The title has shifted here just a bit, but not the main one, which is still Sea of Intimacy, still from the same Predrag Matvejević line in his (I think more and more exquisite) Mediterranean Breviary: “The Atlantic and Pacific are seas of distance, the Mediterranean a sea of propinquity, the Adriatic a sea of intimacy” (tr. Michael Henry Heim). Having written now much of the first draft, a subtitle seems in order: The Adriatic Real and Imagined. And a big thank you to my friend Robin Hemley for helping me to arrive at this.
The real lets me delve into the history; the imagined gives me some leeway (a sailing term!) for the parts that are not, strictly speaking, historical. These include moments when I’m walking around, touching rocks; floating across the water; commenting on fiction and poetry based on the local places; talking with people who left or stayed; exploring places, people, and events that might have been (dogmen, witches, winged lions) but for which no sources are completely trustworthy by today’s standards.
There are, I think, four parts.
Me Bastard, You Bastard is about the virtues of mixture, especially in the face of those who cry “bastardization!” whenever mixture rears is corrosive head.
Places Real and Imagined explores locales that exist both in reality and in people’s minds, which means as places one might be able to return to and have a look around but will never really find again, even if one can in fact get “there”; these are also places as attitudes and, sometimes, places with attitudes.
Part three is Kin, and it’s where my cherry brandy (a.k.a., sangue morlacco) makes its appearance, along with the families (of people mostly) who gave it birth. There’s also a bit here, if the eventual publisher let’s me, about the Valentino family’s journey away from these places and one of its members’ subsequent return.
In Bridging the Living and the Dead, which is the final part, I hope to pull some of the threads together, tracing the remains of regional ancestors, some of them saintly, some mythological, some all too human, tying them all together if not into a nice bow, at least into a pleasing form that will encourage readers, a few at least, to affirm: Ah, I see!
Two editors interested so far. Hoping they see.
Russell Scott Valentino 