THE SALINGER OF THE SOUTHWEST . . .

I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks now about W. P. Kinsella’s wonderful baseball novel Shoeless Joe, with its subplot involving protagonist Ray Kinsella persuading notoriously reclusive author J. D. Salinger to accompany him on his whimsical journey to, ultimately, northern Minnesota in search of baseball footnote Archibald “Moonlight” Graham. “Are you kidnapping me?” Salinger asks Ray, who has cornered “Jerry” in the driveway of his secluded home in Windsor, Vermont:

“Oh, please, that’s such an awful word. I’m sorry. I planned things so differently. I wanted to convince you to come with me. I never wanted to have to do this . . .”
00“Then you are.”
00“I just want to take you for a drive. I have tickets for a baseball game. A baseball game,” I say again. . . .
00“And if I don’t?” . . .
00What can I possibly say? I am inarticulate as a teenager at the end of a first date, standing in the glare of the porch light, a father hulking behind the curtains.

In Field of Dreams, the disappointingly diluted movie version of the novel, the Salinger figure is replaced by a character named Terence “Terry” Mann, played by James Earl Jones (who in my estimation is always really just playing James Earl Jones—yawn . . .). Lamely-conceived and lamely executed, this substitution was prompted (or so I understand) by the fear—or the threat—that visually representing the intensely private Salinger on the big screen would result in a lawsuit that verbally representing him in the pages of the novel could not.

So . . . did I have in mind that scene, or scenario, from the novel when I headed off to Santa Fe a few weeks ago, having told various people that my purpose in going there was “to stalk Cormac McCarthy”? Well . . .

Well, McCarthy is in the headlines these days thanks to the release, just yesterday, of the movie adaptation of his relentlessly bleak post-apocalyptic novel The Road. And part of the McCarthy story in newspapers and newsmagazines involves his Salinger-like reclusiveness, his retreating to the outskirts of Santa Fe where he hunkers down—or bunkers down in pre-apocalyptic fashion—far from the madd(en)ing crowd of paparazzi, autograph seekers, and other celebrity hounds. Well, it ain’t necessarily so; in fact, last week The Wall Street Journal published a very engaging interview—or extracts from a conversation—with McCarthy and film director John Hillcoat, conducted in San Antonio, thus giving the lie to McCarthy’s reputed utter reclusiveness. Anyway, I haven’t seen the film yet . . .

. . . but I have seen Cormac McCarthy.

I don’t want to give away too many specific details of my “sighting” him because I don’t want to detract from his right to privacy. I’ll just mention that whenever I travel, one of the ways I get my bearings in a new city or town is by mining the Yellow Pages for a list of used bookstores that becomes my connect-the-dots map of wherever I happen to be. In Sante Fe, I managed to get to only two of the stores on my list. In the first one, I had a great visit with the proprietor, Henry: we chatted about everything under the southwest sun . . . including how, as Henry put it, “Cormac will come in here and sit down and talk about anything and everything . . . except about being an author.” And he added: “And he won’t sign books.”

From that bookstore on North Guadalupe Street, I walked about ten minutes up through The Plaza (the heart of Santa Fe) to East Palace Street. Arriving at the bookshop there just before closing time, I had just begun to browse when I heard a voice talking with the proprietor and his assistant about “the Institute” (that is, the Santa Fe Institute, which I knew McCarthy is associated with). Could it be . . . ? I wondered, though I already knew the answer: I had recently re-watched Cormac McCarthy’s interview on Oprah . . . and the voice was unmistakably his. Just to be sure, I double-checked the physical person standing three feet away from me against the author photo in a copy of The Crossing that I pulled off a shelf . . .

So . . . did I pull a Ray Kinsella and try to kidnap him? I just want to take you for a drive . . .

No. I left him alone, though as soon as he left the shop, I confirmed with Nick and Pat, the proprietor and his assistant, that I had indeed had a close encounter with America’s second-most elusive and reclusive author. I returned to the shop the next day to browse some more and Pat told me “you played it just right”—had I “outed” McCarthy, he explained, I would have created a very awkward moment indeed! He also mentioned that McCarthy is not quite as reclusive as everyone believes: because no one expects to see him, he is actually able to “hide in plain sight” . . .

