Michelle Lovric - News 2007

2007

		December 2007 Sotheby's Preview magazine Michelle Lovric has written a brief analysis of the love letters of Maria Callas to her husband based on the collection of manuscript letters that will be auctioned by Sotheby's in Milan on December 12th. Review in The Independent Michelle Lovric has reviewed Andrea di Robilant's Lucia in the Age of Napoleon for The Independent newspaper, published on October 28th. Click here to read it. The Scotsman newspaper ran a feature on the art of writing love letters, featuring material from Michelle Lovric’s How to Write Love Letters. Glasgow Herald Favourite Places Michelle Lovric wrote an account of her favourite place – Venice and the Madness Museum, for the November 17th edition. Michelle Lovric was interviewed by BBC Radio Wales, REM.fm, the English-language radio station based in Spain, and The Sydney Morning Herald about her book on the World’s Most Unusual Museums. December Italogram You’ll know when you’ve upset someone in Italy … See the Italograms Page December Books Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible Anne Enright The Gathering Lucy Ellmann Dot in the Universe Exhibition of Venetian Proverbs in Calligraphy ITALIAN PASSIONS La passione per la cultura e belleza Italiane The Dundas Street Gallery Edinburgh December 9th – 5th 2007 An Exhibition of paintings, original prints, calligraphy & carvings Andrew McMorrine, Alasdair McMorrine and Marion Roberts are three artists who share a passion for all things Italian and who have worked and studied in Italy over many years. Marion Roberts has established a reputation as a landscape painter and calligrapher. After a career in teaching she set up Orbost gallery in Skye with her husband and, through the gallery sells to private collections in Britain and abroad. Interest in poetry inspires much of her calligraphy which incorporates an elegant quality of line with appropriate decorative details. She works on vellum with gold leaf. The calligraphy in this exhibition is inspired by the work of the writer Michelle Lovric – her anthology Venice, Tales of the City and her novel Carnevale. Marion Roberts has selected 16 Venetian proverbs from these books for a calligraphic and pictorial treatment – examples at left.
San Giorgio in Alga as it is now Aerial photograph by Arturo Colamussi from 'Islands of the Venetian Lagoon'		November 2007 Publishing News Cowgirls, Cockroaches and Celebrity Lingerie: The World's Most Unusual Museums by Michelle Lovric An armchair travel guide to unusual museums. Published by Icon Books on November 1st at £9.99 Buy from Amazon.co.uk November Italogram An almost unavoidable situation in Italy See the Italograms Page Hidden Europe www.hiddeneurope.co.uk Michelle Lovric has written an article about the islands in the Venetian lagoon for the magazine's November issue. The article contrasts the diverse fates of islands in what once was called the Archipelago delle Malattie -the Archipelago of the Maladies that encircles Venice like a shield. San Giorgio in Alga as it was in the late 18th century Etching by Francesco Tironi Ruskin wrote movingly about the island in his Stones of Venice, 1853: The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly named "St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-coloured line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north--a wall of jagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. November Books Harry Bingham This Little Britain Giovanni Battista Meneghini My Wife Maria Callas Sarah Chambers From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender and Politics in Arequipa, Peru 1780-1854 Andrea di Robilant Lucia in the Age of Napoleon Event There will be a sale of Chinese silk jackets, scarves, small antiques, jewellery, home accessories and other items. You can see more about the kind of items that will be available at www.greathaulofchina.com and www.felicitylundberg.co.uk. Great Haul is currently providing merchandise for the Terracotta Warriors exhibition at the British Museum. Ten percent of all the takings will be donated to By Grace, a school and feeding station for AIDS orphans in Africa. VENUE The lobby of Allies and Morrison, 85 Southwark Street, London SE1 0HX DATE Tuesday December 4th, between 12 noon and 6pm HOW TO FIND IT The nearest tubes are Southwark and London Bridge. Buses that pass nearby are the RV1 from Covent Garden and the 381 from Waterloo. The Allies and Morrison office has a very nice café called The Table, which is open to the public. (It won the best ‘Cheap Eats’ section in the 2006 Time Out eating awards.) The Tate Modern (currently showing Louise Bourgeois) is a few steps away.
