The Venetian’s Wife

‘The year is 1469. Niccolo Dei Conti stands atop the steep hill that overlooks his villa on the outskirts of Venice. He clenches his fists, raises his arms to the heavens and bellows with anger and frustration at the storm raging around him. He demands that the lightning strike him down and rid him of his old age and loneliness. The storm is unobliging…

He’s considering the solitude and his wifeless bed when a visitor arrives. She moves like Mercury, circling the room, touching with golden fingers the pots, pans, candle holders and all things metal. She discovers the knife that Niccolo Dei Conti’s hand rests on, and because his feet are firmly planted on the floor she burns his heart out… But his journey is not over. He has been a traveler all his life and he still has far to go.’

Thus begins an odd and fascinating quest, a collaboration between the 15th century Venetian and a 20th century art restorer.

Yet again a Chronicle book has caught my eye, almost calling out to be held again, if nothing else, to admire the design and artful publishing. The book is The Venetian’s Wife, by Nick Bantock, a name familiar to many from the series of Griffin & Sabine books published some years back. This book is a little more complex, certainly longer, but having that dreamlike, otherworldly style which characterizes the writer’s other books. The story’s main character, Sara Wolfe, works for a London museum restoring paintings, thoroughly bored with ‘conserving’ mediocre Victorian portraits, feeling her talents are wasted. But… ‘Sara Wolfe is about to fall backwards. The thick walls that separate the past from the present are crumbling, but she doesn’t know it yet…’

The truth is, many details of the story are not clear in memory, since it has been five or six years since I read the book. Turning the pages of the book today, reading a paragraph, a page here and there was stimulus enough to assure me I could read the book through again with first-time pleasure. The virtuosity of Bantock is his rare eye in combining of text and image, his ability to bring a tactile sense to his story. The images or graphics serve to heighten the phantasmagorical quality, the illusory nature of what is happening to the young woman, Sara.

The pleasure of reading The Venetian’s Wife derives from a collaboration of writer, graphic designer and publisher, complementing each other in a seamless flow of beauty. There is a quality to this book that suggests a fuller dimension in both storytelling and publishing, and if you’re looking for a good read, then I heartily recommend you explore the exotic world of Nick Bantock books and his collaboration with Chronicle.

Color of Paradise

“I have come to the unalterable decision—

to go and live forever in Polynesia.

Then I can end my days in peace and freedom.

Without thoughts of to-morrow and this

eternal struggle against idiots.”

— Paul Gauguin, October 1894

So off he went. It was his first trip to Tahiti, lasting from 1891 to 1893. The paintings from Gauguin’s days in Polynesia are the ones that most of us immediately identify with his name. The work has a sense of serenity, and about them he wrote in his journal: ‘It is indeed life outdoors, but however in the forest, forgotten streams, women whispering in an immense palace decorated by nature itself, with all the wealth hidden in Tahiti. Hence all the fabulous colors, the blazing but filtered and silent atmosphere.’

Paul Gauguin died in the Marquesas Islands in 1903 in poverty. Though his paintings from the Polynesia years glow with the spirit of his genius, the last years were difficult ones. His health was poor and he found himself in trouble with the government for inciting the natives not to pay taxes, nor to send their children to schools that taught only evil.

Gauguin’s journal of Polynesia is a magnificent document, and thanks to John Miller and Chronicle Books we have access to that journal in a translation published in 1994. The illustrated journal is called Noa Noa, which in English means ‘fragrant, fragrant.’ This volume reunites the journals with the original etchings, as Gauguin intended. The final lines in Noa Noa are…

Ye gentle breezes of the south and east

That join in tender play above my head,

Hasten to the neighboring isle.

There you will find in the shadows of his favorite tree,

Him who has abandoned me.

Tell him that you have seen me weep.

Lost Travelers

There are somewhere among the books I keep, a half-dozen publishing jewels that never tire, and call me back for another look, another read. For that reason, those half-dozen jewels are stashed in places I often return to, there to show me again what imaginative publishing looks and feels like. I like a good story to read, but the physical book, the binding, design, these aspects too, grab the attention. I admire and appreciate those books that radiate a skillful combination of these qualities.

One special San Francisco publisher consistently puts out books that the reader can recognize immediately as a rare collaboration of artists. Browsing in a bookstore and glimpsing the small trademark eyeglasses at the lower end of a book’s spine, Chronicle Books leaps to mind and my hand moves automatically to take down that book for a close look. I have no knowledge of Chronicle Books sales records, but I believe one of their more memorable releases was the Griffin & Sabine series of books published in the early 1990s, written and illustrated by Nick Bantock. Another Chronicle title I stumbled upon in a bookstore I half remember is The Tattooed Map, by Barbara Hodgson, an entrancing novel of Morocco, bizarre happenings and mysterious Arabs.

The first scan here is from facing pages in the Hodgson book, showing clippings of old postcards, stationery and notes in the narrator’s hand, wrapping the text of the story. In the top left are small notes on photographs taken, roll # 8. (Amazon link here)

The second scan comes from the book, Griffin & Sabine, and is one page of a letter folded inside an envelope; the next image shows the facing pages and that envelope. (Amazon here)

The bottom picture is another set of facing pages, these from Sabine’s Notebook, the second in the series. (Amazon)

When I look at any, or all of these books I am impressed again by the ravishing book design, and at the possibilities in publishing that Chronicle Books brings to life.