{"product_id":"landscape-with-traveler-isbn-9781609804992","title":"Landscape with Traveler","description":"\u003ci\u003eLandscape with Traveler: The Pillow Book of Francis Reeves\u003c\/i\u003e is Barry Gifford’s first full-length novel. In print for the first time in fifteen years,\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eLandscape with Traveler\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eis written as the protagonist's diary—inspired by the first century Japanese writer Sei Shōnagon’s pillow book—and structured as three acclaimed short novels bound into one volume. The book recounts the deep friendship between a middle-aged gay man and a young straight man through vignette-like entries, all the while tracing a history of the US from the 1930s through 1970s.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Laying bare the themes that have marked his lifelong career: a winsome, beat-inspired frenzy of love, a generation-defining crossroads in American history—the novel tells an honest story of a male homosexual life.\"\u003ci\u003eLandscape with Traveler\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel with character. The tone is so light and airy it achieves its own separate sense of time...beautifully refined without sacrificing wit or warmth. It's a delight.\" \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Sunday Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"For reminding us so artfully of the difficult simplicities, reminding us of what we already know, [the protagonist] Francis Reeves will become part of our landscape.\" \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWashington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Landscape with Traveler\u003c\/i\u003e is a major accomplishment, a small profound novel that will leave the reader utterly affected. Barry Gifford has created a small masterpiece.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Bay Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe author of more than forty works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into over twenty-five languages, \u003cb\u003eBARRY GIFFORD \u003c\/b\u003ewrites distinctly American stories for readers around the globe. From screenplays and librettos to his acclaimed Sailor and Lula novels, Gifford’s writing is as distinctive as it is difficult to classify. Born in the Seneca Hotel on Chicago’s Near North Side, he relocated in his adolescence to New Orleans. The move proved significant: throughout his career, Gifford’s fiction—part-noir, part-picaresque, always entertaining—is born of the clash between what he has referred to as his “Northern Side” and “Southern Side.” Gifford has been recipient of awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His novel \u003ci\u003eWild at Heart\u003c\/i\u003e was adapted into the 1990 Palme d’Or-winning film of the same name. Gifford lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e1.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ei don’t know\u003cbr\u003ethat this will\u003cbr\u003ebe of very\u003cbr\u003egreat interest\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I don’t know that this will be of very great interest to anyone,\u003cbr\u003ebut it seems such a perfect place to begin. I’m on a bouncing\u003cbr\u003ebus going back to New York after a weekend on Fire Island,\u003cbr\u003ewhich was quite pleasant in spite of my misgivings beforehand.\u003cbr\u003eThe bus service is the best thing that’s happened in\u003cbr\u003eyears for going to F.I. It picks you up at various convenient\u003cbr\u003eplaces around New York, gives you a free drink—fifty cents\u003cbr\u003eeach for seconds and thirds—and a package of toasted almonds,\u003cbr\u003eand takes you right to the ferry. Plus they allow dogs\u003cbr\u003e(sans carriers).\u003cbr\u003e Before, I had to cab it to the station, take a train (with dog\u003cbr\u003ein carrier), then another cab to the ferry—and usually had to\u003cbr\u003estand all the way on the train—all of which usually cost well\u003cbr\u003eover the bus price besides being a rather unpleasant trip being\u003cbr\u003ebustled about by Long Island commuters, feisty conductors,\u003cbr\u003ehot trains (the buses are air conditioned), etc., ad infinitum.