I thought Sea of Intimacy was going to have six parts, and I was writing that fourth part for some time as a long-ish essay after George Steiner’s Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, a fine book with a smart contrast at its heart. My two points of contrast were going to be the two would-be masters of the Adriatic, Venice and Trieste, and so Part Four: Venice or Trieste: An Essay in the Old Criticism.
As the book has evolved, however, the material collected in the essay has come to feel less and less of a piece with the rest. So while it has some insights I’m happy with — about apparent depth (Venice in shallow, muddy water) and actual depth (Trieste atop cave-filled karst), and about the arts that are characteristic of the two places (Venetian painting and limestone facades, Trieste’s bourgeois nature lending itself quite naturally to the novel) — I’ve dropped it from the book. I can recycle some details and observations for use elsewhere, and maybe the whole will work at some point as a standalone. For now I’m pushing to have a draft of the whole book, now with five parts rather than six, completed by the end of the summer.
After a section that functions a bit like a prologue that I’m calling First Things, there’s Me Bastard, You Bastard, then Places Real and Imagined, then Liquid Borders, then Kin, and then Translatio, or Beings Real and Imagined.
Each of the parts is divided into short sections, basically essays, some of which are all of a single piece while others are themselves segmented. It’s a flexible structure.
I’ve been posting in a special Facebook page created just for this, with pictures and other things that don’t fit in the book. (Search for “Sea of Intimacy” on FB if you’re interested, and you’ll find it.)
I can feel the end now, just out there. Beckoning.
###
Russell Scott Valentino 