"Places of My Infancy" by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (New Directions)

Looking for a small book in size to read on the subway trips from Manhattan to Bushwick, I picked up the elegant Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's miniature memoir of his childhood "Places of My Infancy." The most remarkable aspect of this book is that it's not about people. It is about his home, or one should say estate in Italy during the turn of the Century.

Reading this I reminded of "Against Nature" by Huysmann, but this is the real deal. At least through the eyes of an adult looking back at his life as a child. Detailed architectural accounts of various rooms, including the dining room which has life-sized portraits of the owners (the first ones) eating their meals. One would think why they would want a painting of themselves eating in a room where you actually take your meal? But that's the charm of the super rich - if one could even use the word super in this category, it's more super-duper.

In his house, he had a theater that can hold 300 people, and his family would allow traveling theater people to do shows for the local citizens. Some rich, but a lot were peasants. Eventually, the theater became a movie theater. Di Lampedusa has a way to comment on changes that he remembers through his childhood.

In the book, di Lampedusa admits that he is more attached to things than humans, and this is very much the tale of things - most cases the architecture of his home as a child, including detailed descriptions of rooms, furniture, etc. But the truth (as he knows as well) that 'things' can tell a narrative better than a human at times. Remarkable book.

"Places of My Infancy" is an influence on my childhood/teenage memoir "Tosh" (City Lights Publications).   Focusing on my youth, I realize, after reading this book, that placement or the landscape is equally as important as the characters that are in my book.  I read "Places of My Infancy" in 2012, as I was writing my many drafts of "Tosh."   An essential book for me as a writer.