Paul Gervais- reflections on Reading

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Paul Gervais

Paul Gervais is writing from Italy in his home, the restored Villa Massei. He has just celebrated his birthday with a dinner for fifty. No doubt-daunting for most----- for someone like Paul it seems to happen easily with a casual elegance and with great panache.

Villa Massei  

originally the Renaissance country house of the Count Sinebaldis

Paul and his partner Gil Cohen have had a love affair with Villa Massei for almost 30  years. He found his way to to Villa in Lucca by way of  growing up in northern Massachusetts- where he adds was"just a stone's throw from New Hampshire where my ancestors had lived for more than nine generations." 

Next-A life in San Francisco, circa 1970's where he met Gil.

Then a return to New York, circa 1980. Could there be any doubt the adventure had only begun for the pair?

 Villa Massei

Paul Gervais is a successful writer, painter and landscape designer-and still has time to record his work & play in the blog Gervais de Bédée. He has taken up painting again and is preparing for a show of his recent works-& they are archived on his other blog- Paul Gervais Art/Works. 
More? 
Yes.
Paul immediately consented to  answering some questions about one of his many passions and my own- Reading.

a Charles X chair- Italian, at the Villa Massei-the perfect spot reading

It has "comforted many a weary old soul since 1830, the year of its manufacture—recovering it would be a pity." PG

What Books are on your Summer reading list?
 

Paul-

I was just given three books last night, as a birthday present, by my friend Diamantina Scola-Camerini ,and so these three volumes have suddenly appeared on my summer reading list.

The first is The Moral Animal, Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright. Now this sounds like something only very dull anti-social people would ever bother to pick up, but interestingly enough it is aimed at a wide audience and was named one of the New York Times’s best books of the year. 

The second is Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee. I’d read his wonderful Guns, Germs and Steel as I crossed snow-covered Burgundy last December by train on my way to Nice from Paris in a driving blizzard and I found it a wonderful traveling companion. 

And the third is a book called Storia di un breve viaggio (The Story of a Short Trip) by my friend Diamantina herself, a bound short story in chap book form—I’m very curious; we’ve been friends for years and I hadn’t known she wrote!

the stacks at Villa Massei

Is there one book that is always there that you honestly don’t expect to get to once again? Why?

Paul-

After a year or so of dormancy I pull the bookmarks out of them and put them back on the shelves. 

Where do you read and When? Does the genre you are reading dictate the  place you read- in other words, Do you take just any old book to bed?

Paul-

I do read in bed, but not every night. Sometimes I’m just too tired and so I watch a little news and call it a day. But if I’m serious about reading a book I tend to do it in my “red room” in front of the fireplace. I also find trains and airports conducive to reading—being stuck in a place where no one can possibly disturb you and send you off in the pursuit of another task.

 
What does your nightstand look like? or your side of the bed, floor,chair! 

 
 

Paul's bedroom see more of it here

Paul-

I read by a lamp fashioned from an antique 19th century porcelain vase which sits on a half-round neo-classical style table ( you can see it in my post A Glance around my Bedroom). The table has an under shelf and this is where my reading material tends to await my attention.

What is you all time Favorite Book for its sense of place?
 

Paul-

Maybe The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles—but there are many.

Tennesse Williams reviewed The Sheltering Sky for the New York Times in 1949 and wrote,"

 There is a curiously double level to this novel. The surface is enthralling as narrative. It is impressive as writing. But above that surface is the aura that I spoke of, intangible and powerful, bringing to mind one of those clouds that you have seen in summer, close to the horizon and dark in color and now and then silently pulsing with interior flashes of fire. And that is the surface of the novel that has filled me with such excitement... “In its interior aspect, The Sheltering Sky is an allegory of the spiritual adventure of the fully conscious person into modern experience.”

What is your Security Blanket Book?


Paul-
It would have to be books like The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul, or Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr—there are many of these too.

"How could people like these, without words to put to their emotions and passions, manage? They could, at best, only suffer dumbly. Their pains and humiliations would work themselves out in their characters alone: like evil spirits possessing a body, so that the body itself might appear innocent of what it did." — V.S. Naipaul (The Enigma of Arrival)

What is your favorite Genre? Why? What is your most recent purchase in this category?

 Paul-
I tend to favor realistic fiction, books that make you say, He can’t be making this up. I love non-fiction as well, especially memoire. I recently read The Hare with Amber Eyes. Very nice.

What about Books you are reading for a second or third time? Why? 
 Any disappointments on second reading?

 

Paul-
I’ve just started reading a book for the third time, Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard. I love anything by Bernhard and I’ve read other books of his more than once. He’s the most amazing writer; his power is that of extraordinary intimacy.
 

What is the seminal book in your field or your passion that you would recommend to young would be/s of the same?

 Paul-

Am I an esthete? Is that what it is? 

Yes, of course!

Paul-

All right then, A Voice Through a Cloud by Denton Welch.

Latest Obsession Author?
 

Paul-

I’ve been obsessed with many authors over the years, Nabokov, Naipaul, Proust. At the moment I’m obsession free.

Book covers can be art- Do you have a favorite cover  in your stacks?
 

Paul-

I do love the cover of my book A Garden in Lucca, done by the very talented Louise Fili.

Going out on a limb here –define LIBRARY in the nontraditional sense?
 

Paul-

Organized reflections.

John Locke said- "Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him." 

Paul-I think surpasses Locke's expectation at each trajectory.

Paul's website here
A Garden in Lucca by Paul Gervais here 
There is a wonderful cycle on  Paul at 1st dibs' Style Compass here
more about A Voice Through A Cloud by Denton Welch here
his blogs here





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