Poet, novelist, memoirist and all-around wonderful writer Wallis Wilde-Menozzi joins us on this episode of The Virtual Memories Show to talk about her two new books, The Other Side of the Tiber: Reflections on Time in Italy and Toscanelli's Ray: A Novel. It's a great conversation about the American experience in Italy over 40 years. Ms. Wilde-Menozzi possesses both a poet's sensibility for beautiful, lyrical language and a keen eye that carefully observes the character of Italy, its populace, and its art. I highly recommend The Other Side of the Tiber; it's a gorgeous, haunting book (I haven't read Toscanelli yet, so I can't vouch for it).
The Virtual Memories Show
Season 3, Episode 10 - Eternity is Music that Plays
(upbeat music) - Welcome to The Virtual Memory Show. You're listening to a podcast about books in life, not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, Gil Roth. I just got back from Toronto about five hours ago. My wife and I went up for a long weekend to coincide with the Toronto Comic Arts Festival because I'm a gigantic nerd. And it was a really, really fantastic trip this time. I got in one podcast interview, but also got to meet some really good artists and other creators, as well as just interesting people. Toronto is a wonderful city. If you're in the Northeast and you haven't gotten a chance to go up there, you should give it a shot sometime. Unfortunately, we were there during apparently the invasion of Ming the Merciless. The weather would literally change from a downpour to sunny to hail in the span of five minutes. And there was no rhyme or reason. You just had to carry umbrellas, raincoats, shorts, everything else you could. It was a pretty amazing and strange phenomenon. But yeah, had a good time in Toronto and have this wonderful podcast awaiting you. Well, why don't we get started? One of the great things about this show or doing the show has been the expanding network of people I've gotten to meet. One of the guys I interviewed a few months ago, Willard Spiegelman, turned me on to our current guest, Wallace Wilde Manazzi, a poet, memoirist and novelist who has spent most of the last 40 years living in Italy. She's an American. And Wallace sent me her two new books that are coming out this month. The other side of the Tiber, Reflections on Time in Italy, and Toscanelli's Ray, a novel. The first one is a nonfiction work. Very much a collection of essays that border on memoir. It's a really wonderful piece of writing. She brings a very amazing poetic sensibility, but also this really great observational eye for the culture and society around her in Italy. In fact, we are going to listen to a sample from the book right now. Visiting Rome, I rarely get much further than the ancient Romans. This attraction was real from the moment I decided to stay. Still more riveting than was the beauty and vitality of even earlier times, times not obscured completely by the Romans. In the early years, at least for short periods, I was content just reveling in what remained of the Etruscan's. The beauty and apparent sincerity of Etruscan art, its portrayal of sacredness, as energy possessed by all living things, held warm and appealing revelations in comparison to the powerful rational definitions and techniques of the Greeks and Romans that were the basis of the Renaissance. The balance between life and death that animated Etruscan images was not about rational learning. The smiling, life-sized terracotta couple that occupies a central place in the Etruscan Museum inside of the Villa Julia, Pope Giulio III's palace, was a favorite spot of mine to encounter this view. The woman, wearing pointed reddish clay slippers and the man, framed by an amusing pointed beard and bare feet, rest their arms on each other's shoulders as the ageless pair look out into a dimension of life that assumes there's something to see in the invisible. Their bright gaze imprints a feeling for this world and the next. Tell me, I always wanted to whisper and then following their eyes apparent focus, I realized that their expression answers that question. Their complicity as they gaze at death precedes all operas and heroic areas about lovers and their tragic separations. No sand pit or trap door here, no last judgment or flames. In their illuminated faces, Yates glittering eyes dance with serenity and connectedness. Eternity is music that plays. Full of anticipation, their reclining bodies tilted in part to a sitting position suggest a life of physical closeness, of love making that bound them in satisfaction. Women in Etruscan times operated in society on terms of equality unknown anywhere else for centuries. This luminous couple knew each other well on earth. - I think that was just beautiful. So that comes from the other side of the Tiber, which was published by Ferrar Strauss and Gero. And Ms. Wildia Manazzi wanted me to mention that Jonathan Galassi, her editor there, was pivotal in getting this book together and making it a reality for which I'm quite thankful. Now, Toss Canelli's