The Book of Flying
One of the staff at Porter Square Books recommended Keith Miller's The Book of Flying to me. It took me a few weeks to crack the cover and then I had to balance the urge to race through it all at once or eke it out, savoring each page. It is a fairy tale, the story of a librarian who sets off through the forest to find his wings. But this is no children's story--it contains adventure, poetry, sex and death. Each chapter is a short story in its own right, a fable of one of Pico's adventures with the magical, marvelous characters he meets along his path to the Morning Town.
The prose is lyrical, reminding me of Italo Calvino or John Crowley. From the first few pages, I knew that I would have to write about it and I would think "this paragraph, this is the one I will quote to let people see what wonders await them in this book." I thought that every two or three pages. So I will give you the opening of the book, the jumping off point for one of my favorite books in years.
I am dreaming. I am dreaming of a city, a white city in the sun by the sea, a city of bells and birdcages, boatswains and ballyhoo, where heart-faced wenches lean bare-breasted from balconies to dry their hair among geraniums and the air is salt and soft and in the harbor sailors swagger from ships that bear cargos of spices. In this city a thousand doves live in the hundred towers of a hundred bells and in the mornings when the bell ringers toll a summons to the sun the doves scatter like blown ash across the tile roofs and light under the eaves whispering lulling words to sleepers, bidding them stay in bed a little longer. And on the silver sky other wings rise.
The city is filled with parks and bazaars. In the cool of the morning vendors cry their wares, pocket watched, pomegranates, parakeets, silks and cinnamon sticks, kittens and tea cozies, amber, sandalwood, baskets and blue glass beads. Magicians pull scarlet scarves and coins from ears, troubadours pull ballads from lyres and mandolins. In the shade of fig trees old men play checkers, casting winks at passing maidens, and old women on park benches giggle and gossip watching their grandchildren flouder in fountains.
The diners push back their chairs. They finish their luncheons with coffee and brandy and black cigarettes, and beyond their conversations seagulls keen and waves gnash at pilings.
In the hot afternoons the whole city sleeps, shuttered indoors in whitewashed rooms while chunks of light crawl slowly up walls like bright sluggish insects.
In the evenings the heart-faced girls dance on the sand to the music of lyres. They dance near fires and the young men watch the lick of the flames on their oiled arms. When the dancing subsides and the fires withdraw their yellow talons and crouch beneath ash peering out with red eyes, the youth quench their craving with whisky and watch wings wheel among the constellations.
For some of the people of the city are winged and when the sea shifts in the morning they pirouette on pinnacles, embrace the air and skim the waves calling to the dolphins and sailfish beneath them. Their wings are long, their eyes aflame and when they sing their speech is half the speech of birds. They fly at dawn and dusk and sometimes, if the moon is full, if the wind is right, they fly at night, slicing the sky to ribbons with the edges of their wings.
I've already begun to read it aloud to jason237.
The prose is lyrical, reminding me of Italo Calvino or John Crowley. From the first few pages, I knew that I would have to write about it and I would think "this paragraph, this is the one I will quote to let people see what wonders await them in this book." I thought that every two or three pages. So I will give you the opening of the book, the jumping off point for one of my favorite books in years.
I am dreaming. I am dreaming of a city, a white city in the sun by the sea, a city of bells and birdcages, boatswains and ballyhoo, where heart-faced wenches lean bare-breasted from balconies to dry their hair among geraniums and the air is salt and soft and in the harbor sailors swagger from ships that bear cargos of spices. In this city a thousand doves live in the hundred towers of a hundred bells and in the mornings when the bell ringers toll a summons to the sun the doves scatter like blown ash across the tile roofs and light under the eaves whispering lulling words to sleepers, bidding them stay in bed a little longer. And on the silver sky other wings rise.
The city is filled with parks and bazaars. In the cool of the morning vendors cry their wares, pocket watched, pomegranates, parakeets, silks and cinnamon sticks, kittens and tea cozies, amber, sandalwood, baskets and blue glass beads. Magicians pull scarlet scarves and coins from ears, troubadours pull ballads from lyres and mandolins. In the shade of fig trees old men play checkers, casting winks at passing maidens, and old women on park benches giggle and gossip watching their grandchildren flouder in fountains.
The diners push back their chairs. They finish their luncheons with coffee and brandy and black cigarettes, and beyond their conversations seagulls keen and waves gnash at pilings.
In the hot afternoons the whole city sleeps, shuttered indoors in whitewashed rooms while chunks of light crawl slowly up walls like bright sluggish insects.
In the evenings the heart-faced girls dance on the sand to the music of lyres. They dance near fires and the young men watch the lick of the flames on their oiled arms. When the dancing subsides and the fires withdraw their yellow talons and crouch beneath ash peering out with red eyes, the youth quench their craving with whisky and watch wings wheel among the constellations.
For some of the people of the city are winged and when the sea shifts in the morning they pirouette on pinnacles, embrace the air and skim the waves calling to the dolphins and sailfish beneath them. Their wings are long, their eyes aflame and when they sing their speech is half the speech of birds. They fly at dawn and dusk and sometimes, if the moon is full, if the wind is right, they fly at night, slicing the sky to ribbons with the edges of their wings.
I've already begun to read it aloud to jason237.