		October 2007 Publishing News COMING SOON - New book on unusual museums around the world (Icon Books, November 1st 2007, £9.99) October Italogram Everyone has this feeling once in a while, unfortunately. See the Italograms Page October books Tess Gallagher Portable Kisses Feyyaz Fergar A Talent for Shrouds Franco Nencini Florence: The Days of the Flood Sarah Salway Leading the Dance (short stories) Deristhe L. Hoyt Barbara’s Heritage, or, Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters Mary Huestis Pengilly Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, 1885 Denis Diderot The Nun Arcangela Tarabotti Paternal Tyranny A word on wordcounts Sooner or later, somehow, anyhow, I was bound to write a novel. It seems vain to ask why. Men are born with various manias: from my earliest childhood, it was mine to make a plaything of imaginary series of events; and as soon as I was able to write, I became a good friend to the paper-makers. Reams upon reams must have gone to the making of ‘Rathillet,’ ‘The Pentland Rising,’ ‘The King’s Pardon’ (otherwise ‘Park Whitehead’), ‘Edward Daven,’ ‘A Country Dance,’ and ‘A Vendetta in the West’; and it is consolatory to remember that these reams are now all ashes, and have been received again into the soil. I have named but a few of my ill-fated efforts, only such indeed as came to a fair bulk ere they were desisted from; and even so they cover a long vista of years. ‘Rathillet’ was attempted before fifteen, ‘The Vendetta’ at twenty-nine, and the succession of defeats lasted unbroken till I was thirty-one. By that time, I had written little books and little essays and short stories; and had got patted on the back and paid for them - though not enough to live upon. I had quite a reputation, I was the successful man; I passed my days in toil, the futility of which would sometimes make my cheek to burn - that I should spend a man’s energy upon this business, and yet could not earn a livelihood: and still there shone ahead of me an unattained ideal: although I had attempted the thing with vigour not less than ten or twelve times, I had not yet written a novel. All - all my pretty ones - had gone for a little, and then stopped inexorably like a schoolboy’s watch. I might be compared to a cricketer of many years’ standing who should never have made a run. Anybody can write a short story - a bad one, I mean - who has industry and paper and time enough; but not every one may hope to write even a bad novel. It is the length that kills. The accepted novelist may take his novel up and put it down, spend days upon it in vain, and write not any more than he makes haste to blot. Not so the beginner. Human nature has certain rights; instinct - the instinct of self-preservation - forbids that any man (cheered and supported by the consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the miseries of unsuccessful literary toil beyond a period to be measured in weeks. There must be something for hope to feed upon. The beginner must have a slant of wind, a lucky vein must be running, he must be in one of those hours when the words come and the phrases balance of themselves - even to begin. And having begun, what a dread looking forward is that until the book shall be accomplished! For so long a time, the slant is to continue unchanged, the vein to keep running, for so long a time you must keep at command the same quality of style: for so long a time your puppets are to be always vital, always consistent, always vigorous! I remember I used to look, in those days, upon every three-volume novel with a sort of veneration, as a feat - not possibly of literature - but at least of physical and moral endurance and the courage of Ajax. Robert Louis Stevenson The Art of Writing and Other Essays
Valle Zappa, with its unusual Dutch-style hunting lodge built during the 1920s in the Venetian lagoon. One of the places discussed and photographed by Arturo Colamussi in his book Islands of the Venetian Lagoon. (Photograph courtesy of Arturo, with thanks)		September 2007 Italogram The Italogram for this month may come in useful for family members or work colleagues. It's on the Italograms Page Book recommendations Laurie Graham The Importance of Being Kennedy Arturo Colamussi Islands of the Venetian Lagoon, Aerial Guide Giannina Piamonte Litorali ed Isole, Guida della Laguna Veneta Pompeo Molmenti Venice, its individual growth from the earliest beginnings to the fall of the Republic Rodman Philbrick Freak the Mighty Frank Cottrell Boyce Framed
		Villainous news Extract from an essay by Agnes Repplier shows what modern writers of historical fiction face when they wish to create a compleat villain and yet the fashion of the times frowns on this flavoursome creature. Between 1892 and 2007, editors seem to have moved little on this point, and sometimes fail to see the cathartic joys of an out-and-out rotter, both in the writing and in the reading. A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS AMID the universal grayness that has settled mistily down upon English fiction, amid the delicate drab-colored shadings and half-lights which require, we are told, so fine a skill in handling, the old-fashioned reader misses, now and then, the vivid coloring of his youth. He misses the slow unfolding of quite impossible plots, the thrilling incidents that were wont pleasantly to arouse his apprehension, and, most of all, two characters once deemed essential to every novel--the hero and the villain. The heroine is left us still, and her functions are far more complicated than in the simple days of yore, when little was required