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busymorning's review against another edition
4.0
I started this book in January and have taken it with me while I travel. His writing evokes certain emotions I feel while I'm elsewhere and enlightens me to look at and pay attention to my surroundings. I find connections. I think introspectively.
"Lavender" and "A Literary Pilgrim Progresses to the Past" are my favorite essays and thus I give it the four star rating for that. Not all the essays were enjoyed, but most contained a line or two that I highlighted for reflection upon a future pick-up from my shelf.
"Lavender" and "A Literary Pilgrim Progresses to the Past" are my favorite essays and thus I give it the four star rating for that. Not all the essays were enjoyed, but most contained a line or two that I highlighted for reflection upon a future pick-up from my shelf.
oceanelle's review against another edition
5.0
This was the only book I brought with me to meet my family in Poland for the first time in my entire life. Little did I know that it was the perfect book to bring--the only book that would encapsulate every contradicting feeling I had about home, identity, memory, time, and understanding where I fit into all of these things. Aciman's writing is beautiful and precise; I feel grateful to myself for taking it along on this journey.
radioactve_piano's review against another edition
1.0
I don't think it should have taken me this long to slog through 200 pages, but there we have it. I definitely slogged. There's absolutely no other word for it. The writing is verbose without being enjoyable, and that's okay -- Aciman does state that he writes to find truth, not that he writes with an outline of where he's going. I'd expect meandering sentences and thoughts from that style of writing.
These essays were repetitive, which also shouldn't be surprising -- the author is always in one place, thinking about being in another. He is searching for meanings but only defining them by falsified memories or imaginary happenings. It's human nature to reframe situations, but I honestly lost patience with the author's way of creating context that didn't exist for absolutely everything.
The brief touching upon the difference between fact and fiction, especially in memoirs (and memories), set the tone for my entire enjoyment level of this book. Ultimately, he wants the reader to connect with everything -- his take on place, his idea about belonging, his tenuous grasp of truth. I don't like liars; I don't like people who make half-apologies for intentional lies; and I don't like someone who combines the two things and reasons through his choices to try to force the reader accept what he's saying -- and beyond that, to force the reader to say, "Yes, I completely agree with you! Well done!"
These essays were repetitive, which also shouldn't be surprising -- the author is always in one place, thinking about being in another. He is searching for meanings but only defining them by falsified memories or imaginary happenings. It's human nature to reframe situations, but I honestly lost patience with the author's way of creating context that didn't exist for absolutely everything.
The brief touching upon the difference between fact and fiction, especially in memoirs (and memories), set the tone for my entire enjoyment level of this book. Ultimately, he wants the reader to connect with everything -- his take on place, his idea about belonging, his tenuous grasp of truth. I don't like liars; I don't like people who make half-apologies for intentional lies; and I don't like someone who combines the two things and reasons through his choices to try to force the reader accept what he's saying -- and beyond that, to force the reader to say, "Yes, I completely agree with you! Well done!"
caramm's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
profejennifer's review against another edition
5.0
This collection of essays tiptoes along the line between memoir and diary, and you get the sense that you should read them very quietly, so as to respect the privacy of the writer who is trying to find himself on the page before you. The pieces reflect on the meaning of place to one who is always already displaced, on the meaning of identity for one who feels himself a shadow. Perhaps the following quote best speaks to the fundamental absence at the heart of these essays, a void that Aciman doesn't quite want to cover over with his words:
"Exile disappears the very notion of a home, of a name, of a tongue. The exile no longer knows what he's exiled from."
I, for one, will be hungry to read anything Aciman writes as he continues to search.
"Exile disappears the very notion of a home, of a name, of a tongue. The exile no longer knows what he's exiled from."
I, for one, will be hungry to read anything Aciman writes as he continues to search.
readbyryan's review against another edition
5.0
Nonfiction—Essay, Travel. Trade Paperback. Found after reading “Call Me By My Name” by same author.
selenajournal's review against another edition
5.0
from Intimacy:
I was after something intimate and I learned to spot it in the first alley, in the first verse of a poem, on the first glance of a stranger. Great books, like great cities, always let us find things we think are only in us and couldn’t possibly belong elsewhere but that turn out to be broadcast everywhere we look. Great artists are those who give us what we think was already ours.