\u003cbr\u003eBut then some enterprising fellow got the idea of chartering\u003cbr\u003ebuses, and the Bus-A-Long was born.\u003cbr\u003e At first, so I’m told, it was strictly a gay affair, with orgies all\u003cbr\u003ethe way back to New York in the back part of the bus. Dick\u003cbr\u003eCornelia swears that the first time he took the bus a giggling\u003cbr\u003evoice was heard to say, “Don’t come in the air conditioner,\u003cbr\u003eMary—it’ll go all over the bus!” Se non e` vero, e` ben trovato.\u003cbr\u003eNow, however, it’s quite integrated and proper.\u003cbr\u003e But I was rather sad on the trip out just from looking at\u003cbr\u003eall the people—the handsome young men so secure in their\u003cbr\u003eyouth and beauty, and the old ones looking at them, envying\u003cbr\u003ethem, desiring them perhaps, remembering probably when\u003cbr\u003ethey too were young and sure that (if they ever thought about\u003cbr\u003eit at all) they always would be.\u003cbr\u003e As they looked at them there seemed also to be a certain\u003cbr\u003epity in their eyes that these kids had such a bitter lesson to\u003cbr\u003elearn in front of them—a certain sad tolerance of their arrogant\u003cbr\u003eflaunting of their invulnerable youth and good looks.\u003cbr\u003eFair cheeks and fine bodies, etc.\u003cbr\u003e There is also a great deal of projection in all this on my part,\u003cbr\u003eI’m sure, though I don’t really have those feelings about growing\u003cbr\u003eold. Still, to most “active” (as opposed to old tranquil me!)\u003cbr\u003ehomosexuals youth is the pinnacle, so I doubt I was too far\u003cbr\u003ewrong in my musings. And they all seemed so awfully lonely,\u003cbr\u003eyoung and old alike—as opposed to being alone (like me).\u003cbr\u003eAnd as I thought that, it occurred to me that they might be\u003cbr\u003ethinking the same thing when they looked at me.\u003cbr\u003e Sad, too, to look at the beautiful young men and have their\u003cbr\u003ebeauty almost totally canceled out by their theatrically effeminate\u003cbr\u003emannerisms. They were all smoking like Bette Davis,\u003cbr\u003ecalling each other “Dahling” like Tallulah, holding their eyelids\u003cbr\u003ehalf-shut like Dietrich—etc., etc., but even that wasn’t\u003cbr\u003econsistent. It alternated with limp-wristed slaps and playful\u003cbr\u003eshoves and high-pitched squeals of “Oh, \u003ci\u003eMary, \u003c\/i\u003eyou bitch,\u003cbr\u003eyou’re really \u003ci\u003esuch \u003c\/i\u003ea camp!” and the inevitable sidelong glances\u003cbr\u003eto make sure it was not lost on the spectators. But they mostly\u003cbr\u003egot drunk and\/or tired and finally calmed down.\u003cbr\u003e It was nice at last to leave the bus and sit on the open top\u003cbr\u003edeck of the little “ferry” (I had to laugh the first time I went\u003cbr\u003eto Fire Island, remembering the ferries on the Mississippi, to\u003cbr\u003esee these little sixty or so foot boats) with spray hitting you in\u003cbr\u003ethe face and to forget the bus trip.\u003cbr\u003e Mostly it was a quiet and very nice (therefore) weekend. I\u003cbr\u003e“had” to go to one big loud cocktail party, but only for a half\u003cbr\u003ehour or so, and refused both nights to go to the bars. The\u003cbr\u003emoon was full so Zagg (my dog) and I took long walks along\u003cbr\u003ethe beach all by ourselves and it was beautiful enough to bring\u003cbr\u003etears to one’s eyes. Nothing like “nature” to clear the head!\u003cbr\u003eI don’t mean necessarily \u003ci\u003evisible \u003c\/i\u003enature, to which I am fairly\u003cbr\u003eindifferent, but rather the hiss of cosmic silence, or the natural\u003cbr\u003esounds and smells of air and water and sand squeaking\u003cbr\u003eunder your bare heels, and the expansion that only solitude\u003cbr\u003ein the open produces—preferably the virgin, uninhabited\u003cbr\u003eopen, but in this case the illusion was made convincing by\u003cbr\u003ethe moonlit dark and by keeping one’s eyes toward the ocean\u003cbr\u003euntil one was in a sufficient trance of self-communication to\u003cbr\u003esee nothing.