Spirit of Place: books about Lisbon, Portugal or New York City
January 22, 2012 6:53 AM Subscribe
My parents will be traveling to Lisbon, Portugal in the coming months and would like suggestions for books to read before their trip. We were talking about this and were trying to come up for the equivalent set of books for someone visiting New York as well. What should they read?
It is fairly easy to find guide books about areas but more difficult to find good history, literature, biography or memoirs that really describe/"get" a place: atmosphere, people, scene, culture, music, and so on.
What are these books for Lisbon (or Portugal as a whole) and for New York City?
(my parents have access to a clutch of bookstores as well as a university library system, so feel free to suggest out of print as well as easily available)
It is fairly easy to find guide books about areas but more difficult to find good history, literature, biography or memoirs that really describe/"get" a place: atmosphere, people, scene, culture, music, and so on.
What are these books for Lisbon (or Portugal as a whole) and for New York City?
(my parents have access to a clutch of bookstores as well as a university library system, so feel free to suggest out of print as well as easily available)
Response by poster: Examples, for NYC, are Power Broker Caro's book on Robert Moses, Call it Sleep by Roth, Manhatta by Sanderson, and Red Tails in Love.
posted by sciencegeek at 7:41 AM on January 22, 2012
posted by sciencegeek at 7:41 AM on January 22, 2012
Best answer: Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier (nom de plume of Swiss philosopher Peter Bieri) seems in order. Amazon link. Reviews link (very mixed reviews, I enjoyed it - Salazar regime backdrop for de Prado's history very informative).
posted by likeso at 8:26 AM on January 22, 2012
posted by likeso at 8:26 AM on January 22, 2012
Best answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Siege_of_Lisbon
posted by critzer at 8:57 AM on January 22, 2012
posted by critzer at 8:57 AM on January 22, 2012
Best answer: The Cardoso Pires book "Lisbon: Logbook" is what you want. I could swear I saw a bilingual version of it somewhere.
The Italian Tabucchi is married to a Portuguese woman and he has had a sort of love affair with the city ever since. His Pereira maintains gives you an interesting overview of a period of Portugal's history which is still ingrained in the national psyche.
Coincidentally, both of these are mentioned in Vila-Matas' Montano's Malady on the Lisbon leg of the narrator's travels. Vila-Matas wrote the best description of Lisbon I have ever read: Lisbon is nothing never ever. Lisbon is for crying, pure destiny and weeping, fado and light of tears. But at the same time is a radical immersion in joy. "I see you once again, / city of my dreadfully lost childhood / Sad and happy city where I dream again". It is not the white city that a mistaken Swiss thought he saw, but a blue city of cheerful invented nostalgia.
Having said that, Fernando Pessoa would be your best guide (and he did write a guidebook) but reading all his poetry would would be a very lateral way of getting into the spirit of the city - even though he is the most Lisbonite of all authors. So, if you read The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, you'll tick Lisbon, Pessoa and Saramago (the only Portuguese Nobel of Literature winner) in one go.
If getting the people's way of thinking and general psychology is what you also aim for, I'd advise The Labyrinth of Saudade by Eduardo Lourenço but I can't find a translation. This one by the same author looks pretty good too: This Little Lusitanian House: Essays on Portuguese Culture. He's pretty good at decoding the national mythology, the Portuguese melancholy at the loss of a great empire, the psychological inheritance of decades of dictatorship, etc.
For a flavor of another ghost hovering above the Portuguese sense of identity (Portugal's Colonial War in the 60's), you can't get any better than António Lobo Antunes' The Land at the End of the World, partly set in Lisbon too.
For a 19th century tour of the city (which is rather fun as most places/streets/buildings mentioned in the novel still exist), Eça de Queirós is your best bet with maybe Cousin Bazilio.
What about movies ( she asked, since most of the books she'd recommend don't seem to have been translated...)?
Wim Wenders Lisbon Story is pretty good and has soundtrack by a very Portuguese Madredeus (in the sense that they appropriated quite a bit from old musical traditions to produce their sound.) If you watch old portuguese comedies and mention it to the natives they will love you. These were wildly popular and some catch phrases are still used today. A canção de lisboa is the most popular one and it's available!
*disclaimer: I am a Lisbon native and my opinions are horribly biased. These are not all exactly easy reads. An easier read and a very entertaining book on history and culture was written by a British writer: The First Global Village: How Portugal Changed the World.
posted by lucia__is__dada at 9:26 AM on January 22, 2012 [6 favorites]
The Italian Tabucchi is married to a Portuguese woman and he has had a sort of love affair with the city ever since. His Pereira maintains gives you an interesting overview of a period of Portugal's history which is still ingrained in the national psyche.