of her save to be beautiful as the stars. She faces now the most intricate problems of life; and she faces them with conscious self-importance, a dismal power of analysis, and a robust candor in discussing their equivocal aspects that would have sent her buried sister blushing to the wall. There was sometimes a lamentable lack of solid virtue in this fair dead sister, a pitiful human weakness that led to her undoing; but she never talked so glibly about sin. As for the hero, he owes his banishment to the riotous manner in which his masters handled him. Bulwer strained our endurance and our credulity to the utmost; Disraeli took a step further, and Lothair, the last of his race, perished amid the cruel laughter of mankind. But the villain! Remember what we owe to him in the past. Think how dear he has become to every rightly constituted mind. And now we are told, soberly and coldly, by the thin-blooded novelists of the day, that his absence is one of the crowning triumphs of modern genius, that we have all grown too discriminating to tolerate in fiction a character who we feel does not exist in life. Man, we are reminded, is complex, subtle, unfathomable, made up of good and evil so dexterously intermingled that no one element predominates coarsely over the rest. He is to be studied warily and with misgivings, not classified with brutal ease into the virtuous and bad. It is useless to explain to these analysts that the pleasure we take in meeting a character in a book does not always depend on our having known him in the family circle, or encountered him in our morning paper; though, judged even by this stringent law, the villain holds his own. Accept Balzac's rule, and exclude from fiction not only all which might not really happen, but all which has not really happened in truth, and we would still have studies enough in total depravity to darken all the novels in Christendom. from Essays in miniature (1892)
		August 2007 Italograms Learn Italian with pictures - colourful expressions to save and keep. Italian is a language rich in metaphors that conjure vivid images. Hence this new idea to imprint Italian expressions in the mind’s eye, with the aid of collaged images. From August, there will be a new word-picture each month on this site, to teach a new Italian expression. You are welcome to save and collect them. Click here to visit the Italograms page.
		Book recommendations Joshua Doder A Dog Called Grk Philip Reeve Mortal Engines Elliot Perlman Seven Types of Ambiguity
		July 2007 Publishing News I cannot remember the time when any cat, no matter how humble in origin and social position, failed to arouse in me breathless adoration. The sight of a dirty alley-cat plunged me instantly into a trance. William Lyon Phelps My First Cat - Writers & Artists Remember is published this month. Writers and artists, both modern and historical, famous and unknown, describe their first experience of owning a cat, with love and wonder. Contributors include Marge Piercy, Emily Brontë, Alexandre Dumas, Terry Pratchett, Pierre Loti, Compton Mackenzie, Louisa May Alcott, Olivia Manning, Derek Tangye and Saki. Copies are available from Mamelok Press in the UK and Chicago Review Press in the USA Michelle Lovric is available for interview or comment - contact details are on the Contacts Page A review has already appeared on the purr'n'fur website.
		Shakespeare and Venice News Shakespeare’s Globe hosted a scintillating lecture season on Shakespeare and Venice this spring. Current productions include The Merchant of Venice and Othello. The weekend of September 21st– 23rd sees their ‘Around Venice’ programme. Contact the Globe on 0207 401 9919 for details. Book recommendations Noel Streatfield Ballet Shoes Saki The Toys of Peace, 1919 Antony Gould Cures & Curiosities Michael Allen (ed) Mr Fenman’s Farewell to His Readers Mira Crouch War Fare Cat website recommendations www.flippyscatpage.com www.purr-n-fur.org.uk A Caution to Novelists And finally, a caution to all writers of novels from G.K. Chesterton, from his book Heretics, 1905 – the opening of his essay: On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set. In one sense, at any rate, it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man; but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. It does much more than that, it tells us the truth about its readers; and, oddly enough, it tells us this all the more the more cynical and immoral be the motive of its manufacture. The more dishonest a book is as a book the more honest it is as a public document. A sincere novel exhibits the simplicity of one particular man; an insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind. The pedantic decisions and definable readjustments of man may be found in scrolls and statute books and scriptures; but men's basic assumptions and everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and halfpenny novelettes. Thus a man, like many men of real culture in our day, might learn from good literature nothing except the power to appreciate good literature. But from bad literature he might learn to govern empires and look over the map of mankind.

