Birthdays

Birthdays Today

Birthdays Tomorrow

Today's Quote

Photos

Loading…
  • Add Photos
  • View All

Videos

  • Add Videos
  • View All

Audio

Loading…

Discussion Forum

Kerouac's comment on this too-big world

Started by ROBERT BERKELEY in Literature Talk 11 hours ago. 0 Replies

Kerouac's:  sweetly, bitterly, poignantly true..ships in the night passing ..a rainy day in Copenhagen, a train pulls in and a princess within looks out..our eyes meet, once..twice...the train departs ,she nods. I place my hand on my heart and am rewarded with an eternal smileContinue

The French Resistance has sent you a message: "Did yourMP3s arrive safely ?"

Started by Roman Payne in Music on Tuesday. 0 Replies

The French Resistance has sent you a message...: "Did yourMP3s arrive safely ?"I wrote earlier to say that: “I buried the corpse of my poor dead laptop, as well as the German keyboard who killed it. And I bought a beautiful new French Resistance laptop with a French keyboard!! :-) " ... the only problem is the French keyboard is “laid-out” as oddly as the French people are “laid-back”... so I kept hitting “Send” (“Envoyez”) by accident. Excusez-Moi !!a)      I need to wait for Lee Crase to…Continue

DISCUSSION: The Furious Poet and A Damned German Keyboard...

Started by Roman Payne in Music. Last reply by Glenda Stryker on Tuesday. 7 Replies

Scheiße !! It's the novelist's nightmare: the keyboard on my laptop broke almost 24 hours ago... it is a keyboard in English, as the novel I am writing is in English...  And since I live in Paris, I cannot find a keyboard English very easily.  So, in despair, I first bought an external keyboard French (a language I know fluently); but since French keyboards have the letters all in the wrong order.  But this proved clumsy to write on, so I then bought a keyboard in German (a language I do not…Continue

Tags: music, roman, payne, poet, furious

Today's Quote

Started by Shaye in Reflections on Life May 16. 0 Replies

Aloha Roman, I was prepared to dislike today's quote (some feminist knee jerk I guess) but instead I loved it and just forwarded it to two other people, one man and one woman, it's an equal opportunity quote. Mahalo!Continue

Just Say No!

Started by Gatzby in CulturalBook the Website. Last reply by Debra S. Edgington May 16. 7 Replies

In my inbox (my reply follows)-Hello, CulturalBook members. In the past week we've acquired about a dozen new members whose profiles promote some kind of wellness product: colon cleanse, weight loss, wrinkle cream, and other similar products that have nothing to do with the theme of CulturalBook. Also, most of their profile photos vs. profile descriptions clearly show that somehow they have done an excellent job of changing genders.Should these "members" be deleted? Please let me know your…Continue

Lice, Rice, Fleas & Cold Eggs. Police Powers & Staff Email Addresses. All this can be yours today!

Started by Roman Payne in Small Talk May 16. 0 Replies

Members have asked:  "Why are emails to staff@culturalbook.com being returned unsent?"Answer: This email address was receiving too much spam... so we shut it down.                                         Helpful CB Staff Email Addresses:GABRIEL KIRKLAND - gabriel@culturalbook.com - Gabriel is the one to contact for all things "marketing" ...if you have free paperback books, ebooks, or audio books to offer to members, contact him.  If…Continue

Discussion: Calling All Members Who Want to Hear and/or Post Original CB Members' Songs

Started by Roman Payne in Music May 16. 0 Replies

Would you like to hear CB Members' songs?  Do you have original songs/recordings to contribute?   Let me explain:First, here is a song that I wrote for the guitar, ("The Song of the Revolution"), which I sing on this free MP3 recording you can download here:    http://www.romanpayne.com/audio/MP3Z_songs-of-roman-payne/song-of-the-revolution.mp3(NOTE: For those of you who know the great poet of…Continue

Dear Entrepreneurs and/or Authors: I am seeking fun promotional products or giveaway copies...