In the words of Emanuele Tesauro: “We enjoy seeing our own thoughts blossom in someone’s mind, while that someone is equally pleased to spy what our own mind furtively conceals.” I was a cipher. But, like me, everyone else was a cipher as well. Ultimately, I wanted to peer into books, places, and people because wherever I looked I was always looking for myself, or for traces of myself, or better yet, for a world out there filled with people and characters who could be made to be like me, because being like me and being me and liking the things I liked was nothing more than their roundabout way of being as close to, as open to, and as bound to me as I wished to be to them.
from My Monet Moment:
It would be just like me to travel all the way to Bordighera from the United States and never one look up the current name of the villa. Any art book could have told me that its name was Villa Garnier. Anyone a the station could have pointed immediately to it had I asked for it by name. I would have spared myself hours of meandering about town. But then, unlike Ulysses, I would have arrived straight to Ithaca and never once encountered Circe or Calypso, never met Nausica or heard the enchanting strains of the Sirens’ song, never gotten sufficiently lost to experience the sudden, disconcerting moment of arriving in, of all places, the right place.
She opens a door and we stop onto the roof terrace. Once again, I am struck by one of the most magnificent vistas I have ever seen. “Money used to come to paint here as a guest of Signor Moreno.” I instantly recognize the scene from art books and begin to snap pictures. Then the nun corrects herself. “Actually, he used to paint from up there,” she says, pointing to another floor I hadn’t noticed that is perched right above the roof. “Questo e l’oblo di Monet.” “This is Monet’s porthole.”
from Temporizing:
Proust’s novel is about a man who looks back to a time when all he did was look forward to better times. To rephrase this somewhat: he looks back to a time when what he looked forward to was perhaps nothing more than sitting down and writing… and therefore looking back.
It is not even Egypt or the things he remembers that he loves; what he loves is just remembering, because remembering ensures that the present won’t ever prevail. Remembering is merely a posture that turns its head away and, in the process, even when there is nothing to remember, is shrewd enough to make up memories – surrogate, standby memories – if only to justify not having to look straight at the present.
from New York, Luminous:
In that spellbound moment when we’re suddenly willing to call this the only home we’ll ever want on earth, New York lets us into a bigger secret yet: that it “gets” us, that we needn’t worry about those dark and twisted, spectral thoughts we are far too reluctant to tell others about – it shares the exact same ones itself, always has.
from Afterword: Parallax:
The German writer W.G. Sebald, who died in 2001, frequently wrote about people whose lives are shattered and who are trapped in a state of numbness, stagnation, and stunned sterility. Given a few displacements, which occurred either by mistake or through some whim of history, they end up living the wrong life. The past interferes and contaminates the present, while the present looks back and distorts the past.
Sebald’s characters see displacements everywhere, not just all around them but within themselves as well. Sebald himself cannot think, cannot see, cannot remember, and, I would wager, cannot write without positing displacement as a foundational metaphor.
In order to write you either retrieve displacement or you invent it.
----------------
things that were my favourites:
Lavender; a wonderful easing into the essays, into reflections on memory, on past, on how we look back on the past and frame it, on how it impacts us into adulthood. it reminded me of bosnia, of my grandfather (even though it was about aciman’s father).
New York, Luminous; a walk through a city through movies and literary references. movies i hadn’t seen were brought to live, then the essay was re-read and i saw how perfectly they shine and how fitting they are.
The Buildings Themselves Have Died; for being a perfectly named story. for making new york come alive in a different way than New York, Luminous. for reminding me of david foster wallace. though there are differences – dfw sees it through the older generations, aciman through the buildings themselves.
I was after something intimate and I learned to spot it in the first alley, in the first verse of a poem, on the first glance of a stranger. Great books, like great cities, always let us find things we think are only in us and couldn’t possibly belong elsewhere but that turn out to be broadcast everywhere we look. Great artists are those who give us what we think was already ours.