Ray, which I haven't had a chance to read yet, is her novel about life in Florence over the course of a single day. She'll tell you all about it during the interview. That came from Cadmus Press, and that was published by a gentleman named Jeffrey Miller. As somebody who used to be a small press publisher, I'm very happy that there are still people in this world who treasure really wonderful prose like this. So I'm very thankful to have been introduced to Ms. Wildia Manazzi and I'm thankful to Willard Spiegelman for coming up with the idea of my interviewing her and for her making time for us. And now the virtual memory show interview with Wallace Wildia Manazzi. (upbeat music) My guest today on the virtual memory show is Wallace Wildmanazzi. Oh my gosh, okay, and I was afraid of mispronouncing the last part, that's amazing. Manazzi, yeah. Manazzi, I was happy to get that right. Who was a poet and the author of two upcoming books, The Other Side of the Tiber and Toss Canelli's Ray. I've read one of them and not the other, so we're gonna start with a conversation about the other side of the Tiber, which has a subtitle of Reflections on Time in Italy. Wallace, can you sort of tell us about the origins of the book and its nature? The origins are actually, I had published a memoir in 1997 called Mother tongue, an American life in Italy, which was about my years of living in Parma, I moved in the 1980s with an Italian husband to his city when he became a professor of biology there. I continued writing poetry, and the thing was that my poetry at a certain point, my lines were so long that I realized that in some ways I was in prose, and so the next book I wrote was Toss Canelli's Ray, which was a novel, and the reason I did it was it was a relief to leave nonfiction, which holds one to very specific truths and very kind of strict attitudes towards fact, and I thought it'd be a relief to write a novel, so I did. But the novel had a very different trajectory in terms of finding a publisher, and it wandered for quite a while, and so it seemed to me it was time to do something else, which is why I turned to another book of nonfiction, which was the other side of the Taiber. - Would you describe the other side of the Taiber as a memoir or as essays? To me they seem very essayistic, unless there's certainly personal bends to them, but they also seem to touch on much larger themes about Italy, about human nature, and about art. If you were describing it to someone, say a podcast audience, how would you characterize this book? - I'd say you read the book right. I think I didn't want to write a memoir in a literal sense. I was much more interested in exploring reality, and in exploring reality in some ways, how it impacted my sense of self, living in a society. One is always part of an interaction and a dialogue, but I was interested in trying to show Italy as a set of, I don't know, postcards that didn't have much to do with what a person perhaps perceives when they come in on a quick trip and are blown away, either by its beauty or by its food. I wanted to describe in some ways what it feels like to live in Italy and how, as an American living there, I felt myself transformed. - And what brought you to Italy, initially? - Initially, initially, as I say in the other side of the Tiber, it was a place I went when I was looking for a kind of safe landing after a marriage, which was difficult, which I left in England, and I just set out rather blindly for a place that seemed like a good, easy place to settle for a while. I was interested in being a writer, and Italy seemed a good place to perhaps make that happen. That was how I settled there in the first place, and Tiber describes a great deal of my life in Rome, my years in the '60s when I was living there and also exploring this marvelous city, which has attracted people for a couple thousand years. But when I finally returned to Italy in a permanent way, it was because I had married an Italian who I had met at Stanford University in California. - And that brought you to Palma? - Yes. - Since my only Italy experience is two five day trips to Milan, during which I spent most of the time covering trade shows, how would you characterize Palma versus Rome? - Well, there's almost no comparison, it seems to me. Although in a funny way, Palma was a Roman colony. Palma has been in existence since Roman times as a city, but it was also occupied at the time of the Terra Mara at the Bronze Age, their Paleolithic settlements. They are so in terms of age, there's not a great deal of difference between Rome and Palma. But in every other way, I think Rome is sprawling. It has a history that has affected the world. Palma too has its own history, it has its painters, it has Palma Genino, Correjo, it has its musicians like Verde, it has its conductors, Tuscanini, it has its food, Palma Genino, it has prosciutto, but it's a small place. The population is about 200,000 people. And the people who organized it and left their mark, the Berbins probably, the