Wonder how close it might actually be? Bright sunny day off Saturday. I walk a bit near Piedras Marcads canyon without quite realizing it. Lunch at Thai Boran while I read the new Andre Aciman book, from FF in UK, hardback $, "Stowaway." It is a short story between boards. Novella? not quite enough? Is he creating a box of chocolates, a cache of jewels, a tray of jellied sweets. Each of his recent stories could be the basis of a screenplay. He knows his audience so well, a savy, knowing YA fairy tale for the sentimental 60-70 year olds. He comes up with quotable lines and easy to admire turns of phrase and thought. Stowaway it turns out is code of sorts for closeted bi/gay married man who commits suicide never having realized his loves or his life. The two figures who chat over coffee for a morning frame the fable, one the older woman, the other the clueless sort of handsome young lawyer the wonderful Paul was secretly in love with. If I let myself criticize too much, it is pretty cloying. Paul the great writer of brilliant journals, now available for discovery.
After lunch I went back out Piedra Marcada canyon and walked to the first view. I thought I was racking up footsteps but not nearly as many as I'd thought. Still it was fun to see the basalt boulders and the glyphs and markings. I wonder if Handke visited here? He would have loved the whole landscape and written about it brilliantly.
Aciman writes well about the nuances of feelings in relationships. And yet now I would look backward into his work and claim that Harvard Square is his best novel, better even than Call Me ByYour Name, because in that one he has sold out or honed his product into a perfect glovetail with the market hand. His memoir about the year in Rome is much more important. Or at least substantial.
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