\u003cbr\u003e I was amused to be flagrantly flirted with by a most handsome\u003cbr\u003eyoung man for whom everyone was on the make but\u003cbr\u003eme. He had come by with several friends the night before\u003cbr\u003e(friends of his) at about midnight to pick up my host and go\u003cbr\u003eto the bars. He kept insisting that I come with them, at which\u003cbr\u003eknowing looks passed among the others. But I stuck to my\u003cbr\u003eguns and went for a walk (and to bed) alone, much, apparently,\u003cbr\u003eto the others’ consternation and amazement. Though I\u003cbr\u003ecan’t say that I wasn’t at least a little tempted.\u003cbr\u003e However, it’s good to be going home, as always. Why \u003ci\u003edo \u003c\/i\u003eI\u003cbr\u003ealways weaken and accept these invitations?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e2.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e back home again\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBack home again. It was good to find a letter from Jim waiting\u003cbr\u003e for me in the mailbox. Perfect timing, really, as sitting\u003cbr\u003e on the bus starting out on the trip, looking at all those people,\u003cbr\u003e suddenly Jim popped into my head (a case of opposites!).\u003cbr\u003e Tears came, and a tiny haiku appeared in my mind:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Thank you, God.\u003cbr\u003e I thought you had forgot me,\u003cbr\u003e And you gave me such a friend.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I kept saying it over and over to myself, and felt so good that\u003cbr\u003e I couldn’t begin to describe it. And whenever I was by myself,\u003cbr\u003e as on my walks (both nights I was there) along the beach, it\u003cbr\u003e stayed the same way—really a kind of exultation—and I’d sit\u003cbr\u003e on a log and imagine Jim sitting in California looking at the\u003cbr\u003e same moon and thinking of it as a sort of satellite for all our\u003cbr\u003e thoughts. Silly in a way, I guess, and rather childishly romantic,\u003cbr\u003e but there it was.\u003cbr\u003e I do often fear that my effusion of friendship for Jim might\u003cbr\u003e put him off somehow. I pray it won’t, but from past experience\u003cbr\u003e I know that it can do so. I guess that if it does, then it\u003cbr\u003e does, and no amount of worrying or reassurance can help.\u003cbr\u003e Offerings must be true, so that the receiver (if any) knows\u003cbr\u003e what he’s getting.\u003cbr\u003e How wonderful it would be if we could develop one of\u003cbr\u003e those ideal friendships in which each friend was totally natural\u003cbr\u003e and honest so that no word or letter or gesture came from\u003cbr\u003e anything but a true, natural impulse, with no feelings of guilt\u003cbr\u003e or reproach, but only of gladness and love and respect. In\u003cbr\u003e which I could, for instance, with no hesitation, beg him for\u003cbr\u003e a letter, and he could, without guilt feelings of any kind, not\u003cbr\u003e write one for a year even, if he didn’t feel like it, and I would\u003cbr\u003e understand and love him even more for it. I think, naively,\u003cbr\u003e perhaps, that it’s possible.\u003cbr\u003e I wonder sometimes whether loving someone isn’t simply\u003cbr\u003e paying attention to him. In friendship, paying attention to\u003cbr\u003e his mind and welfare, and in “love,” in its popular sense, to\u003cbr\u003e his body as well.\u003cbr\u003e My own friendship with other men, particularly with\u003cbr\u003e “straight” men, such as Jim, gets into complications at times,\u003cbr\u003e and my motives are often suspect, even to me, and whatever\u003cbr\u003e I say, I do feel acutely the difference between us. I accept it,\u003cbr\u003e though, and live quite comfortably with it on the whole.\u003cbr\u003e I was talking with a young friend of mine the other night\u003cbr\u003e about various “serious” things, including love. We were concentrating\u003cbr\u003e on that, because sort of offhandedly one night a\u003cbr\u003e few months ago I had said I thought loving someone was\u003cbr\u003e an end in itself. That is, loving someone with—deliberately,\u003cbr\u003e if necessary—no thought of being loved in return. Wishing\u003cbr\u003e for it, maybe, but no expectations. I think it’s nourishing and\u003cbr\u003e makes one grow.