Farnese and the Austrians, make Palma a little European court, whereas Rome is the eternal city. - I know it's coincidence that the two books happen to be coming out in the same month. Do the other side of the Tiber and Tuscanelli's ray compliment each other, do you feel? I know you said you wrote one in the wake of the next, but I think they do it in a way. I think they do, Tuscanelli's ray is set in Florence. So it's another city again. I know Florence very, very well, because I've had a friend there for 40 years. And so in terms of familiarity with the city, I know it quite deeply. The similarity would probably be, Tuscanelli's ray is set in 1994. I want to deconstruct Florence. So I have a set of characters, starting with a Nigerian prostitute. I have an Italian tree scientist. I have Florentine peasants. I have an American sand therapist. I have an Etruscan who's buried in the garden. And I want to bring them all together in a time period which shows the variety of different points of view, actually, that exist in Florence. I wanted to write a novel which has, again, an impact of sort of breaking up that attitude of a novel like "Room with a View" or some kind of Anglo-Saxon view of living in an Italian city and feeling that we dominate the plot, we describe how the Italian characters are all a little dark or sleazy or whatever it is. And we're the innocents. I wanted to write a book which put us all on the same plane. And nobody's story dominated. So it's a polyphonic novel. That's why it took a while to get it published. - Now, who do you consider your influences and those terms in fiction writing? - Well, it was my son-in-law who's Russian who said, "Oh, it's Dostoevsky who wrote the polyphonic novel." Then it's probably somebody like Milan Kundera who writes quite a bit about that kind of thing. I read the other day that the idea of putting characters in different places is becoming more and more common. So you have a character from Nigeria, a character from Paris, a character from America. And whether it's airplanes, whether it's internet, whatever it is, we're bringing people onto the same plane from very, very different places. I'm not sure that's polyphonic. I really made a huge effort to not let anyone's value system be the one that prevail. They all, it's a modern novel in that sense. It's existential. All the characters have problems to solve. And nobody's problem is really more significant than anybody else's. And yet shoulder to shoulder, these are very different people. - Even the debt of Truskin? - Even the debt of Truskin. - Okay, that's just, I worry there's gonna be more problems after I drive this. - That's a real problem, but she doesn't get resurrected. She only gets excavated. - Oh, okay. Now, one of the things I found interesting reading the other side of the Tiber was the inclusion of black and white photography throughout the piece, which, and you address him at one point in the book, reminded me very much of W.G. Seabald's fiction, I guess. We never quite know how to characterize Seabald's books. What influence has Seabald had on you at all? Or had you read him before beginning the other side of the Tiber? - Well, it's a wonderful connection. I actually wrote a novel which I haven't published, which I wrote way before Seabald, which was set in Rome. And in that novel, I had the fictional characters. I interviewed the characters on whom those fictional episodes were based. So I had interviews with the real characters. I had the fictional novel. And in between, I had photographs of the real places. And I think this feeling that Seabald has too, which is this, it's partly memory at what point is memory fiction at what point is it fact that what, it's both. - And what point did you reach a conclusion on that? - Did I, well, I, being from the Midwest, and as I say, in the Tiber, I tend to believe that there is a distinguishable line between fact and fiction quite often. And I tend to think that when you're writing a certain kind of book, one has an obligation to try and make it true in a different way than you do when you're writing a book, which is defined as a novel and inventing. I do think, you know, there is a continuum, but there are also ways ones can distinguish differences that I think send you on different courses. And the difference between writing something fictional or non-fictional for me has probably not blurred, or I haven't been able to, I should say, not blur it, but I haven't been able to dominate it the way Seabald did. I think, you know, how he mixed it up in the end, he had a very powerful mind that put it all in the cauldron and it came out that way. And I don't know what is fact and fiction, and I think he had, that was part of what he was trying to tell that wasn't my particular narrative focus. - It did strike me in Tiber that their inclusion of those photos while it's meant to add a sense of irisimilitude, I suppose, could serve that somewhat subversive purpose of really leading you along thinking, oh yes, this must be