Coincidentally, both of these are mentioned in Vila-Matas' Montano's Malady on the Lisbon leg of the narrator's travels. Vila-Matas wrote the best description of Lisbon I have ever read: Lisbon is nothing never ever. Lisbon is for crying, pure destiny and weeping, fado and light of tears. But at the same time is a radical immersion in joy. "I see you once again, / city of my dreadfully lost childhood / Sad and happy city where I dream again". It is not the white city that a mistaken Swiss thought he saw, but a blue city of cheerful invented nostalgia.
Having said that, Fernando Pessoa would be your best guide (and he did write a guidebook) but reading all his poetry would would be a very lateral way of getting into the spirit of the city - even though he is the most Lisbonite of all authors. So, if you read The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, you'll tick Lisbon, Pessoa and Saramago (the only Portuguese Nobel of Literature winner) in one go.
If getting the people's way of thinking and general psychology is what you also aim for, I'd advise The Labyrinth of Saudade by Eduardo Lourenço but I can't find a translation. This one by the same author looks pretty good too: This Little Lusitanian House: Essays on Portuguese Culture. He's pretty good at decoding the national mythology, the Portuguese melancholy at the loss of a great empire, the psychological inheritance of decades of dictatorship, etc.
For a flavor of another ghost hovering above the Portuguese sense of identity (Portugal's Colonial War in the 60's), you can't get any better than António Lobo Antunes' The Land at the End of the World, partly set in Lisbon too.
For a 19th century tour of the city (which is rather fun as most places/streets/buildings mentioned in the novel still exist), Eça de Queirós is your best bet with maybe Cousin Bazilio.
What about movies ( she asked, since most of the books she'd recommend don't seem to have been translated...)?
Wim Wenders Lisbon Story is pretty good and has soundtrack by a very Portuguese Madredeus (in the sense that they appropriated quite a bit from old musical traditions to produce their sound.) If you watch old portuguese comedies and mention it to the natives they will love you. These were wildly popular and some catch phrases are still used today. A canção de lisboa is the most popular one and it's available!
*disclaimer: I am a Lisbon native and my opinions are horribly biased. These are not all exactly easy reads. An easier read and a very entertaining book on history and culture was written by a British writer: The First Global Village: How Portugal Changed the World.
posted by lucia__is__dada at 9:26 AM on January 22, 2012 [6 favorites]
*bookmarking furiously*
Wonderful, lucia! Night Train gave me a taste for more (authentic) literature about Lisbon and Portugal. Thank you!
posted by likeso at 9:59 AM on January 22, 2012
Wonderful, lucia! Night Train gave me a taste for more (authentic) literature about Lisbon and Portugal. Thank you!
posted by likeso at 9:59 AM on January 22, 2012
Best answer: Rem Koolhaas' Delirious New York is a great NYC book, especially the chapter about Coney Island.
posted by Ragged Richard at 10:15 AM on January 22, 2012
posted by Ragged Richard at 10:15 AM on January 22, 2012
Another vote for Pereira Maintains. The Lisbon it describes may no longer exist, but it does a good job of recreating a version of one that did.
posted by Hartster at 10:58 AM on January 22, 2012
posted by Hartster at 10:58 AM on January 22, 2012
For a flavor of another ghost hovering above the Portuguese sense of identity (Portugal's Colonial War in the 60's), you can't get any better than António Lobo Antunes' The Land at the End of the World, partly set in Lisbon too.
I believe this book is also known in English as South of Nowhere. It sounds like exactly the same book, in any case.
I was actually going to recommend another Antunes novel, The Return of the Caravels, which is generally about the collapse of the empire from those wars, and the 'return' & reintegration of expat colonial citizens (who may never actually been to Portugal in their lives).
One of the back-cover blurbs says that Lobo Antunes is an "heir to the narrative collage technique championed" by the likes of Celine, Faulkner, García Marquez, Joyce, Nabokov, Pynchon, and Calvino which sounds about right. It would be challenging if you were expecting a simple plot-driven novel, because instead it's more of a semi-hallucinatory collection of vignettes that build an overall feel for the spirit of the times.
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:16 PM on January 22, 2012
I believe this book is also known in English as South of Nowhere. It sounds like exactly the same book, in any case.
I was actually going to recommend another Antunes novel, The Return of the Caravels, which is generally about the collapse of the empire from those wars, and the 'return' & reintegration of expat colonial citizens (who may never actually been to Portugal in their lives).
One of the back-cover blurbs says that Lobo Antunes is an "heir to the narrative collage technique championed" by the likes of Celine, Faulkner, García Marquez, Joyce, Nabokov, Pynchon, and Calvino which sounds about right. It would be challenging if you were expecting a simple plot-driven novel, because instead it's more of a semi-hallucinatory collection of vignettes that build an overall feel for the spirit of the times.
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:16 PM on January 22, 2012
« Older How to set up video chat on iPad with Hotmail | How Can I Blow My Sister's Mind in the Big Apple? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by dizziest at 7:26 AM on January 22, 2012