[While I tried to post this Friday July 22nd, storms and subsequent power-outages made that impossible...so you may have to look on-line for two shows. Actually, I am posting this on Sunday July 24th.]
For those of us with limited time and/or budget for summer travel: here are a few suggestions.
This Sunday 7/24/11 PBS shows the 2nd of a 3-part series featuring the Roman detective, Aurelio Zen.
The series is a good adaption of Michael Dibdin's crime novels and features some great landscape and food shots. Not to mention compelling plot, Italy and gorgeous actresses & actors such as Rufus Sewell above. [Note: I did see him on the London stage in a production of The Scottish Play, but find him better suited for his role in the movie version of one of my favorite comic novels: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.]
Below, you can see the marvelously presented meal celebrating Marcel Proust's recent birthday (sent me by the photographer, Liz Muir, who was also part of her book group's festivities). It reminded me of the only book connected with Proust that I have been able to finish: How Reading Proust Can Save You Life by Alain de Botton. I mean: how could I not be entranced by a well-written, B & W picture-book whose author claims that reading a great novel "can be nothing less than life-transforming?"
de Botton is the Swiss writer (of Sephardic Jewish heritage living in London whose life has "touched" several different European perspectives on culture) whose many books explore the implications of philosophy on daily life. People seem to either "Thank God" for him or dismiss him as pompous & facile. I was taken by his Proust book, am now nearly through Status Anxiety, and just took out his The Art of Travel from the library so (as a serial reader), I will not be faced with an empty nightstand when craving bedtime reading. Status Anxiety references much in Western Civ., and thus is a grand European tour of sorts...especially given its illustrations from Art History. Additionally, it connects to U.S. history in such a way that I had many light bulbs going off in my head.
de Botton has been dismissed by some "serious" philosophers as making easy points and dumbing down philosophy. So I guess, by appreciation, that makes me a dumb snob. Having taken a year of Japanese Literature in lieu of my Western Civ., requirement in college (my undergraduate years at Univ. of Chicago required...and still do...a Core curriculum that ranged through the heavies of Western Civ.), I am definitely drawn to understand more history in context. Because context is all, isn't it? And because context affects values and values: thoughts & behavior.
And whether it is thinking about a garden, ourselves or our culture: I will make a toast to remembering that our cultural values fluctuate and are determined at a specific place & point-in-time by those in power. And what better way to distract from summer temps of 90+ and power-interrupting thunderstorms than to question our assumptions by vicarious travel? Skol!
4 comments:
Thanks for the suggestions in this post. I've put "Zen" in my Netflix queue and de Botton on my reading list. Yes, here's to vicarious travel.
Altoon: I have to thank you for lots of vicarious travel. Mostly to the woods of Vermont, to the museums of NY and to the imaginative places in your paintings and mind!
I loved the three Zen episodes and hope they plan more. It was so nice to see food/landscape that was not British (even tho Sewell is!). Rufus Sewell was a scream in Cold Comfort but I also like him in the 1993 BBC adaptation of "Middlemarch."
I agree that Sewell was excellent in Middlemarch you mention.
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