real. I've seen photographs of this, and yet we're taking her at her word, you know, that this is how things are in Italy or this was her experience there. - Nice, good, good, good. The photographs I had were, again, they weren't really an afterthought, but they were taken with this very, very instantaneous kind of approach to taking photos and all the way, and I was very lucky that FSD was interested in having me include photos, and I found they were another way of sort of emphasizing certain themes and subliminally, you know, sounding different notes through the book, and they let me do it, and the person who designed the book worked so thoughtfully with me in terms of placing them, and I think they were fun to do, and I think it does make the book more interesting in the sense of maybe it gives you another place where your mind also can go in your own direction. - And in fact, they lead to a story within Tiber about getting a certain photograph. If you can maybe tell us a little about that, the instance where you had to get into the gallery to shoot? - Sure, sure, sure. It's interesting, in all things, the book, I think says that in many ways, is the thing that people find sometimes to make fun of Italians because they're whatever, they're messy or they're slow or things are inefficient or whatever, although I'm not so sure, that's all true, but at any rate, Italians in other things are remarkably flexible and generous and creative and inventive, and this was another example of that kind of thing, which was I had hoped to take some pictures of Michelangelo's statues, and it is true of most artworks, you need some kind of permission or you need, and often the rules are quite different and so on, so there were rules for taking the Michelangelo stuff, but I was in Florence and I was also against a deadline, I didn't have much time to really take these photos if I was going to take them. And typically, Italian, the situation in the end was resolved by the director saying he was very sympathetic to the project, to whatever, to me, he was more than willing to do it, but the only way he could do it is he could let me in on the day the whole museum was closed and I would pay the 30 euros for the right to take the photos and I would have to say I wouldn't take photos other than the ones we had agreed on, but he'd be happy to do it, and so I went on the day rang one of those typical little side doors that was caught into the wall where you have to bend in half of your tall to get in and there was somebody there who handed me my permit and I was led into the academia and the guards said it will be outside the door, but basically I was-- - Don't break anything. - That's right, and you can't, and I had agreed to come just with a simple camera and no ladders, no flash, no extensions, no whatever, but I had, and when I went in, I thought since I had all these constrictions which were all very reasonable, but I thought, well, I'd probably be done in half an hour instead. I was there for an hour and a half, nobody disturbed me. I just, the statues are placed quite high, even I'm tall, but even for a tall person I was still kind of shooting above an angle above my head and the time just disappeared. I didn't have enough time after an hour and a half and I was quite disoriented by the time I finished. - In terms of the art and the experience and not having anyone around you at the time? - Exactly, of course, one is aware of in Florence or in any museum that basically lots of people are around you and we're all inoculated, I think, in good ways to be able to enjoy art without having to be alone, but the fact of being alone suddenly opened up a dimension of experience that I wouldn't have imagined exactly until it took place. - You get a sense of vertigo, keeping that sea ball theme going? - I had, I wrote in the acknowledgments, I wrote, I had, there is this thing called the Stendall syndrome, which was somebody, it wasn't, Stendall didn't give it the name, but it was about people who came to Italy, stood in front of things like the David and then collapsed or swooned or fainted, just overwhelmed by the beauty or the experience. So I became quite disoriented, in a way, after I'd been there for an hour and a half, and I did, as I wrote, I did hear these sounds, which, as I said, probably just sounds like things that keep the moisture at the right level or tell, - And the security camera, I think you mentioned also. - Yeah, security cameras, but I could hear these kind of noises that also contributed somehow to the vertigo, 'cause it was so silent, and then there were these hums, and then there was Michelangelo, and it was an experience that actually just completely eliminated a sense of time completely. - Do you feel, or did you feel transformed? You talk about transformation quite often in terms of character, what lasting experience that have on you? - Did that, as I wrote, it sort of revealed this world that I think is. I said it, I felt I was in his world, which is our world, which is a