Books

• Adrian Tchaikovsky, Service Model
• Danzy Senna, Colored Television
• J. M. R. Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money
• Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

Films

• Identificazione di una donna (Identification of a Woman), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
• Strategia del ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem), dir. Bernardo Bertolucci
• The People’s Joker, dir. Vera Drew
• The Hudsucker Proxy, dir. Joel Coen
• Mikey and Nicky, dir. Elaine May
• The Maltese Falcon, dir. John Huston
• Fargo, dir. Joel Coen

Books

• Danielle Dutton, Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other
• Italo Calvino, Marcovaldo, or, The Seasons in the City, translated by William Weaver
• Marco Malvaldi, The Art of Killing Well, trans. Howard Curtis
• Lucy Ellmann, Things Are Against Us
• Edmund Crispin, The Moving Toyshop
• Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist

Films

• Gun Crazy, directed by Joseph H. Lewis
• Europa ’51, dir. Roberto Rossellini

Books

• Magdalen Nabb, The Marshall Makes His Report
• Anna Maria Ortese, Neapolitan Chronicles, translated by 
• Renee Gladman, To After That (TOAF)
• Renee Gladman, My Lesbian Novel
• Henry James, The American
• Kim Stanley Robinson, The Wild Shore
• Kim Stanley Robinson, The Gold Coast
• Kim Stanley Robinson, Pacific Edge

Films

• J’ai faim, j’ai froid, directed by Chantal Akerman
• L’oro di Napoli, dir. Vittorio de Sica
• É stata la mano del Dio (The Hand of God), dir. Paolo Sorrentino
• One Hour With You, dir. Ernst Lubitsch
• Rumours, dir. Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson & Galen Johnson
• Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, dir. Ernst Lubitsch

Exhibits

• Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli
• Parco Archeologico di Ercolano
• “Retroscena. Storie di resistenza e dissidenza nella Collezione Della Ragione,” Museo Novecento, Firenze
• “Oleksandra Horobets: Ho paura di disegnare mia madre,” Museo Novecento, Firenze
• “Dagli anni ’60 agli inizi del XXI secolo,” Collezione Roberto Casamonti, Firenze

Books

• John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos
• John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes

I’ve been reading John Wyndham’s books since I noticed that New York Review Books reprinted Chocky; I read Day of the Triffids long, long ago, but I’d never read the others and I wondered if I was missing anything. I won’t say much because I don’t think these are really books for me. The Kraken Wakes seems like the most interesting of these, in part because of the way it’s narrated – the narrator and his wife are basically Nick and Nora from the Thin Man movies if after a lot of cocktails they got a job narrating the end of the world for an ersatz BBC in an imagined 1950s Britain. (I’m not sure it’s actually as entertaining as that makes it sound.) But I found myself stopped in reading by a breackneck paragraph early in the book:

In the course of the next three years we ourselves lost interest almost to vanishing point. Other matters occupied us. There was the birth of our son, William—and his death, eighteen months later. To help Phyllis to get over that I wangled myself a traveling-correspondent series, sold up the house, and for a time we roved.

After this paragraph, the death of their child goes entirely unmentioned, until two hundred pages later just after they’ve witnessed the atrocities attendant upon an alien invasion of Earth:

She stopped suddenly. Her expression changed. “Sorry, Mike. I shouldn’t have gone off the handle like that. I must be tired, or something.” And she took herself off with a decisive air of not wanting to be followed.

The outburst disturbed me badly. I hadn’t seen her in a state anything like that for years. Not since the baby died.

And that’s it! That’s all we hear about this baby, though the narrator and his wife are front and center for the entire novel. (They have no other children; their happy-go-lucky demeanor before and after this is entirely unchanged.) Someone who’s more interested in science fiction than I am should think about this more deeply – why does this baby appear and die so casually? There’s an ongoing macro-catastrophe – rising sea levels threaten humanity – but I find myself caught up in how this personal tragedy appears and then utterly disappears. It’s a gratuitous writerly act – there’s something about this that feels of the present moment.