In the words of Emanuele Tesauro: “We enjoy seeing our own thoughts blossom in someone’s mind, while that someone is equally pleased to spy what our own mind furtively conceals.” I was a cipher. But, like me, everyone else was a cipher as well. Ultimately, I wanted to peer into books, places, and people because wherever I looked I was always looking for myself, or for traces of myself, or better yet, for a world out there filled with people and characters who could be made to be like me, because being like me and being me and liking the things I liked was nothing more than their roundabout way of being as close to, as open to, and as bound to me as I wished to be to them.
from My Monet Moment:
It would be just like me to travel all the way to Bordighera from the United States and never one look up the current name of the villa. Any art book could have told me that its name was Villa Garnier. Anyone a the station could have pointed immediately to it had I asked for it by name. I would have spared myself hours of meandering about town. But then, unlike Ulysses, I would have arrived straight to Ithaca and never once encountered Circe or Calypso, never met Nausica or heard the enchanting strains of the Sirens’ song, never gotten sufficiently lost to experience the sudden, disconcerting moment of arriving in, of all places, the right place.
She opens a door and we stop onto the roof terrace. Once again, I am struck by one of the most magnificent vistas I have ever seen. “Money used to come to paint here as a guest of Signor Moreno.” I instantly recognize the scene from art books and begin to snap pictures. Then the nun corrects herself. “Actually, he used to paint from up there,” she says, pointing to another floor I hadn’t noticed that is perched right above the roof. “Questo e l’oblo di Monet.” “This is Monet’s porthole.”
from Temporizing:
Proust’s novel is about a man who looks back to a time when all he did was look forward to better times. To rephrase this somewhat: he looks back to a time when what he looked forward to was perhaps nothing more than sitting down and writing… and therefore looking back.
It is not even Egypt or the things he remembers that he loves; what he loves is just remembering, because remembering ensures that the present won’t ever prevail. Remembering is merely a posture that turns its head away and, in the process, even when there is nothing to remember, is shrewd enough to make up memories – surrogate, standby memories – if only to justify not having to look straight at the present.
from New York, Luminous:
In that spellbound moment when we’re suddenly willing to call this the only home we’ll ever want on earth, New York lets us into a bigger secret yet: that it “gets” us, that we needn’t worry about those dark and twisted, spectral thoughts we are far too reluctant to tell others about – it shares the exact same ones itself, always has.
from Afterword: Parallax:
The German writer W.G. Sebald, who died in 2001, frequently wrote about people whose lives are shattered and who are trapped in a state of numbness, stagnation, and stunned sterility. Given a few displacements, which occurred either by mistake or through some whim of history, they end up living the wrong life. The past interferes and contaminates the present, while the present looks back and distorts the past.
Sebald’s characters see displacements everywhere, not just all around them but within themselves as well. Sebald himself cannot think, cannot see, cannot remember, and, I would wager, cannot write without positing displacement as a foundational metaphor.
In order to write you either retrieve displacement or you invent it.
----------------
things that were my favourites:
Lavender; a wonderful easing into the essays, into reflections on memory, on past, on how we look back on the past and frame it, on how it impacts us into adulthood. it reminded me of bosnia, of my grandfather (even though it was about aciman’s father).
New York, Luminous; a walk through a city through movies and literary references. movies i hadn’t seen were brought to live, then the essay was re-read and i saw how perfectly they shine and how fitting they are.
The Buildings Themselves Have Died; for being a perfectly named story. for making new york come alive in a different way than New York, Luminous. for reminding me of david foster wallace. though there are differences – dfw sees it through the older generations, aciman through the buildings themselves.
gmrickel's review against another edition
DNF for now (page 87). Not super interested in reading a travel memoir at the moment. I plan to take it up again next year.
tiedyedude's review against another edition
1.0
DNF. Started out interesting enough, but quickly petered out.
tynansal23's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
3.75