world which is halfway towards another world. I felt the enormous power of what he was doing, but I also felt this sense of process, the fact that we're becoming, the fact that nothing is quite finished, the fact that it's very hard to capture what life is. - And one of the themes that comes up several times in the book is visiting John Keats' final home, I suppose, something I've touched on a few other episodes that I wanna talk to you about, is that nature of literary pilgrimages, of going to these landmarks of writers or artists whose work you've come to adore over the years. Besides Keats, you also have the Caravaggio and Ashbury section in the book, which I found pretty illuminating, even though I'm more on when it comes to Ashbury, but at least it helped create a contrast between those two artists. Do you find yourself engaging in those sort of pilgrimages in your, well, in your non-Italy life, were there places you've gone to to visit the homes or resting places or other great landmarks of authors or poets? - Here in America, you mean? Well, I certainly did when I lived. Everybody did Emily Dickinson the world I was in, and I think one of the places I go here, which is I don't, if I think of the man, it's hard to say, I feel the same thing, but of course, the Frick Museum. The idea that you can see where somebody lived and then see art in that context, I think is a very thrilling experience whenever. - It's one of my favorite places in New York, certainly. - I just went up there because they had the Pierre de la Francesque. They have a special small exhibit, so I went up to see it. Yeah, it's a wonderful museum. Yes, I think it's an important thing if you can see the birthplace or the some physical space that influenced the person. I think it's, and I hope, if I'm here in America for more time, that I'll be able to sort of return to that kind of activity. - And to which poets do you feel the most affinity without saying influence? - Well, there's so, so, so many, but in recent times, as women have become published more frequently and have become sort of a line of work, that where one has sort of given birth to another person, given voice to another person, I think somebody like Louise Gook, who was just published, I think, as, I don't know, I haven't gotten the volume, but I think, because I think I have them all separately. I don't know, I-- - Oh, the large collected work of her? - Yes, yes. I think she's an extraordinary poet and has gone, in her recent years, she's settled some of her work in Europe. I think poets that I really, I think, is it trans, I don't know how you pronounce it, transhimer, transhimer? - Oh, the one who won the, a transhimer? - Yes, transhimer, I think he's an extraordinary poet. Robert Bly has been translating him and has just published a book of their correspondence. I think somebody like H.D. is somebody I return to quite often, but I could, I've written an essay, there was a point in Italy where I broke my arm in Parma, a sort of fainted and woke up and Dante was in my head and so I returned to him and to say that I discovered anything in him. Again, hardly means anything. I mean, he's one of, it's just a, it's a book that will never be exhausted and has fed people. We have that new translation now. The Clive James translation just came out. I just bought it, but I, okay, this is my moment of embarrassment. I have to admit, I've never actually read the Divine Comedy and I know, I know, I need to spend time this summer sitting down and reading and I thought, well, I love James's poetry and his essays. I'll make that my first stab at working through the comedy. - That seems a wonderful, worthy activity and you're absolutely, you know, when he says he woke up in the middle of his life in this dark world, you're just at the right age to start asking yourself what that's all about. - I've been asking that for a long time, actually. One of the questions that I have about Tiber in particular is what Americans don't get about Italy and what we didn't get about Italy when you first encountered it. - Oh, good question. - It's actually two good questions in mind, but go on. - Yeah. - I think this is true, it's become very true for me, living back here is for longer periods of time. It's very hard for us to ever see what we don't know and if we live in one place, basically, that's what we bring to any other place. And instead of you are, for one reason or another, you have lived enough in another place so that it's not that you remain on a surface where you're a colonial sort of person, but you actually have to change in relation to, because you understand and empathize so much with actually the difference. Then you begin to see that there's an awful lot that we don't get about each other, about each other's cultures and so on. Americans, I think, who come to Italy want to get just it's, and rightly so, it's beauty, it's art, it's delicious food. - In a sort of greatest hits way. Just, you know, get out and see, you know, a checklist of great