• Ardengo Soffici, Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms, translated by Olivia E. Sears
• Jeff VanderMeer, Absolution
• Milo De Angelis, Finite Intuition: Selected Poetry and Prose, trans. Lawrence Venuti
• Via Roma 398. Palermo, including Documents Relating to the Death of Raymond Roussel by Leonardo Sciascia, edited by Luca Trevisani
• Giorgio de Chirico, Geometry of Shadows, trans. Stefania Heim

Films

• Die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster Princess), directed by Ernst Lubitsch
• Ich möchte kein Mann sein (I Don’t Want to Be a Man), dir. Ernst Lubitsch
• The Masque of the Red Death, dir. Roger Corman
• The Fog, dir. John Carpenter
• Steak, dir. Quentin Dupieux
• Wrong, dir. Quentin Dupieux
• Parthenope, dir. Paolo Sorrentino
• Hello Dankness, dir. Soda Jerk
• Passione, dir. John Turturro
• Napoli velata, dir. Ferzan Özpetek

Exhibits

• Museo Marino Marini, Firenze
• “Carlo Maria Mariani. Arte oltre il tempo,” Palazzo Pitti, Firenze
• “Sette opere per la misericordia,” Pio Monte della Misericordia, Napoli
• Cappello Sansevero, Napoli
• Museo Darwin-Dohrn, Napoli
• “Da Caravaggio a Gemito,” Gallerie d’Italia, Napoli
• “Dan Flavin dalla Collezione Luigi e Peppino Agrati,” Gallerie d’Italia, Napoli

Books

• William Sloane, To Walk the Night
• William Sloane, The Edge of Running Water
• Anna Kavan, Machines in the Head: Selected Stories
• Edward Ashton, Mickey7
• Eugene Lim, Fog and Car
• John Wyndham, The Chrysalids

Films

• Francesco, giullare di Dio (The Flowers of St. Francis), directed by Roberto Rossellini
• Daaaaaalí!, dir. Quentin Dupieux
• Rubber, dir. Quentin Dupieux
• Reality, dir. Quentin Dupieux
• Le deuxième acte (The Second Act),dir. Quentin Dupieux
• L’Amore, dir. Roberto Rossellini
• Die Puppe (The Doll), dir. Ernst Lubitsch

Exhibits

• Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze
• Museo di San Marco, Firenze
• Chiostro dello Scalzo, Firenze
• Casa d’arte futurista Depero, Rovereto
• “Il sogno di Luigi Serafini,” MART, Rovereto
• “Italo Cremona. Tutto il resto è profonda,” MART, Rovereto
• “Surrealismi: da de Chirico a Gaetano Pesce,” MART Rovereto
• “X Premio Fondazione VAF,” MART Rovereto

Books

• Magdalen Nabb, The Marshall’s Own Case
• Felix Denk & Sven von Thülen, Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall
• John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
• John Wyndham, Chocky

Films

• Die Bergkatze (The Wildcat), directed by Ernst Lubitsch
• Germania anno zero (Germany Year Zero), dir. Roberto Rossellini
• Stromboli, terra di dio (Stromboli), dir. Roberto Rossellini
• Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy), dir. Roberto Rossellini

Exhibits

• “In the Light of Florence,” Pneuma Art Foundation, Firenze

Books

• Benjamin Balint, Kafka’s Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy
• Avram Davidson, The Other Nineteenth Century
• Magdalen Nabb, The Marshall and the Madwoman

Films

• Faces, directed by John Cassavetes
• Street of Crocodiles, dir. Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay
• This Unnameable Little Broom, dir. Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay
• The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer, dir. Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay
• Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies, dir. Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay
• Stille Nacht I: Dramolet, dir. Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay
• Stille Nacht II: Are We Still Married?, dir. Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay
• Husbands, dir. John Cassavetes

Exhibits

• Museo dell’Antico Palazzo dei Vescovi, Pistoia
• Chiesa San Giovani Fuorcivitas, Pistoia

Books

• Jeff VanderMeer, Authority
• Jeff VanderMeer, Acceptance
• Carlo Levi, Words Are Stones: Impressions of Sicily, translated by Anthony Shugaar
• Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library
• Andrea Camilleri, Excursion to Tindari, trans. Stephen Sartarelli