Started by Roman Payne in CulturalBook the Website. Last reply by Lee Crase May 13. 4 Replies

Dear Entrepreneurs and/or Authors,I would like to reward CulturalBook members for posting interesting blog posts, prose, poetry, photos, as well as for taking part in contests, etc...So I am looking to purchase fun promotional products related to culture, literature, gourmet, and such...I am also hoping to get some giveaway copies from published authors...If you want to promote your work, your art, your company; or if you wish to earn a little cash, please write to me at …Continue

Tags: giveaways, promotions, authors, entrepreneurs

Prose/Poetry Blog Posts

fait accompli

Posted by Jack Spratt on May 26, 2013 at 4:57am 0 Comments

“So! Does this mean that I’ve passed the first Audition?”

“Yes. Two dogs!”

Later on…

Continue

Don't miss it! Giveaway for The Secret Rescue ends TOMORROW

Posted by Michelle Lancaster on May 24, 2013 at 10:05pm 0 Comments

The book giveaway for The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of American Nurses and Medics Behind Nazi Lines by Cate Lineberry ends TOMORROW, Saturday, May 25. This is a new release, a hardback first edition courtesy of the generous folks over at Little, Brown. Don't miss it!…



Continue

quickening

Posted by Jack Spratt on May 24, 2013 at 12:26am 0 Comments

An observation about solitude and creative/artistic endeavors. I have no literary friends with whom to query the good or ill of what/how/why…

Continue

ain't no

Posted by Jack Spratt on May 23, 2013 at 6:24pm 0 Comments

ain't no jack-in-the-pulpit, pussy-toes, posey, poesy, poet (ry) writer but red poinsettia knocked silly by it: knotweed! Clubbed senseless where I growed!

Poetry that is.

“Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the…

Continue

Suggestions?

Email: staff@culturalbook.com

Top Content 

1 May is Short Story Month - Flannery O'Connor

May is Short Story Month - Flannery O'Connor
2 Video Book Trailer: eBook: 100 Marketing Trade Secrets for any business

Video Book Trailer: eBook: 100 Marketing Trade Secrets for any business
3 Calling All Shakespeare Lovers

Calling All Shakespeare Lovers
4 The Face of Evil

The Face of Evil
5 You Wonder

You Wonder

Do you have a website? Help promote CulturalBook.com by putting a "Badge" on your site. Message "Hemingway" after you've done so to get recognition! Just click "Get Badge" link below.

Loading…

Get Badge

B.W. Grant Barnes' 5 Star Review of 'The Italian Pleasures of Gabriele Paterkallos' by Pietros Maneos

In this novella, Pietro Maneos continues his project of revitalizing an aesthetic Romanticism in which the poet (or "poeta" as one of the main character's lovers insists on, and "poesia" rather than pedestrian poerty) is a hero and lover in the mode of the classical Jason, Theseus, Achilles, and the very real Dante, Lord Byron, Jean Paul and Gabriele d'Annunzio.
 
Because of the beautiful poetic forms of Maneos' previous publications (at least two volumes of poetry so far, supplemented by many YouTube videos of Pietros reading his and similar poetry, including his unpublished "American Bards"), I had half-expected the new work would be a novel in verse, probably Petrarchan sonnets, but "The Italian Pleasures of Gabriel Paterkallos" is actually epistolary prose, and the form is exclusively the letters that Gabriele sent in the second half of 2001, when Gabriele was living in Rome.
 
And these letters are exclusively those Gabriele sent to his friend and mentor, whom the editor describes as "a self-exiled American novelist residing in Paris, Odysseus Pane, a few years his senior". Because Odysseus's letters are absent from the novella, the few things we know about this Odysseus are what Gabriele writes in his own letters. The focus is, thus, as it should be, on Gabriele's self-reported adventures and experiences in the Eternal City.
 
According to the foreword, the publication of even these letters is accounted for by Gabriele's letters having been purloined by a lover of Odysseus and sold to the highest bidder; it is the triumph of Gabriele's and Odysseus' shared aesthetic that the highest bidder turns out to be the same publisher of the novella and not a certain Middle Eastern government that would certainly have an interest in keeping the content of many of the letters unpublished.
 