stuff. - Checklists and people move very, it's quite astounding how many people move very fast through Italy, I mean, they'll see eight or 10 cities in two weeks and so you wonder, but it's all, it is a taste, it is a taste or the people come and just drink a lot of wine or whatever it is, but Italy has a very different mentality. - I think, then, then, I... - I think you're slow food chapter at the end of the timer, not to give away the ending. The slow food that, you know, does talk about that nature of taking time, I suppose. - Taking time, yes, and that's what it is, reflections on time, what we don't get about ourselves, perhaps, is time. And the idea that time is money, which is something we all learn. I don't think we realize how deeply we believe that. I mean, how it affects us just day in and day out in so many ways. I remember, and in Italy, there's a kind of cynicism of time isn't money. I mean, there isn't, there just, maybe there isn't. - Do you see that as a Protestant and Catholic nation split? I mean, you also bring up the importance of communism in terms of real activity in Italy, which would seem to be antithetical to Catholicism, except that both of them seem to have a very different approach to money and the welfare of people than Protestantism or the Protestant work ethic. - Yes, I think-- - That wasn't even in the form of a question, I apologize. - No, that's, that's, you know, it's true. And at a level of generalization, it's absolutely true. I think, I think there's quite a difference in terms of what I would say competition is. Italians, up to, of course, human beings compete and human beings do all sorts of terrible things in competition and so on and so on. But Italians officially still find the idea of competition something that they don't believe, it's a good thing to nourish at some level. They think it brings about mean-spiritedness and a kind of individualism that's not healthy. In schools, they are still doubting the possibility that you could fairly evaluate people at some levels. My husband is, has been on a national committee for the last few years, for the very first time, they're saying that professors will have to be evaluated by some kind of scale with numbers and stuff. And this is 2012, 2011, 2013. And it's fiercely resisted as something that's really positive, that this is progress. So that is such a fundamental difference. I mean, as I said, I could write many books on it to really trickle down on that level of competition and what it means to us as individuals, as people, as how we handle money, how we see taxation, who we should help. All those things, there's quite fundamental differences in the assumptions, I think, of what society is about and what an individual is. - That's part of the vibe I got reading the book. That it felt like a very, it gave me a taste of a culture in a way that I didn't understand previously, which is a great credit on your part, that it really illuminates aspects. I suppose I had some fear that the book would be largely a very poetic take or very artistic take on Italy. And in fact, your level of involvement and explanation of the day-to-day aspects of life, of politics, of the non-artistic world, that we're very illuminating. - The North-South divide in Italy, more or less pronounced in the North-South divide in America. - Again, I haven't been here long enough to know - Coming from Midwestern perspective. - Yeah, yes, I would hate to-- - Is there that level of caricaturing or stereotypic, I guess, that we have in terms of Southern Northern? - Northern, yes. I think it's interesting and admirable and in other ways kind of disconcerting for me to see that in America, although we've made incredible strides in terms of multicultural, in another way, it's still a very live issue with a lot of very live feelings, whether that's North-South, I'm not so sure, but there's a lot going on here in terms of people holding positions that are often confrontational in terms of where this whole business of multi-ethnicity should be going. Italy has gone through it too in a very different way 'cause they were, they, in some ways, each little region is very different with different history and different people, but in another way, Italians have not had this immigrant issue until rather recently, at least in this period, and the North-South divide is real in Italy. It's real at a verbal level. People will say insulting things. - That are geographically explicit about that. - Yes, be quite, but there's a level of debate which is, I don't know how to explain it because again, I think Italy is stereotyped as people will stop at Berlusconi and say how can this be and how, but on the other hand, there's a level of debate that in some ways is much further out of the box than anything you hear, and I think it's because it's not that an extremist can just talk. An extremist is taken on by somebody who's very, very adept at debate. And night after night after night after night, there's debate on Italian TV which involves active