\u003cbr\u003e And this isn’t just idle conjecture, either. I’ve tried it and\u003cbr\u003e it works. Tried it not in the way of testing out a theory, but\u003cbr\u003e because it once was forced on me. That was with Ilya in\u003cbr\u003eGreece (a three-volume novel in itself!). But when I realized\u003cbr\u003e that it was a one-sided affair I thought about it for a couple\u003cbr\u003e of nights in a very concentrated way (I couldn’t think about\u003cbr\u003e anything else!) and rather than become bitter and vindictive\u003cbr\u003e and bitchy as I might have done, I decided (really consciously\u003cbr\u003e decided) to love him just the same for as long as I did love\u003cbr\u003e him. (Though a question arose as to whether “love” was love,\u003cbr\u003e but anyhow . . .)\u003cbr\u003e That went on for a couple of years and got calmer and\u003cbr\u003e calmer and actually almost more and more beautiful, and that\u003cbr\u003e one experience—the blossoming (and going to seed, I suppose)\u003cbr\u003e of a lot of experiences in the then past—turned out to\u003cbr\u003e have taught me one of the most valuable lessons I ever learned.\u003cbr\u003e Anyway, this friend of mine took it up and apparently has\u003cbr\u003e been thinking a great deal about it. He has his doubts, but I\u003cbr\u003e have now passed the point of merely believing it. I know it,\u003cbr\u003e and it’s part of me.\u003cbr\u003e I’ve been accused so often and by so many different people\u003cbr\u003e of being a bad influence that it scares me. We can know,\u003cbr\u003e it seems to me, almost anything except how we affect other\u003cbr\u003e people. No, that’s not true. We can know nothing. It seems to\u003cbr\u003e us that we know certain things, but only because they are so\u003cbr\u003e unimportant to us that we never think about them enough to\u003cbr\u003e realize that we don’t know them. But important things, like\u003cbr\u003e what people think about us, are frustratingly inscrutable. We\u003cbr\u003e can learn what are called “facts”—we cannot learn what we\u003cbr\u003e want to know.\u003cbr\u003e In my own way, I’m very stubborn, which I can see in my\u003cbr\u003e way of dealing (in my own mind) with the world at large. I\u003cbr\u003e have decided how I like it and live in it as though it were that\u003cbr\u003eway.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e3.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e paradoxes\u003cbr\u003e spring up\u003cbr\u003e on all sides\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eParadoxes spring up on all sides, it seems. It becomes both\u003cbr\u003e easier and more difficult to write, though the focus becomes\u003cbr\u003e finer as I go deeper into things that I am not used to talking\u003cbr\u003e about and so don’t know how. For Jim, my response to his\u003cbr\u003e friendship, there is of course a lot more to be said. It will take\u003cbr\u003e me the rest of my life to say it.\u003cbr\u003e If just one little thing had been different I’d probably\u003cbr\u003e never have known Jim. I wouldn’t have known the difference,\u003cbr\u003e naturally. One could go mad thinking of the friends,\u003cbr\u003e the perfect lover still unmet because on a certain evening in\u003cbr\u003e 1953 one decided to turn down Fifth Avenue instead of going\u003cbr\u003e on to Seventh as originally intended. And I do believe the\u003cbr\u003e old adage about suffering being good for the soul—\u003ci\u003eif, \u003c\/i\u003eas it\u003cbr\u003e should, it produces understanding, which it has in his case\u003cbr\u003e even though it often does not. I’m sure he knows that—but\u003cbr\u003e who could blame him if he’d have preferred somewhat less\u003cbr\u003e understanding! The trick is to understand how much \u003ci\u003eeverybody\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e suffers—to understand it and keep from going mad, that\u003cbr\u003e is. At the same time I’m saying all this I am blissfully aware it’s\u003cbr\u003e all so much meaningless chatter. Saved again!\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seven Stories Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304388088037,"sku":"NP9781609804992","price":13.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781609804992.jpg?v=1767731105","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/landscape-with-traveler-isbn-9781609804992","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}