{"product_id":"falling-palace-isbn-9780375714283","title":"Falling Palace","description":"A portrait of the sun-drenched volcanic city from an American who has lost his heart to the place and to a beguiling Neapolitan woman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eFalling Palace \u003c\/i\u003eDan Hofstadter brilliantly reveals Naples, from the dilapidated architectural beauty to the irrepressible theater of everyday life. We witness the centuries-old festivals that regularly crowd the city’s jumbled streets, and eavesdrop on conversations that continue deep into the night. We browse the countless curio shops where treasures mingle with kitsch, and meet the locals he befriends. In and out of these encounters slips Benedetta, the object of the author’s affections, at once inviting and unfathomable. Weaving the tale of an elusive love together with a vivid portrayal of a legendary metropolis, this is a startling evocation of a magical place.“Beautiful . . . Outstanding . . . Hofstadter’s book–free of knowingness, charged with experience–is written with the ease of affection and discovery . . . It is a story of love–for an arcane city and for a girl, Benedetta, who embodies the Neapolitan enigma. The city prevails on every page . . . Hofstadter has penetrated the extended labyrinth, and his account of his explorations, literally breathtaking, is lyrical in the Neapolitan tradition.”\u003cbr\u003e–Shirley Hazzard, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Lovely . . . Deeply felt . . . Those who know Naples and those who don’t will enjoy Hofstadter’s delicious descriptions of that unusual metropolis. [A] deft writer . . . He makes these people real and sympathetic to us . . . [He] succeeds wonderfully in conveying the city’s mix of poverty and splendor . . . It’s curiosity about Benedetta that will keep most readers turning these pages, but in the end, it’s Hofstadter’s feel for her city that satisfies most deeply.”\u003cbr\u003e–Marjorie Kehe, \u003ci\u003eChristian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Secretive, shadowy and hot: what a lover Naples makes. Hofstadter gives a good sense of its spectral exuberance . . . Like \u003ci\u003eAnnie Hall,\u003c\/i\u003e this is a tale of a fleeting romance looked back upon many years later . . . with the city as much a character, and object of his affections, as the woman.”\u003cbr\u003e–Matt Weiland, \u003ci\u003eNewsday\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Chilometri\u003c\/i\u003e away from those sun-kissed, espresso-soaked travelogues . . . Hofstadter paints a warts-and-all portrait of both Benedetta and Naples, and the two are all the more alluring for their imperfections.”\u003cbr\u003e–Melissa Rose Bernardo, \u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003eDan Hofstadter has written four books. His last, \u003ci\u003eThe Love Affair as a Work of Art\u003c\/i\u003e, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He has written for most national magazines and was for eight years a regular contributor to \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e1\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSidewalk-ology\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Caffè Gambrinus, in Piazza Trieste e Trento, was the most   convenient meeting place in Naples. Inside, politicians rehearsed the   deals they would later strike in the city council chamber, the Sala   dei Baroni; visitors and greenhorns from outlying towns staked out   the sidewalk tables; and carabinieri gadded about in the streets,   receiving their dole of female admiration. The café's interior was   lined by mirrors full of shifting lights and decorative panels by   painters of the Belle Epoque. Two gigantic Venetian chandeliers   romped overhead, as though inviting you to do the same on the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBenedetta with her unique blend of affection and defiance inevitably   claimed a lot of my time; but once, when she had to study for one of   her \"soul-destroying\" examinations, I decided to embark on a study of   my own, of the people's gestures in the Gambrinus. For several nights   I took up a station at the bar and watched the patrons, and soon I   began to recognize many of their gestures. I could say that I   recognized them from Arthur Avenue, in the Bronx, or from Havemeyer   Street, in Brooklyn, but really I recognized them from everywhere. I   say this because so many gestures are actually universal, signals the   body dictates and the mind passively ratifies. To signify money, for   instance, we rub a thumb against a pointer; to show exasperation, we   fold our arms and cock our heads. Other gestures, though not   necessarily unknown to us Americans, seemed more intrinsically   Mediterranean. These included nose-tapping, to signify the odor of   something fishy; the pulling down of an eyelid, to suggest that one   ought to keep one's eyes open; and the upward jerking of the lower   jaw to indicate refusal, like an animal jibbing at suspect food.   Still others were typically Italian, such as the hands pressed   prayerfully together and shaken at someone who was behaving   unreasonably, or the sign for \"later,\" an index finger twirling   around in front of the speaker's nose, like the hand of an imaginary   clock. Some gestures enacted an entire social role, such as the hand   held edgewise and palm up, rocking back and forth at shoulder height,   pretending to threaten a blow. To understand this one, you had to   remember that the classic Italian grandmother had two prime insignia,   the \u003ci\u003ematterello\u003c\/i\u003e, or rolling pin, and the \u003ci\u003espianatoia\u003c\/i\u003e, or pasta board.   The hand held edgewise stood for the \u003ci\u003ematterello\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere was never a time when I conceived of Neapolitan mimicry--that   rolling-pin gesture, for instance--quite apart from Benedetta. For   all her chattiness, she was the archetypal enunciator of body   language. Words came second for her: when she spoke, speech glossed   gesture, rather than the reverse. Her body never stopped doing its   wry little pantomime, her smile archly informing me that nobody's   words could be fully believed, not even hers. \"They can't fool me,\"   she seemed to be saying. It never occurred to her that she might be   fooling herself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn those days, prowling the historic Neapolitan bookshops--Treves,   Colonnesi, Pironti--I found, at Colonnesi, I think, a book titled \u003ci\u003eLa   mimica a Napoli\u003c\/i\u003e, by a learned Neapolitan abbé named Antonio De Jorio.   