Short takes
Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World
By Roger Atwood
St. Martin's, 337 pp., illustrated, $25.95
The looting of antiquities has been such a ubiquitous practice that it becomes noteworthy only when it reaches truly brazen proportions, as when Lord Elgin, Britain's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, stripped the Parthenon of its sculptures or when, 200 years later, Iraqi opportunists raided ancient archeological sites while the bombs of "shock and awe" were still falling.
Journalist Roger Atwood gained extraordinary access to actors at every level of the illicit trade in antiquities -- from the farmers and villagers who are usually the first to stumble on a site, to the reputable museums and auction houses profiting from an international traffic that mirrors the drug trade, complete with "mules" and FBI stings.
Packed with detail, "Stealing History" focuses on the looting of a recently discovered site in Peru, the Royal Tombs of Sipn, with its hoard of opulent ceremonial objects in silver, copper, and gold. Atwood's sensual appreciation of these treasures only increases his indignation on behalf of the peoples whose cultural patrimony is being stolen. "In this business only the poor get punished," one informant tells him. "We don't call the rich looters, we call them collectors."
Mary After All
By Bill Gordon
Dial, 274 pp,. $23
This fictional memoir begins with a swagger: "Tony the Horse was a hit man, and he wore a size 13 ring." The reminiscing narrator is not a hard-bitten con recollecting in the tranquillity of his cellblock but rather a 60-year-old woman, Mary Nolan (ne Marelli), looking back on a colorful working-class upbringing in Jersey City. Her grandfather Louie ran a speakeasy. Her favorite neighborhood character was called Charlie Cupacoffee. When Mary needed a job, she sought career advice from her aunt, a bookie.
Bill Gordon takes a risk in this debut novel by speaking through a female protagonist, and it's a risk that pays only modest dividends. Mary seems less a fully imagined character than a generic concept, as she grows up a dependable good girl in the 1950s, marries too young in the 1960s, then dumps Mr. Wrong and learns to stand up for herself in the feminist 1970s. Eventually she strikes a comfortable arrangement with her ex-husband as they ease into middle age.
Like gritty Jersey City itself, Mary's life traces a cycle of decline and resurgence. Gordon brings warmth and compassion to telling the story. What it really could use, though, is more of the quirky originality that gets it off to such a catchy start.
The Writer's Voice
By A. Alvarez
Norton, 128 pp., $21.95
In the lectures that make up this collection, the British poet, author, and critic A. Alvarez addresses the complex topic of writers and writing in terms of crystalline transparency.
The two central concepts around which his advice to aspiring authors flows are the notions of "voice" and "listening." Not to be confused with "style," which is a costume an author puts on and takes off, voice is that expression of personal truth without which a writer has little of value to communicate. By listening -- that is, carefully attending -- to the writing of others, one learns to distinguish authenticity from artifice, to understand what "works" in a written work, and to apply that understanding to one's own efforts.
Lest we be misled by all this talk of truth and authenticity, Alvarez -- whose very name maintains a screen of authorial privacy -- includes an acerbic essay, "The Cult of Personality and the Myth of the Artist," in which he assails the public posturing and cheap self-exposure toward which, he believes, literature and art have tended since the Beat generation. Lucid, worldly, and wise, Alvarez's own voice is, as always, a pleasure to listen to.
Amanda Heller is a critic and editor who lives in Newton.
