Beautiful Ruins audiobook

Preconcetti sventato ancora una volta!Whoever designed the cover of this novel and came up with its title (because I refuse to believe either of these disasters were Jess Walter’s doing) must have had one thing in mind: make this book appear to be as much of a chick-lit beach read as possible. And yes, while there are certainly elements of the chick-lit beach read here—some tender relationships, a sprinkle of sentimentality, a romance or twelve—it would be highly unfair to categorize it as so, because this book smashes that label to pieces and even transcends whichever other label one might try to apply to it. Beat that, labels!Walter is a skilled writer. For such a short book with its surprisingly large cast of characters, including (believe it or not) Richard Burton, Walter manages to do draw out each of them fully and beautifully, flaws and all. Traversing from post-war Italy to modern-day Hollywood and back again, the plot is expertly constructed. Though it does, at times, meander into predictable territory, it never stays there long, and the care with which Walter crafts the relationships among his characters—whether it be between a mother and her son, a young man and his comrade, or a widow and her never-forgotten flame—is a care reminiscent of that shown by Krauss in The History of Love. In fact, I think both novels succeed on a similar level (besides shattering my preconceptions), which is to address the often competing themes of desire and responsibility, imagining the possibilities of a life-that-could-have-been while ultimately reconciling it with the life-that-is.But also, yes. It is a love story: And the robot loves his master, alien loves his saucer, Superman loves Lois, Lex, and Lana, Luke loves Leia (till he finds out she’s his sister), and the exorcist loves the demon even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace, as Leo loves Kate and they both love the sinking ship, and the shark—God, the shark loves to eat, which is what the mafioso loves, too—eating and money and Paulie and omertà—the way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar, and sometimes loves the other cowboy, as the vampire loves night and neck, and the zombie—don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool; has anyone ever been more lovesick than a zombie, that pale, dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms, his very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains? This, too, is a love story. And also, yes. Parts of it do take place on the Italian Riviera. Get over it.

I got a table at the Rainbow Room I told my wife I'd be home soon Big ships are approaching the docks I got my hi-fi boom box Mashed potatoes in cellophane I see my life going down the drain Hold me baby and don't let go Pretty girls help to soften the blowPalm trees; the flat broke disease And LA has got me on my knees I am the bluest of blues Every day a different way to lose The Go GetterI'll be the Go GetterThat's my planThat's who I amThe Go GetterYeah the Go GetterThe Go Getter The Black KeysI have a complicated relationship with social satire. I give the vulgar and violent (thinking here of South Park and Chuck Palahniuk) a wide berth –– but the bizarre sensibilities of Monty Python, the gentle humor of Garrison Keillor or the politician-skewering tirades of Stewart and Colbert tickle me. I have the hardest time appreciating modern literary satire. When I commit to spending a few days with a book, I want story. Good, old-fashioned, beginning-middle-end story, not cynical commentary wrapped in wit. Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins is the marriage of gentle social satire with old-fashioned story-telling; a marriage that gives life to a delightfully original and brave novel. Like any skilled satirist, Walter creates a world that is slightly off-kilter – not bizarre, not unbelievable- just a sense that something, somehow is slightly amiss. The reader is always a bit wobbly – guaranteeing she will take nothing for granted in the narrative. The title Beautiful Ruins refers to one of novel’s central themes: the inevitable crumbling of youth, of promise, of dreams. There are so many beautiful ruins in this story, which takes place in 1962 Italy and present-day Hollywood, with a bit of contemporary Spokane and Edinburgh and 1970’s Seattle tossed in, not to forget a slight detour to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the 1850’s. Among the ruins we find the village of Porto Vergogna and the dreams of its most ambitious resident, hotel owner Pasquale Tursi; the actress Dee Moray, who comes to Porto Vergogna in 1962 to convalesce; Alvis Bender, a war veteran turned writer who can’t write past his first chapter; the legendary movie producer Michael Deane, who has made a beautiful ruin of his face with Botox and plastic surgery; Deane’s assistant Claire Silver, whose love life and career represent everything she hates about sell-out, superficial Los Angeles; former Seattle grunge rocker Pat Bender, a mid-life shamble of addiction and self-loathing; and aspiring screenwriter Shane Wheeler, who delivers one of the book’s most surprising chapters, a pitch for a movie about that great ruin of the American frontier spirit: the doomed Donner party. That’s a heckuva lot of characters (and there are more, far more!) and this is a heckuva lot of story. Yet it works, in all its madcap and poignant twists, thanks to Walter’s crisp writing and efficient plotting. You fall in love with these characters – Walter gives them such soul, your heart is constantly tugged. This is a book you could read in the space of a Sunday, not because it’s simple, but because you simply don’t want to put it down. I waver and withhold a fifth star because the Hollywood scenes feel a bit thin and fantastical to me - there's that satire twitch of mine - and I couldn't quite connect with Claire, who holds a pivotal role, until she, well, I don't want to spoil things. If you don’t care for Hollywood endings, you might feel cheated by Walter’s wrap-up of his intertwined story lines. Me? I’m a sucker for spoonful of sugar to make the medicine of satire go down. Richard Burton makes a brilliantly comic cameo; it is in fact this famous actor for whom the book is titled, after Louis Menard’s piece in The New Yorker: “[Dick] Cavett’s four great interviews with Richard Burton were done in 1980….Burton, fifty-four at the time, and already a beautiful ruin, was mesmerizing.” Jess Walter uses his characters and their exploits to poke firmly but not cruelly at the bubbles of pop culture, our adoration of celebrity and beauty and the fickle nature of the film and publishing industries. Not to mention the fickle and fleeting nature of love. He shows the folly of great expectations and the beautiful ruins of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. It is a charming literary mosaic.