It made a big impression on me. Writing in the early nineteenth   century, De Jorio had thoroughly researched his city's gestural   vocabulary, and he furnished amusing plates to support his   contention, showing standard types of quarrels and domestic   calamities. De Jorio was a French-style positivist, and his writing   was as ponderous as today's social science jargon, but he also   championed the nifty idea that conversational mimicry had a grammar   much like that of spoken language. He claimed that such mimicry had   its nouns and verbs, its adjectives and expletives, even its   metaphors. I made heavy weather of the abbé's prose, but in time I   came to enjoy him, responding to the sly humor lurking within his   long-winded arguments. Sometimes I wished I could talk to him and put   a few pointed questions to him. If you whistled and drew a feminine   curve in the air, I wanted to ask him, was that synecdoche, \"the part   for the whole\"?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the Gambrinus I saw De Jorio's catalogue of gestures come alive,   plus others he hadn't dreamt of. Waiting at the gelati counter, some   women moved their whole bodies in unconscious arcs, even pointing   with a foot to illustrate a point. The difference between the patrons   here and those in, say, an American café wasn't so much the air   pictures themselves as their frequency, their relentless   articulation. Wrists, ankles, necks, and waists spiraled in a   constant ballet, but the most interesting moves belonged to no known   language. They were personal and abstract, like abstract art; and it   occurred to me that such intimate gestures were as intrinsically   mysterious as the movements of serpents or parrots. In Naples, I was   learning, the body spoke the mind. Watch the hands, I would remind   myself, as I listened to people talk; keep your eyes always, always   on the hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy very first test, you might have said, was Gigi in Al Portico,   telling me a story in his bizarre lingo, a staccato mix of Italian,   Neapolitan, and lots of white wine. Gigi was a theater person, a   comic and a poet, and he was unlike anyone I knew in this town. I   didn't know anyone else who, flinging himself down opposite me with   barely a salutation and no preamble, would launch into an anecdote, a   harangue, a routine. Gigi had dyed-blond, porcupine-like hair, and   always had a three-day beard. With his tommy-gun stutter and opaque,   coffee-bean eyes, he flaunted a vaudeville version of shiftiness, and   he habitually glanced around as if to jump up at any moment. Gigi   talked mainly with his hands, which flew in all directions, like   startled birds, but when he wanted to make a point he slowed down and   molded the air, kneading it, cutting it like a baker. Drawing a   distinction, Gigi gave you two loaves of air, pushed neatly apart   with both hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBenedetta had recently introduced me to Gigi, who seemed the answer   to my difficulties with the Neapolitan dialect. I had originally   studied in central Italy and was used to Italian with a Tuscan sound;   when I started spending time in Naples, talking at a normal clip,   people answered me at the same speed, but in a language I hardly   recognized. Many expressions were new to me, while others were old   friends in outlandish disguises. Most words ended in a faint generic   vowel, a sort of primal \"uh,\" or they simply dropped their final   syllables. Down here those syllables seemed expendable, like the   outer leaves of an artichoke.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI hoped that Italian-without-words would offer a way out of my   difficulties. Since the Neapolitans were renowned for the graphic   precision of their gestures, I had set about studying the patrons in   the Gambrinus, hoping to appropriate the gestural vocabulary, but   naturally my study went beyond that café. I had resolved that   whenever I encountered a dialect speaker, I'd follow his gestures as   an aid to gathering his meaning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat was where Gigi came in. I thought he could unwittingly help me   learn what I needed to know. Listening to his stories, watching his   simultaneous manual elaboration, I'd gradually absorb a basic   gestural lexicon. This evening, for instance, I was trying to follow   him carefully without letting him see that I was copying his hand   motions under the table.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGigi had the habit of resuming old conversations as if we had left   off chatting the evening before, and sometimes he resumed   conversations we had never begun. This time we had run into each   other by accident. The weather that fall was so balmy that people   couldn't keep off the streets, and toward nightfall, when the traffic   fumes had settled, many wandered idly about, performing the   \u003ci\u003epasseggiata\u003c\/i\u003e or dropping into a café for an aperitif. Some restaurants   were serving dinner outdoors, and this balmy evening, at about   ten-thirty, I had followed my nose to a table at Al Portico, a place   that served food on a terrace out back. At one of those tables Gigi   had spotted me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat was where I usually met Gigi. The first time he ever saw me, he   said, hearing that I was an American, \"Do you know Joe Pesci?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Not personally,\" I answered. \"I know who he is.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well, I'm an actor, too,\" he said, forgetting all about Joe Pesci,   \"and I'm famous, too. My name is Gigi Attrice.