June 2007
Publishing News

The Married Man’s Mentor

A rare Victorian marriage manual discovered by Michelle Lovric in an antiquarian bookseller’s and now reproduced in facsimile by Andrews McMeel with an introduction by Michelle Lovric.

The Andrews McMeel website.

Michelle Lovric's introduction

London news

The Old Operating Theatre
Congratulations are due to our neighbourhood museum, and the inspiration for much colourful material in Michelle Lovric’s novel The Remedy:
The Old Operating Theatre Museum is the winner of a 2007 Museums and Heritage Award for Excellence: see http://www.museumsandheritage.com/

On the 50th anniversary of the rediscovery of the UK's only surviving 19th-century operating theatre, why not become a Friend of the Museum and help secure its future.

Book recommendations
Markus Zusak The Book Thief
Orin Starn, Carlos Ivan Degregori and Robin Kirk (eds)
The Peru Reader
Ugo Foscolo Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis
Mom Kapor A Guide to the Serbian Mentality
Silvia Evangelisti Nuns, A History of Convent Life

		May 2007 Publishing News How to Be Happy, Though Married (see April) is published this month Copies are available from Mamelok Press. More on the How to be Happy page Michelle Lovric is available for interview or comment - contact details are on the Contacts Page
		New proverbs El segreto de le fémene no lo sa nissum, altri che mi e vu, e tuto 'l Comun. No-one knows the women's secret, except me, you and the whole city. Verze riscaldà e mugér ritornà no xe mai bone. Reheated cabbage and women who come back are never good. Book recommendations Donna Leon Suffer The Little Children Mario Vargas Llosa The Way to Paradise Hugh Thomson The White Rock

		April 2007 Publishing News How to Be Happy, Though Married Advance information: publication in May 2007 A serious little book of this title first appeared in 1885, written by the Reverend E.J. Hardy. Oscar Wilde praised it extravagantly: ‘It is a complete handbook to an earthly Paradise, and its author may be regarded as the Murray of matrimony and the Baedeker of bliss.’ Most of the humour in Reverend Hardy’s original manual was confined to the title. Otherwise his book was typical of its 19th-century ilk: religious, reproving and decidedly coy not just about sexual matters but the nitty-gritty details of married life. Times have changed and our needs within marriage have changed with them. If anything, marriage asks more of us than it did one hundred years ago. Now the same person who washes the socks is also expected to be a tender lover and psychological counsellor. Help is at hand. Throughout the ages, marriage manuals have given excellent (and appalling) advice on how to find and keep a spouse. This new anthology includes extracts from these sometimes unintentionally hilarious books, often juxtaposing very modern advice with ancient wisdom of a thousand or five hundred years ago. This book provides something really useful and thought-provoking, as well as entertaining, for anyone contemplating or living in the state of matrimony. It’s also a wonderful new source of fresh material for wedding speeches.
		New proverbs Xe più le done che varda i òmeni che le stele che varda la tera. There are more women looking at men than there are stars looking at the earth. Non ghe xe Pasqua senza fogia, né dona senza vogia. There's no Easter without leaves, And no woman without desires Book recommendations Diane Setterman The Thirteenth Tale Stef Penney The Tenderness of Wolves Yuval Taylor and Hugh Barker Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music Sarah Salway Tell Me Everything

		March 2007
		The novelist and poet Cheryl Moskowitz, who is a member of the Clink Street Writers Group hopes to undertake a project in Ethiopia, using creative writing to help deprived children and child sex-workers to imagine other lives and other possibilities. She is seeking modest sponsorship for her expenses. Anyone who might be able to help this worthy cause should contact Cheryl direct. Click here for more details.
		New proverbs I fati i xè omeni, e le ciacole e xè done. Deeds are men, words are women. Tre done in casa, inferno verto Three women in the house, hell opens. Quando le fémene se barufa, el diavolo se pètena la coa. When females fight, the devil combs his tail. Book recommendations Irène Némirovsky Suite Française Peter Carey Theft, A Love Story Flora Tristan Peregrinations of a Pariah Cheryl Moskowitz Wyoming Trail Edward St Aubyn Some Hope

		February 2007
		Howard Fitzpatrick of Venice Art Tours has started a blog. He’s a great wit both online and in person, so a visit to his website is recommended: www.venice-art-tours.com
		New proverbs I monti xe monti senza bisogno d'essar monti. Mountains are mountains without needing to be mountains. Tosa smemorada, tosa inamorada The forgetful girl is the girl who has fallen in love. Chi ga dentro 'l fogo, manda fora el fumo If you have fire inside, you send out smoke Book recommendations Edward St Aubyn Mother’s Milk Hisham Matar In the Country of Men Charlie Fletcher Stone Heart Fiammetta Rocco The Miraculous Fever Tree

		January 2007 Publishing News
		An interview with Michelle Lovric, about her writing habits, will be featured in Writing Magazine February edition, which comes out in early January. One of the best cookery blogs on the net has given Carve-Ups (see November's news) an excellent review: culinaryhags.blogspot.com This month Michelle Lovric is completing an anthology called How to Be Happy, Though Married, to be published in May 2007 by Chicago Review Press in the USA and Mamelok Press in the U.K. A serious little book of this title first appeared in 1885, written by the Reverend E.J. Hardy. Oscar Wilde praised it extravagantly: ‘It is a complete handbook to an earthly Paradise, and its author may be regarded as the Murray of matrimony and the Baedeker of bliss.’ The new version contains advice from ten centuries, some wonderful, some appalling to modern readers. And naturally a few Venetian proverbs will be included.
		New proverbs Quando Dio vol castigar un omo, el ghe mete in mente de maridarse. When God wants to punish a man, he puts him in mind to get married. El matrimonio nasce da l'amore come l'azéto dal vin Marriage comes from love the way vinegar comes from wine. Matrimoni e macaroni se non i xe caldi no i xe boni Marriage and macaroni - if they are not hot, they are not good.

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