After looking up various images of the 1963 movie, CLEOPATRA, the film that critically bombed but was lit up by the scandal of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, I saw a coastline of Italy that looked exactly like the cover of this book. It is a most felicitous cover that captures the mood and time that this novel begins, in 1962. A parochial innkeeper, Pasquali Tursi, lives in a rocky coastline village called Porto Vergogna (Port of Shame), a place the size of a thumb between two mountains, and referred to as "the whore's crack."One day, Pasquali is stunned by the vision of a young, striking, blonde American actress, Dee Moray, from the movie set, and baffled why she is staying at his inn. He learns that she is sick, and waiting for the famous publicity agent, Michael Deane, to take her to Switzerland for treatment. She stays at the ramshackle inn for a few days. Walter depicts their friendship with exquisite wistfulness and beauty. Her Italian and his English are as rocky as the cliffs surrounding the village, but a meeting of the souls eclipses language. On an outing together, they climb the cliffs high above the Ligurian Sea so that Pasquali can show Dee five frescoes painted on the wall inside a machine-gun pillbox bunker left over from World War II. At this scene, I almost wept. These frescoes become the most poignant visual metaphor of the book.Alvis Bender, an American writer with writer's block, traumatized from his experience in the war, stays at the inn annually, and has left his one devastating chapter in the drawer in Dee's room. It is an astonishing chapter, one of the highlights of the novel. It is a treat to witness the variety of stories that make up Walter's one larger story.The novel alternates non-linearly from 1962 to contemporary time in Hollywood, Calfornia, where Claire Silver, a scholar of film archives, works for the now legendary film producer Michael Deane. Claire is on the cusp of quitting her job and leaving her boyfriend, and is suffering from several regrets. She is braced for another insipid film pitch when she receives a surprising visitor.In this pensive, reflective, aesthetically pleasing, and geographically stunning story, we meet a disparate cast of characters that are ultimately linked. There's also a washed-up rock musician, a frustrated screenwriter, and a cameo appearance by a certain alcoholic son of a Welsh coal miner--a brief but rollicking insertion of a true-to-life legend that is so spectacular and credible, it almost outshines the rest of the book. But the rest of the novel is exquisite, so that the scenes in repose combine with eye-popping chapters, and give the book a sublime balance.The story has an undulating, timeless presence. Patience is rewarded, as it ascends toward its peak with a languid pace. The outcome may be a little too neat for some readers, but it is a minor flaw that is incidental to the mature and subtle elegance rendered on every page. As time passes, it continues to echo with its alluring characters, resonating themes, and delicate visual beauty and symmetry.