\" He extended his hand   as though responding to applause. Gigi is a male name in Italian, a   diminuitive for Luigi. Gigi told me that he specialized in comic   routines and could sometimes be seen on television. I'd never seen   him on television, but Benedetta had--she told me later that she'd   seen him trying to push a car uphill, with what success she couldn't   remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis evening Gigi was telling me a long story about a friend of his   who worked as a concierge. Like most men in the service trades in   Naples, Gigi said, this fellow had to hustle to make ends meet. The   story illustrated the \u003ci\u003earte di arrangiarsi\u003c\/i\u003e, the technique of   occupational improvisation, but it was meant no less to say something   about Gigi himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs Gigi talked his hands went faster and faster, but soon I lost   track of the sign language, because I got drawn into the tale. The   concierge's name was Abinotto, Gigi said, and his building had some   unusual tenants. Among them were a transvestite, a secretive old   widower, and a smuggler of contraband cigarettes. There were also   three illegal Arab immigrants and a pair of elderly sisters, one of   whom had two beautiful daughters who'd been deluded into thinking   they were fashion models.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThose girls,\" Gigi said, \"went constantly to fake interviews and   beauty contests, events they had to pay for. One of them got pregnant   and didn't know who was the father. But my friend Abinotto knew.   Being the concierge, he knew all there was to know about her, and all   about the other tenants as well.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGigi was a nervous raconteur. If it's true, as they say, that   comedians are angry deep down, then Gigi exemplified that truth.   Maybe because of his stutter, he had a bilious way of telling a joke.   Shakily he lit a cigarette, then lost his grip on it, bobbled it in   the air, and rescued it--all without burning himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe told me that Abinotto had a porter's lodge off to one side of the   building's entrance. In the lodge Abinotto kept nothing but an old   service revolver his father had given him and seven hundred condoms.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Gigi, why seven hundred condoms?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Listen,\" he said, dragging on his cigarette, \"Abinotto wasn't so   young anymore, okay? His wife had died a few years earlier, and just   before that he'd bought a job lot of condoms on the black market.   He'd calculated the number of times he was likely to have sex with   her before one of them died, and it was seven hundred. Of course he'd   been wrong, poor guy, so now he was stuck with the merchandise, which   he thought he might as well dispose of. At a profit, if possible.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMaybe Gigi was embellishing this tale, but I was so intent on   memorizing at least a few of his gestures that I didn't question its   veracity. And anyway his delivery was distracting. He kept sticking   his hand—the one holding the cigarette—under his shirt collar to   scratch his neck. And every time he introduced a new character he   would wring his own features into a version of that person's   face--you wouldn't have thought his own could contain so many others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAround us on the terrace, tables were being claimed. Parties of   diners, overdressed, with glittery watches, were sitting down and   confabbing with the waiters. Many of them glanced over at Gigi as he   rattled on, waving his arms, and some couldn't help smiling as they   recognized him. The air vibrated with the clinking of tableware and   the laughter of women. At intervals I could hear the snarl of a Vespa   on the other side of the arbor that screened the terrace from the   street. When a waiter came, Gigi asked for more wine and I ordered   ziti.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"My friend Abinotto is basically a good person,\" Gigi said. \"But his   concierge's salary wasn't enough to live on. He needed more money,   okay? So he began to run errands for the people in his building.   They'd give him money to buy things for them, and of course he   skimmed off a percentage for himself. \u003ci\u003eCosi si arrangiava\u003c\/i\u003e—that was   how he got by. And, well, as he ran these errands, his lodge began to   fill up with merchandise—the old pistol and the condoms had company   now. There were boxes full of contraband cigarettes for the smuggler,   who was afraid of keeping them in his own place, and porn videos for   the old widower, and in the end Abinotto's lodge was packed with all   this stuff--the pistol, the condoms, the cigarettes, the videos.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI thought Gigi's tale had the neatness, the brilliant illumination,   of a story by Boccaccio, who lived in Naples for eleven years and   adored the city. In Boccaccio's stories the people acted the way   you'd expect them to act, with direct, inescapable   consequences--everyone was bathed in a high, searching light that   left nowhere to hide. I was smiling at Gigi's story, but I could   already see the police sniffing around Abinotto's lodge, making the   obvious connection between the porn videos and the seven hundred   condoms and the beautiful girls upstairs; the pistol and the   contraband cigarettes wouldn't help matters any. So Abinotto's arrest   wasn't about to surprise me. What did surprise me was that Gigi, as   he was wrapping up his routine, stuttering and nervously scratching   his chest, bobbled a lighted cigarette and dropped it right down his   shirtfront. Retrieving it just above his belt, he fished it out from   under his shirt, inserted it in the corner of his mouth, and kept on   talking, unscathed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLater, I asked him point-blank to show me some Neapolitan gestures.   He said, \"What do you mean? What gestures?\"","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304725795045,"sku":"NP9780375714283","price":13.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375714283.jpg?v=1767726683","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/falling-palace-isbn-9780375714283","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}