So did I really go to Sante Fe to stalk Cormac McCarthy? Of course not. I went there to scout out possible relocation destinations for the Witness Protection Program, should I ever be (un)lucky enough, on my travels, to bump into fugitive South Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, high on the roster of America’s Most Wanted. I used to see him out walking around Castle Island when I lived in Southie years ago. I think I’d recognize him anywhere . . . though I doubt that I’d find him in a used bookstore . . .

ITALIAN SEASONINGS

Yesterday I ventured into Boston’s North End not for a Mediterranean dining experience—my usual reason for visiting that enclave—but for a relatively rare literary event in that otherwise culturally rich community. The event, held at the local branch of the Boston Public Library, was a reading by Canadian novelist Nino Ricci, whose most recent novel, The Origin of Species, was awarded Canada’s highest literary recognition, the Governor General’s Award. But Ricci was in the North End to read not from that novel (which will be released in the U.S. by Other Press in the Spring of 2010) but from his first novel, The Book of Saints (originally published in Canada as Lives of the Saints), which won the Governor General’s Award back in 1990.

While I have known Ricci’s name for a good decade-and-a-half, I had not read any of his work until a couple of weeks ago, when I tossed The Book of Saints into my carry-on bag as I headed out the door for an overseas flight—an apt choice, as it is truly a transporting novel. Set in the fictionalized southern Italian village of Valle de Sole in 1960, it dramatizes the scandal that grows around Cristina, a young mother who becomes pregnant again after her husband has emigrated to North America for work. Narrated from the first-person perspective of her young son Vittorio Innocente, the novel records in rich detail the texture of life in the village—not just its physical properties but more importantly the social fabric that would enwrap Cristina and Vittò and suffocatingly define them by the mother’s indiscretion. Compellingly plotted and beautifully written (and tastefully seasoned with Italian phrases throughout), The Book of Saints is thoroughly engaging—really one of the most satisfying novels I have read this year. I was happy to learn that the novel is the first volume of a trilogy: I look forward to tracking Vittò’s story further in the sequels, In a Glass House and Where She Has Gone.

An unexpected bonus at yesterday’s reading was the screening of a couple of video clips from Lives of the Saints, the made-for-TV movie adaptation of the trilogy. While Ricci admitted that the movie takes great liberties with the original narratives, it nonetheless brings the physical world of the books to life in visually pleasing ways—not the least of which is Sophia Loren, whose star power led to the creation of a role in the film that does not exist in the books. Interestingly, though, Ricci shared with yesterday’s audience that when he was writing The Book of Saints and imagining into literary life the strong character of Cristina, he had the person of Sophia Loren in his mind’s eye.

Anyway . . . I am so taken by Nino Ricci’s writing—and was so taken by his reading yesterday as well—that I hope to bring him to UMass Boston for a reading when he returns to the area to promote the U.S. edition of The Origin of Species in April.

In the meantime . . . while I read Ricci’s novel on my transatlantic flight to London a couple of weeks ago, I read another Italy-centered book on my return flight from Paris a week later. Pietro Grossi’s Fists fell, almost literally, into my hands from a crowded shelf in the legendary Shakespeare & Company bookshop in the Latin Quarter right on the Seine: with the reviewers’ blurbs declaring it “A perfect book” and “The greatest addition to Italian literature for a very long time,” I decided to give it a chance. Originally published in Italian as Pugni in 2006 and just released by Pushkin Books in a translation by Howard Curtis, this gathering of three short stories—“Boxing,” “Horses,” and “The Monkey”—is truly exquisite. In one sense, as narratives involving young men coming-of-age, the stories read like parables. But they are so gracefully composed and so winningly developed that they ultimately sit between the covers of this beautifully produced book (I must confess my weakness for French flap covers!) as enduring works of finely crafted and fully realized literature.