Beautiful Ruins, Jess WalterBeautiful Ruins is a novel by Jess Walter, first published in 2012. The novel is a social satire which explores human nature and satirizing the Hollywood culture, that is at the center of the novel. Similarly, the novel includes significant leaps of time, and geography, with much of the early parts of the novel, set in an Italian coastal hotel, but later parts are set in Hollywood; Edinburgh; Seattle; Florence, Italy; Portland, Ore.; Truckee, Calif.; and Sandpoint, Idaho. تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و نهم ماه آگوست سال 2019میلادیعنوان: ‏‫ویرانه‌ های زیبا؛ نویسنده: جس والتر‏‫؛ مترجم: فرناز کامیار؛ ویراستار شهین خاصی؛ تهران‫ کتاب کوله پشتی‏‫، 1398؛ در 439ص؛ شابک 9786004611985؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 21م‬عنوان: ویرانه ‌های زیبا؛ نویسنده: جس والتر؛ مترجم: سیدمیثم فدائی؛ تهران: نفیر، ‏‫1397؛ در 451ص؛ شابک 9786009835386؛‬ساختن فیلم «کلئوپاترا» در «ایتالیا»، و رابطه ی پنهانی «ریچارد برتون» هوسباز، با هنرپیشه ای بنام «دبرا مور»، در کنار عشق آتشینش به «الیزابت تیلور»، آغازگر داستانی میشود، بنام «ویرانه های زیبا»؛ عاشقانه ای به اصالت «ایتالیا» و جذابیت «هالیوود»؛نقل از متن: «اسکورس ازم پرسید: مایکل بهم بگو چی از کلئوپاترا میدونی؛ عجب سئوال احمقانه ای! همه ی آدمای این شهر، در مورد این فیلم میدونستن؛ بیشتر اینکه چطوری داشت، فاکس رو زنده زنده قورت میداد؛ اینکه این ایده، به مدت بیست سال، به دست فراموشی سپرده شده بود، تا اینکه سال 1958میلادی، والتر وانگر، تهیه کنندگیش رو به عهده گرفت، و وقتی متوجه ی رابطه ی زنش (جوان بنت) با مشاورش (جنینگز لنگ) شد (که البته سوء تفاهمی بیش نبود!)، به اون مرد شلیک کرد، و اینطوری شد، که روبن مامولیان، تهیه کنندگی کلئوپاترا رو تقبل کرد، و یه قرارداد دو میلیون دلاری با (جوآن کالینز) بست؛ کالینزی که به اندازه (دان ناتز) عقل و شعور داشت! بعد استودیو اونو بیرون انداخت، و رفت سراغ (الیزابت تیلور)، بزرگترین ستاره ی دنیا، که بعد از دزدیدن (ادی فیشر) از (دبی رینولدز)، شهرتش به قهقرا رفته بود؛ اون دهه ی سی رو هم رد کرده بود، و این ازدواج چهارمش بود، ولی تو این وضعیت بی ثباتی شغلی، چیکار کرد؟ یک میلیون دلار و ده درصد فیلم رو خواست؛ هیچکی تا اون موقع دستمزد نیم میلیونی از بازی تو فیلم نگرفته بود، اما این خانم یه میلیون میخواست!» پایان نقلتاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

In 2006, Janet Maslin of the NY Times said, “Jess Walter is a ridiculously talented writer.” That’s been a blurb on every book he’s written since. I can see why, especially since I happen to agree. This, his most recent novel, showcases these talents well. The writing is effortless, the plot is engaging, the characters are memorable, and it’s full of fun and insight. The social commentary is awfully good, too, meaning I approve of the targets he pokes at. The story begins in the early 1960’s in a remote fishing village just beyond Italy’s fashionable Cinque Terre. Young Pasquale, fresh out of college, has come back home to run his family’s small hotel. A beautiful American actress named Dee arrives (mistakenly?) as a guest. She was originally in Rome for the filming of Cleopatra. Though Pasquale’s English is not great, and he’s also a bit shy, his earnest good intent makes an impression. But she’s sick (dying?). We then cut to contemporary America – Hollywood – the epicenter of both glitz and schlock. Claire is a film-loving assistant at Michael Deane’s studio. Deane, a cheeser of some repute, began his career as a production assistant for Cleopatra, later became a big-time producer, then fell off the pace awhile before getting his groove back via reality TV. (Walter’s skewering of this broadcast idiocy is something all but the lowest of brows can appreciate.) Anyway, Claire is about to give up when two visitors show up. One is a young writer hoping to pitch his sensationally bleak movie idea and the other is an older Italian gentleman there to see Michael. So that’s how it sets up. We then get the back story that brings us up to the present. And what a story it is. One of the characters is an American writer (a car salesman, really) who visits Pasquale’s hotel annually with the intention of writing a book, but in practice to drink wine. He did manage a chapter, though, and the truth is it’s very good. We also witness some touching scenes where Pasquale and Dee connect, if only briefly, at soul level. Then there was the whole Cleopatra circus. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (or Lizard as I like to think of them in this era of Brangelina) took some managing, and Deane was the man tasked with the job. The Welshman was a handful with his unslakable thirsts. His cameo role was one of the highlights of the book. Fast-forwarding a few decades we meet Pat who is all about wine, women and song. At least the song part had at one time provided an income. He’s in rather dire straits when we meet him, though. Naturally, his story connects with the others. Back in Hollywood, agendas are identified and actions are taken. Now, in the time-honored tradition of keeping important plot points to one’s self, I hereby button my lip.I’ve been a Jess Walter fan for several years now. He’s one of those writers who’s found the sweet spot between flourishes and flow. He never appears to be trying too hard while giving us bright, shiny nuggets in an entertaining way. Richard Russo identified this talent early in Walter’s career, which is meaningful since Russo is another writer I’d put in that category. My expectations for a Walter book are high. In fact, I may have rounded down from 4.5 stars to 4 because I know his capabilities. The shortcoming in this work, I felt, was in his character development. He tended to trade depth for breadth. With as many as 8 POV characters, it would have been nice digging deeper into a select few. But hey, let’s end this on a positive note. This is a very readable book — by a ridiculously talented writer.