conflict. It isn't polite sort of somebody listens and somebody answers. There's shouting, there's insults. And that can be very annoying and very distracting, but on the other hand, things get said and seen that here sometimes we have a feeling it's all kind of rational and it's all gonna be worked out. Whereas in Italy, I think sometimes the stuff comes out and then people do go on strike there. People do protest, take days off work to organize protests, marching for immigration, marching for this, marching for that. In some ways, there's a deeper sense of injustice and it does kind of reach boiling points where people take to the streets. And friends of mine who've been stationed there as well as my publisher when he's gone over there for vacations sort of marveled over the notion of scheduling your strike and exactly when you're all going to fail to show up to work one day and how different it is than living here in America. You spent so much time in Italy and Rome, what do you think you missed in America particularly or do you think there was? - No, I obviously missed 30 years and at a level of popular culture, I missed a lot of music, a lot of films, when I moved to Europe, there wasn't the internet so one waited for mail. So I've been a New Yorker reader, I've been a New York Review books reader, I get journals, but there was an awful lot of America unmissed. And it's hard to say in two words what I miss, the country's changed a great deal. I can say now because I've been back here more on a very regular basis. I used to come back once a year. And being back on a regular basis, the friendliness, the helpfulness of Americans, the sort of positive spirit, all those things are still in evidence to me. But many of the things that seemed extremely central to our way of life seemed to be very much under pressure. And in some ways seemed to be very hard to express in open ways. There's a lot, I find a lot of reticence on the part of people to really discuss their views openly or if they do discuss them openly, there's very much this checking to find out if you're on the same side before we start. And I think that's a great pity for a democracy. - Did you find that growing up? I mean, your father was a senator, my grandfather, was a senator. That sense of, as I characterize it, high school football of national politics, that you're either red team or blue team and rah rah, was that always as pronounced as it is now in your experience in getting way far a field, I apologize. - Yeah, well, it's hard to generalize. But I grew up, I was born in the '40s, grew up in the '50s and my grandfather was a Republican and we, four children in our family, all turned out to be Democrats, much to my parents dismay, as my mother said, being a Republican was in her blood. But my grandfather in Wisconsin was there for four terms, and he ran as an independent because Wisconsin was a Republican state that was often characterized by conservatism. My grandfather refused to see Senator McCarthy and after that, he was dumped by the Republicans who then voted for a Republican, who would have been more recognizable, I think, to Tea Party people today. So, but my grandfather, I remember when he was defeated in the early '60s by Gaylord Nelson, who was a Democrat, I told my grandfather that I voted for a Democrat and he said that was fine, we should vote our conscience. He was somebody who was still a Senator who had, who believed very much on reaching to the other side of the aisle, that was the phrase then, and that's the way they worked. And I remember my grandfather was head of the Foreign Relations Committee at a certain point and yet he evolved enough so that, ultimately, he opposed the Vietnam War. There was not a feeling so much of ideology, but a feeling of voting, as my grandfather used to say, voting your conscience, but your conscience wasn't a rigid line. Interesting. Three Italian writers or poets who we should read. I was just talking about that with Jonathan Galassie, we were talking about Italian writers and who, I suppose it depends on who you haven't read, you know, because of course, there's so many classics and any literature. So, I was just reading Alessandro Stile's book and he was saying, "Carlo Levy, if you haven't read Christ stopped at Eveli, that's a book you should read. If you haven't read "Family Lexicon" by Natalia Ginsburg, and these, as I said, are fairly early writers, that's a book you should read. Elsa Marante's "History" is a novel that's certainly worth reading. Saviano's book, the Gamora is a popular book that is eye-opening and worth reading. I could, that's giving you a good chunk of my broad knowledge of Italian culture comes from the leopard at this point, which is how the lampaduce, and I'm pretty sure that's not something that I should be extrapolating into, you know, Italian character overall. But, and I always-- It's just beautiful book. Oh, I discovered it two years ago. Thanks to our mutual acquaintance, Willard Spiegelman, he had a piece in the Wall Street