I became aware that I had finished this book after I read the last word, me, on the last page, although of course it wasn’t the actual physical last page, for there were three blank pages, blank, that is, except for the publisher’s web address on the actual, physical last page, a result of the printing process, which puts several pages onto the two sides of a folio at the same time, the sheet then being folded into a signature, a name it derives from the letter or number, or the combination of letters and numbers, printed at the foot of the first page (and sometimes on subsequent leaves of a section) as a guide to the bookbinder in the process of gathering, and thus sharing its origin, as a mark, with the more usual use of signature, or John Hancock, the signatures, after binding, being cut to release the pages themselves, at least in a modern book, unlike older ones that required you to cut the pages yourself, a job for which a sword, even a short stabbing sword, or long dagger, a cinquedea, would probably be overkill. Putting aside the urge to count personal pronouns in the text, to determine, falsely, as it happens, whether the author, or rather the narrator, was an egomaniac, I focussed instead on the indisputable fact that, while I had apparently finished the book, I had not entirely finished the trilogy, the full arc of the story, of which this was the middle section, denoting, perhaps, that a certain balance or equilibrium or straightforwardness might have been expected to infuse it, an expectation that was confounded when I considered what had actually happened, or rather what the narrator had told us had happened, over the course of its 339 pages. A woman asked a favour and a man was soundly beaten up for reasons that we can only guess at, or invent, and hope that perhaps all will explained when we reach volume 3, which given that it has taken six long months to move from Volume 1 and muster the strength to face Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream could be a little while from now. But then, that too would be as nothing compared to the playful way in which the author Javier Marías, and that is quite probably his real name, or at least the one he habitually uses while writing books of this nature, leaves a man head down in a toilet bowl for several long chapters during which the narrator reminisces about the nature of violence as he heard about it from his father, leaving us, the readers, head down in admiration for his ability to use three words, utterances, even phrases, where one might have served a lesser writer.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The sign says, roughly, No admittance for the purpose of criticism to journalists from Gambero Rosso.

To the end of the line, in fact, where below a shiny modern bridge an antique pile of flotsam and a rusty piece of reinforcing mesh barred the path. I turned around, and made my buttock-bruising way back, over concrete incised with deep grooves that I am sure were designed deliberately to impede progress. The steps up by Castel Sant’Angelo, unlike the ones by Ponte Garibaldi, do not have a nice little gutter to wheel the bike in. So I had to heave it on my shoulder. Hey ho, virtue in spades.

Having negotiated the hordes clustering around the Vatican I was somewhat peeved to have missed my turn, and found myself struggling up the giant hill behind the pope’s gardens.  Eventually I found a tiny set of steep stairs down which the bike and I rattled. No virtue in that. And after a few more minutes there we were.

It isn’t the most prepossessing place, nor does it need to be; the crowd outside tells you you’ve arrived. Inside, even at 2:30, was a scrum. You gently and patiently elbow your way to the front — there’s no line, obviously — to be confronted by a stunning display of laden pizza. Make your choice, get your ticket, gently and patiently elbow your way back to the till, and pay. Then it is time to gently and patiently elbow your way back to the front, although this time waving the ticket parts the waters, and pick up your order, by this time reheated, if that’s what you wanted. Back through the scrum to the pavement, all the while trying to keep a suppli from rolling off the trencher.

I chose margherita, just out of the oven to avoid any benefits or drawbacks of reheating. And it was good. More specifically, the base, for which Pizzarium is known, was indeed very good; full of nice big holes and light despite its height. The topping was also good, but (and I know this is going to sound heretical) there was just too much of it. Indeed, looking at all the various combos on display, most of them seemed overburdened. I’m not saying pizza toppings should be mean. Rather that there is a right amount, which is not too messy and which sits well with, rather than suppressing, the base. So that’s my verdict. Good, but not great.

Would I go there again? Not deliberately, although if someone wanted to I’d go with. Maybe driving home from the country, although it is on the wrong side of the main road in. Is it manna from heaven? Not in my view. I can get slices of similarly long-fermented pizza base and delicious toppings from a world-beating pizzaiolo just a longish walk from here. And for a more standard thinner slice, there’s a place not too far away that I could tell you about, but I’d have to kill you. For sit-down, the local joint, Da Bruno a Quattro Venti (which I refuse to link to because its website autoplays a fatuous commentary) is way better than average. But for my money, when I want toppings to die for and a whole different attitude to the pizza experience, there’s only one place: La Fucina.