A favorable review today in The New York Times said Jess Walter’s new book is like a film script, but to my way of thinking it is more like Walter as a one-man performance artist, who suddenly pulls all kinds of horns, drums, bells and other props out of his bottomless pockets to illustrate a point, to make us laugh, to break into our attention and to declare: “are we entirely mad?” His work is brilliantly interpreted and performed by Edoardo Ballerini on audio, and to hear the thick and heavy tones of Richard Burton declaiming in a small outboard floating off the coast of Italy is to feel a stab of remembered joy. Fifteen years from conception to production, this is Walter at his crazy, mad, funny, piercing best, for he skewers us and our lives by reflecting popular culture back at ourselves, but showers us with tender mercies at the end. The novel covers a time frame from the early sixties through at least the last decade, and covers at least as many personalities as years. But what a wild and happy party it is, with all the usual suspects: love, greed, envy, pride, lust, infidelity…and, I’ll say it again, finally love. “It’s a love story,” we hear as Hollywood producer Michael Deane pitches his latest to the studio executives at the end of the book. And I guess it always is, in the end, for that is all that really matters.Take this trip, and if you have eschewed listening on audio for whatever reason, throw aside your inhibitions and do yourself a favor. This is performance art, and may be listened to with great effect. We have a nubile Hollywood actress with a bit part in an Elizabeth Taylor film, a Hollywood producer, a small Italian coastal village, a young man pitching a story…you get the idea. There is lots going on but it always with the greatest clarity that we can see that life ”isn’t always easy” and that we usually find our hapless ways despite, or perhaps because of, our questionable choices.

Beautiful Ruins is a revelation. It contains shimmering prose and a life-affirming message. Spanning 50 years and two continents, it asks some tough questions about how to define success and happiness in our media-driven, celebrity-obsessed culture. It artfully encompasses such disparate events as the filming of Cleopatra in the 1960's and the tragedy of the Donner Party over 100 years earlier. It skewers the modern entertainment industry for its preoccupation with ratings and admonishes us to ignore this chatter when we chart our own lives. Reading it is like eating an artichoke. As you peel away the leaves, stand-ins for the myriad tribulations confronting the characters, the anticipation builds. By the time Walter wraps it all up, in a masterful final chapter that both updates and recapitulates his many story threads, you feel sated and satisfied. (view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)]["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>

I would never have suspected that a novel about a small town actress, a decrepit Italian hotel, an ambitious writer, a crass Hollywood producer and Richard Burton would have me turning to grab this book at every spare opportunity, and allow me to stretch my lunch hour without guilt to finish the book.In the early 60s, Pasquale has taken over his family's completely out of date hotel in a village so small that tourist boats never come there -- except one day, when one does, and deposits a beautiful American actress, Dee Moray, on the pier. She takes a room in the hotel, and seems to be very ill, but waiting for the arrival of someone she loves, and of course, Pasquale is smitten. This story is interwoven with a modern-day tale of ambitious Hollywood production assistant Claire, who works for an aging but still ambitious producer, who will end up having played a critical role in the story of the young actress from 50 years before. Into her orbit comes a young writer who is eager to pitch a movie plot about the Donner Party -- and an aging Pasquale, on a search to find the woman who captured his heart so many years ago.And when Michael Deane, the famous producer, decides to pay an old debt (or is that what his real motivation is?) and help Pasquale find Dee, all the threads will be woven together into a story of completion and redemption.And how does Richard Burton work into all this? You'll have to pick up this beautifully written, funny, mulitfaceted book yourself to find out. An absolutely riveting work.

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