Exhibits

• “Effetto notte: Nuovo realismo americano,” Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Roma
• Parco archeologico di Tindari, Tindari
• Museo Storia Naturale La Specola, Firenze

Films

• L’Heure d’été (Summer Hours), dir. Olivier Assayas

Books

• Marco Vichi, Ghosts of the Past, trans. Stephen Sartarelli & Oonagh Stransky
• Laney Salisbury & Aly Sujo, Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

Films

• Il peccato (Sin), directed by Andrey Konchalovsky
• Shinjuku Boys, dir. Kim Longinotto & Jano Williams
• Flux Gourmet, dir. Peter Strickland
• May December, dir. Todd Haynes
• Berberian Sound Studio, dir. Peter Strickland
• Mine vaganti (Loose Cannons), dir. Ferzan Özpetek
• Salvatore Giuliano, dir. Francesco Rosi

Exhibits

• Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo, Roma
• Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Altemps, Roma
• Museo Nazionale Romano, Terme di Diocleziano, Roma
• “Teatro: Autori, attori e pubblico nell’antica Roma,” Museo dell’Ara Pacis, Roma
• “Elisabetta Benassi: Autoritratto al lavoro,” MACRO, Roma
• “Patrizia Cavalli: Il sospetto del paradiso,” MACRO, Roma
• “Marcia Hafif: Roma 1961–1969,” MACRO, Roma
• “Laura Grisi: Cosmogonie,” MACRO, Roma
• “Retrofuture: Notes for a Collection,” MACRO, Roma
• “Luigi Serafini: Una casa ontologica,” MACRO, Roma
• “Rivelazioni: Juliette Minchin & Marta Roberti,” Museo Sant’Orsola, Firenze
• Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Firenze
• Basilica si San Lorenzo, Firenze
• Casa Guidi, Firenze
• Galleria Pallatina, Palazzo Pitti, Firenze
• Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Palazzo Pitti, Firenze
• Casa Vasari, Firenze
• Museo Horne, Firenze

Books

• Percival Everett, Erasure
• Marco Vichi, Death in Sardinia, translated by Stephen Sartarelli
• Hisham Matar, A Month in Siena
• Marco Vichi, Death in the Tuscan Hills, trans. Stephen Sartarelli

Films

• American Fiction, directed by Cord Jefferson
• Lazzaro felice (Happy as Lazzaro), dir. Alice Rohrwacher
• Synecdoche, New York, dir. Charlie Kaufman
• Hit Man, dir. Richard Linklater
• The Long Goodbye, dir. Robert Altman
• Il posto, dir. Ermanno Olmi

Exhibits

• Casa Martelli, Firenze
• “Anselm Kiefer: Angeli caduti,” Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze
• Chiesa di Santa Maria Novella, Firenze
• “Federico Tiezzi La belva nella giungla,” Museo Novecento, Firenze
• “Louise Bourgeois: Do Not Abandon Me,” Museo Novecento, Firenze
• Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Prato
• “Colorescenze: Artiste, Toscana, Futuro,” Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato
• “Yu Ji: Hide Me in Your Belly,” Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato
• “Centro Pecci Commissione 2023: Adelaide Cioni,” Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato
• “Eccentrica: Le collezioni del Centro Pecci,” Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato
• Chiesa di Santa Croce, Firenze
• Uffizi, Firenze
• Oratorio della Confraternita di San Martino dei Buonomini, Firenze
• Badia Fiorentina, Firenze
• Museo di Antropologia e Etnologia, Firenze
• Museo e istituto fiorentino di preistoria, Firenze
• Museo degli innocenti, Firenze
• Pinacoteca nazionale di Siena, Siena
• Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena
• Oratorio di San Bernardino, Siena
• Museo civico, Siena
• Collezione di Geologia “Museo Giovanni Capellini,” Bologna
• Pinacoteca nazionale di Bologna, Bologna
• Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
• Oratorio di Santa Cecilia, Bologna
• Museo civico archeologico, Bologna
• Casa Morandi, Bologna
• Museo Morandi, Bologna
• “Una ricerca polivalente: Esperienze dal Centro Video Arte di Ferrara,” Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna