of Asimov, he mentioned Foundation in The Three Body Problem. Anyway, I'm looking forward to read the next book in the series.

The Secret Commonwealth, by Phillip Pullman

A good friend once brought me Northern Lights to read while I was ill in hospital; I had never heard of it, and it was a wonderful discovery. The world created by Pullman, a kind of multiverse like our world but not quite like it, immediately got me entranced, like any good fantasy book does. I read the other two books of the trilogy right away, and loved them too. So naturally I was very curious about the second trilogy about Dust, and it hasn't disappointed me so far.

I liked La Belle Sauvage, and now The Secret Commonwealth is even better. I feel sometimes a problem with successful fantasy series is the authors starting to take themselves too seriously - that happens with Tolkien and the Game of Thrones series, for instance - but I think Pullman manages very well to keep a balance between his fantasy universe and dealing with serious questions. Because any good sci-fi or fantasy book deals really with our present issues and worries. So I'm still enjoying The Book of Dust, and looking forward to the next novel.

Rome, again

It is always a joy going back to Rome, one of my favorite cities in the world; since my travelling friends had never been there, I had the added pleasure of showing them my favorite sites. We stayed near Santa Maria Maggiore, which is an excellent starting point to walk around the city. We arrived at night, and I took them for a stroll to enjoy the first sights of the Colosseum, the Trajan column and the Forum, and the ever crowded Trevi fountain – so they could have the crowd experience after the relatively quiet cities of Orvieto and Assisi. We ended the evening with a pizza by the Pantheon – a pretty bad restaurant, but the square is magnificent.

The next day, we started by walking by the Colosseum with its crowds of tourists and silly legionnary’s clad men, the Arch of Constantine and the Forum until the Capitol, one of the most beautiful squares in the world, with the Dioscori’s and Marcus Aurelius’ statues.

Then we visited the wonderful church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, the perfect example of Rome’s historical charm – outstanding beauty made of a mixture of styles, the Roman columns, medieval tombstones, Cosmatesque pulpits and Baroque ceilings.

From the Capitol to the Tiber, whose banks are so bucolic in its neglect, and a visit to the beautiful church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin – people queue to put their hand inside the Bocca della Veritá, but seldom enter the church, which is a true gem.

Across the river to the Trastevere, a most lively and still trendy neighborhood – old streets, ancient churches like the beautiful Santa Maria in Trastevere, graffiti covered walls, lots of restaurants – we ate magnificently at the Tonarello.

Crossing the Tiber again, along the via Giulia towards the Campo di Fiori, always a lively market and not in the least touristy. A few more blocks, and we were at the beautiful Piazza Navona, one of the most splendid Baroque squares ever, the fountains are just magnificent. Then on to Piazza della Rotonda and the Pantheon, that amazing building designed by Hadrian and still proudly standing.

Rome is remarkable, among everything else, for its many magnificent churches, that I never get tired to visit; I hope I didn’t impose too many on my friends, but how can one grasp the experience of its millenar history and many art styles otherwise?

Santa Maria Maggiore is the perfect example of a Roman church – huge and majestic, the 4th century structure, the Roman columns, Cosmatesque floors, Renaissance ceiling gilded with the first New World gold send to Rome, decorative paintings. There is now a security control at the entrance, as in other Roman churches that didn’t exist the last time I was there – a sad sign of the times.

Santa Prassede Basilica is not very known, but it hosts the most beautiful medieval mosaics in Rome. It’s truly dazzling – the colours and composition are only surpassed by the mosaics at Ravenna.

San Giovanni in Laterano, the cathedral of Rome, is another example; I particularly admire its Cosmatesque cloister and the baldachino. Then there’s the nearby Scala Sancta, a typical Catholic curiosity – so holy you have to climb it on your knees, unfortunately the warning sign for pickpockets is no longer there, I found it hilarious. Maybe they gathered how incongruous it was?

After the churches, we walked to Piazza di Spagna, full of tourists, climbed the Spanish steps and enjoyed the wonderful views over the city from the top, and headed to the Pincio gardens. We visited the Galeria Borghese – worth it for the wonderful Bernini sculptures. Later we walked down via Veneto, a most posh street, reminiscent of the 50s Rome, the Rome of La Dolce Vita.

I had been twice to the Vatican museum, but it’s always a pleasure to go there, even with the crowds. The classical sculptures, the Egyptian and the Etruscan collections, the gorgeous Map gallery, the astounding Borgia apartments, the Rafael stanze, and of course the Sistine Chapel, are always a wonder. And there is now an excellent modern art collection along the Borgia rooms until the Sistine Chapel which is a wonderful add to the museum – I was really impressed.

We left the Vatican walking along the Bernini colonnade to the river, passing by Castel Sant’Angelo – of Hadrian’s memory – and by the Ara Pacis – of Ausgustus’ memory. The Piazza di Spagna again, and the posh via Condotti.

In our last day in Rome, we visited the Domus Aurea, what’s left of the megalomaniacal construction ordered by Nero. It’s a very interesting guided visit, and one wonders how they managed to build it in just a few years.

Leaving the Domus Aurea, we visited Santo Stefano, a most curious and interesting church, decorated with depictions of martyrdoms. Then we walked by the huge Caracalla Baths and to the Circus Maximus, now mostly a place for dog walking, and finished our stay buying books at a Feltrinelli bookstore.

Conclusion? I cannot wait to go to Italy again.