Journal that reminded me that I had this book sitting on my shelf for 10 years, and I should take that down and read it. And-- Good for you. It changed my life, I like to believe, but I realize looking at that very Sicilian approach to politics and culture may not be that healthy when I'm trying to, you know, get a greater understanding of Italy overall. Yes, I think, you know, the feeling is, Italians can be intolerant or tolerant. There's a feeling, but there's a feeling that's so much more with that kind of stuff being expressed. It brings, it ultimately brings, I think, it brings us towards a tolerance quite often in Italy. They're the, in this new government, they just have elected, they have the first, she was called the first person of color in the cabinet, and she said, "I'm not the first person of color, I'm a black." And there's always a dialogue going on in Italy. Everybody speaks up in a certain kind of a way, and I think that makes things quite lively, keeps you alive. Is the current novel at all derived from the first novel that you wrote? It isn't. It isn't. I think Tuscanelli's Ray was a novel that struck me at the time that I realized that Italy was changing. We, you know, for the first, when I came to Italy to live in Palma, which was 1981, there were virtually, there were virtually no people other than whites in a city like Palma. There were no foreign languages. There was nothing that was really different than the people who were natives. Whereas even 10 years, this novel is set in '94, and that was when Berlusconi is elected, too, for the first time, but the borders were being penetrated by lots of people, and there was a variety that was coming, and that created a sense of anxiety, and it created a sense that even things like the Italian school system, which have a set curriculum, a national curriculum from north to south, and had never particularly accommodated any difference, other than what, you know, what models should be taught, suddenly they were under a lot of pressure, too, to expand or to consider things in a different way, and they were coping with foreign languages for the first time, children who were arriving in the schools who didn't speak Italian. So it suggested, for me, this crack, which was quite appealing, because I had lived my first 10 years in Palma feeling the wall, feeling there were no cracks in the wall, just feeling that culture was not about to open up or be changed by anything I was bringing to it. Whereas this novel is all about the cracks, and the fact that they're motions that cannot be stopped, they're under way. And Tuscanelli's ray takes place on the solstice. It was a measurement set up by Tuscanelli, who was a 15th century mathematician. He set up this measurement in the cathedral in Florence, and when the ray struck the floor of the meridian, it was to announce the summer solstice, which was then going to be used as part of a measurement, which would work on defining when the spring equinox took place. So I felt this crack, too, was the little hole up in the top of the dome. The little crack was being pushed by this ray, and I saw this ceremony in 1997 in Florence, and somehow I realized that was my novel. I realized I was going to take this arc of time just before the ray hits and try and do something in layers about this changing world. I promise I'll give it a read after the podcast. Thanks. Wallace, Wildee Minazzi, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. [MUSIC] And that was Wallace, Wildee Minazzi. You can find both of our new books, the other side of the Tiber and Tuscanelli's ray, in better bookstores. I can't praise Tiber highly enough. I hope that sample at the beginning of the episode kind of tempts you into buying it. Her website is Wallace, Wildee Minazzi. Wallace, the spell W-A-L-L-I-S, Wildee is W-I-L-D-E-M-E-N-O-Z-Z-I.com. You can also visit the page for this podcast to find the correct spelling. And that was the virtual memories show. You could search for virtual memories on iTunes to find previous episodes or subscribe or rate and review the show. In fact, I'd really appreciate it if you did rate and review things because I like to get an idea of what I'm doing right and wrong in terms of the show. You can also find past episodes at our website, chimeraobscura.com/vm, or at virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com. While you're at chimeraobscura.com, you can also kick in a couple of shekels as my podfather, Mark Marin, puts it, make a little donation to keep the show going, help me get some new microphones, and maybe give me some idea what you think the show is really worth. We're also on Facebook at Facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow. It'll be a new episode every other Tuesday if I have anything to say about it. And I do have to say the next one that's coming is a pretty special one to me. So I hope you come back for that one. Until then, I am Gil Roth, and you are awesome. Keep it that way. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]