I’m the kind of person who likes to do a little research, especially when reviewing books. Not for me the put-down (X fails to consider the reverse-Reimann manoeuvre and yet expects us to take his analysis of post-causal hermeneutics seriously) that is so easily countered (Y obviously didn’t get as far as page 3, where I explicitly observed that causality in and of itself is meaningless without reversing the manoeuvre often erroneously credited to Reimann). So after guffawing my way annoyingly through Dennis Danziger’s A short history of a tall Jew, I headed on over to everybody’s favourite search engine. The publisher, Deal Street Press, is invisible, even when I added the city of Los Angeles. Danziger’s website has been dead since the day it opened with a self-deprecating Hello World, which, like so many untended derelict alleys is now home only to drug pushers. The man himself is a reasonably frequent contributor to The Huffington Post, where he explained that the book had been self-published, as part of making a claim to being “the world’s worst Jewish businessman”. I looked at a couple of his other pieces; they’re good. He’s good. I admire what he has to say about teaching and teachers.

So I’ve just read two successive self-published books! This is definitely a trend. I was going to kvetch about the lack of good copy editors these days — Tetrus indeed — but I guess maybe there wasn’t one at all. The thing about being self-published, of course, is that you have to be self-everything else as well, although I’m happy to be an outsourced marketing department, especially for products I enjoy myself.

Didn’t I say this was going to be a short review?

A short history of a tall Jew really is funny, and has some seriously tea-up-the-nose spluttering set pieces, but probably only if you have at least a smidgin of sensitivity to the cosmic joke that is Jewishness. I’m not going to summarise the plot or anything like that. Its about a guy who teaches English in the Los Angeles public school system. Dennis Danziger teaches English in the Los Angeles public school system. And he is Jewish. He’s probably tall too. At least, he enjoys basketball. Try it, what harm can it do?

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Tech Transfer is a self-published first novel.

If that rings alarm bells, silence them. Daniel S. Greenberg knows science, especially science funding, administration and politics in the US, better than anyone else alive today. Add the book’s subtitle — Science, Money, Love and the Ivory Tower — and the package is not too different from a couple of his other titles: Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards, and Delusions of Campus Capitalism and Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion. The difference, of course, is love, of which there is precious little in Tech Transfer, although plenty of lust. Greenberg has taken the stuff he’s learned in more than 40 years of reporting about science, and written about in sober analysis and non-fiction, and used it to embroider a very slightly different picture.

He’s done this before, sharing snapshots from the life of Grant Swinger, erstwhile director of the Center for the Absorption of Federal Funds and recently President of the University of Avarice. Swinger returns the favour with a backhanded puff for Tech Transfer, which is the full-length portrait.

It is a truly delightful romp through the modern American university and its multitude of relationships, internal and external. I won’t say more here — except to point out that my judgement may well be clouded because Greenberg is a friend of long standing. There are other reviews and an interesting review cum interview out there that you may want to check. Or you could trust me, something that could hardly be said of anyone in Tech Transfer.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

There is a temptation, and we all know what Oscar Wilde said, in his native English, about temptations, or perhaps it is merely an urge, or a desire, something I want to do in any case, when faced by an extremely peculiar writing style, something way out on the boundaries of normalcy, something that takes a bit of work, or at least effort, to make sense of, to see whether the particular style is easy to emulate, simulate, copy. That was the notion that struck me, not literally, of course, for it consisted only in the firing of a particular set of neurons, forcefully, and why do we say that neurons “fire” as if some explosive force were indeed involved, as I made my way past about the one-third mark, although I wasn’t literally counting words, paragraphs, pages and chapters, of the book I eventually finished a little more than a week ago. Tedious though it may seem, at least to the beginner who has not in fact yet metaphorically waded through the sucking swamps and treachery of his prose, not yet come to the realization that while this “intriguing and audacious experiment,” as an unnamed reviewer in the Sunday Times, and the rushing flow of composition prevents me from backtracking and consulting a search engine in an attempt to, how can I put it, search for him, or her, is indeed intriguing and audacious, it is also extremely successful. If you like this sort of thing. And if you do like this sort of thing, as another reviewer apocryphally wrote, then this is indeed the sort of thing you will like. I did. And although other books that have been waiting patiently their turn, their moment to glory in the limelight of attention, will keep me from Volume 2 of Your Face Tomorrow, that Volume 2 too is waiting its turn, a turn that necessarily must come after Volume 1, the book I am here not so much reviewing as reliving, a turn which will come in due course. At least, that is what I intuited, glancing at the pile of unread books by my side. When, it is impossible now to say, or even think with any certainty, the only certainty being that it will indeed come, at some time, in the future. Obviously.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars