Dear Reader, As I did when writing the column for Salon.com, when I had a freedom to write what I wanted which was unthinkable and nearly limitless, when I would try to reach you by a bridge of words, by a rhythm of speech, by speech that was not just words but sound and music, as I did when I tried to reach a magical moment of consonance between us, unraveling the terror of an orphan on the...
We didn’t know for sure what their lives were like before they came to our town. We watched them from afar, from high buildings, from shadowy cafes across the street. We watched them in the rain as they lined up for their buses, with their backpacks and their sensible shoes, their skinniness, their soft hands, their way of walking which was arrogant in its sloppiness, as if they could barely...
After two and a half years working on The Stones of Le Santucce, about the rebuilding of a bombed medieval Tuscan convent into the Residence Le Santucce, the Tanganelli family, the town of Castiglion Fiorentino (and our reasons for leaving America, and the tragic bombing of December 1943, and Napoleon’s suppression of the church, and Garibaldi’s visit in 1849, and the rise of Fascism...
Dear reader, Enjoy with me if you will the humor of this, from my notes on the writing of The Split-Second Forever: Soon after I began living in this little town in Tuscany, I told everyone I was writing a book about it—about Le Santucce, about the history, about medieval building techniques, about Tuscan convents, about this beautiful place the Alfeo Tanganelli built from the bombed-out ruin of...
[UPDATE July 27, 2021: I briefly called it “The Split-Second Forever” but the title has gone back to being The Stones of le Santucce.” Just so you know.–ct] I’ve been working on The Stones of le Santucce nearly four years. People are starting to wonder. I saw Professor Alpini this morning, standing near the gate to our little walled garden, talking in the driveway with a...
This morning at Caffe la Posta in Castiglion Fiorentino, as I was trying to read the Italian newspaper, I ran into professor Giuseppe Alpini. He asked me how the book is coming. Oh, you didn’t know I’m writing a book? The idea for the book came in the early morning darkness in June 2015, when I awoke at the Residence Le Santucce in Castiglion Fiorentino after a very vivid dream. I...