Maneos adopts for his salutations and letter closes what could have been mere Homeric mnemonic techniques and instead adopts a different descriptive phrase of himself and Odysseus that parallels the content of the specific letter. This makes for a special treat, because Maneos is imaginative and right on point in summarizing in just a few words the story that unfolds in each individual letter.
 
In brief, the plot begins thus: The 21-year old Gabriele has decamped for as many weeks as his finances support to Italy, not merely "to find his soul" but rather "to make his soul" in the Eternal City. Somehow, he has obtained a publisher in Rome for his first book of poems, coincidentally titled "The Soul of a Young Poet" (the same title that Maneos himself used for his 2002 first book of poetry). Gabriele also comments on his own famous (for some, notorious) photo shoot for Abercrombie and Fitch (climbing into a helicopter nude), a Bruce Weber shoot that Maneos coincidentally also got his first major press about.
 
Also coincidentally, Gabriele as well as Maneos modeled for a full-length portrait in the pose of Polyclitus's great classical statute "Doryphoros" (spear-bearer), with the spear replaced with the torch of Enlightenment, and both Gabriele and Maneos included "Keatsian butterflies" with the figure. ("I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days -- three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain." ' John Keats, "Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne"). And Gabriele has the same Greek athlete-god body ("gymnos") body that Maneos's own modeling and training is famous for.
 
I recognize some of the names associated with Maneos' own biography even if they are craftily spelled in the novella, so I might have room to speculate that it just might be possible to read "Italian Pleasures" as a roman à clef. (Lovers, friends and colleagues of Maneos - take heed and buy this book to see if and how Maneos transformed you! And if I'm totally off the mark, and Maneos isn't writing about his own life, then he is an obviously a writer inspired by the muse of his own artistic presence.) And, indeed, if the novella is true to Maneos' own life, then being able to read that he can exclaim after each sexual encounter, "Oh, the Beauty! The Beauty! The Pleasure! The Pleasure!," is reason enough to buy this book and enjoy the repeated readings.
 
Maneos' program in support of an aesthetic Romanticism permits many of the letters to be more than mere vignettes and actually read like short stories, one folding into another à la Boccaccio. Frequently, the letters deliciously report how Gabriele has connected with many different women, à la d'Annunizio. Some of Maneos' best writing is in his loving descriptions of how these many women respond to him and how some enjoy the moment and others merely project their own personalities onto him. Also very engaging is Maneos' ability to describe the stage set in Rome, Florence, Venice and Miami in their own right.
 
In his "Dangerous Liaisons," Laclos used letters to show the destructive gamesmanship of French royal society. Maneos avoids not only the Laclos trap of an ironic stand ex cathedra but also static interiority such as one sees in, say, Huysman's fictionalized account of a decadent scholar, "Against Nature." As vigorously athletic as he is a lover and a poet, Gabriele exercises a Byronic appeal: He begins to have certain dealings with shady characters that touch on criminal law and plans an uprising and military attack in the Eastern Mediterranean. (Gabriele writes to Odysseus: "If nothing else, we will die . . . disproving Auden's famous saying, `Poetry makes nothing happens.'" Later, "Show me a man's heroes, and I will show you his soul, and if he has no heroes, you have revealed everything." In short, the man of action is poetic in his self-understanding: "History is not a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken, but rather, a glorious tale which I wish to be cast in.")
 
The trajectory of Gabriele's time of self-exploration, self-creation, and self-fulfillment leads to a conclusion of the novella that makes one wonder what further adventures and loves such a life already richly lived and loved will have, wherever in the world Gabriele finds himself (with Odysseus on the run from government agents or criminals? as a Felix Krull-like confidence man? as a Byronic hero finding the next injustice to set right?). "Italian Pleasures" will bear rereading until the necessary sequel comes along. "The Pleasure! The Pleasure!"
 
 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0985228105

Views: 5

Tags: Gabriele, Italian, Maneos, Odysseus, Pane, Paterkallos, Pietros, Pleasures, The, of

Comment

You need to be a member of CulturalBook to add comments!

Join CulturalBook

© 2013   Created by Hem of CulturalBook.

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service