The Force of Things

October 22, 2012
Digging up the ghosts and skeletons hiding in family closets can be exhilarating, repulsive, amusing, or terrifying, and reading memoirs of a familyâunless it's oursâcan be just as exhilarating or terrifying or uninteresting. What is it about this family that resembles our own? What lessons can we learn from this memoir? Stille's sometimes charming, sometimes tedious memoir traces the story of his star-crossed, storm-tossed parents who lived and loved against the backdrop of the migration of Jews from fascist-dominated Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and a cultural life in postwar America that included moving among New York intellectuals such as Dwight McDonald, Alfred Kazin, and Philip Roth. Some of his relatives are notable characters; his Aunt Lally, for example, is "something of a Holy Fool out of a Russian novel, a person almost free of guile or malice." An inveterate hoarder, Lally's apartment contains mountains of documents that eventually help Stille discover elements of his father's personality and his father's passion for detail. Like an improbable Romeo and Juliet, Stille's father, the celebrated Italian journalist Mikhail Kamenetzki, and his mother, the Midwestern beauty Elizabeth Bogert, meet when she "goes to a party in New York with her first husband and leaves it with her second" (Stille's father). Stille's often moving, though overlong, memoir records one couple's struggles and uncertainties in the midst of uncertain times.

November 15, 2012
Based on memory, parental revelations, published material and uncovered correspondence, New Yorker and New York Times contributor Stille (The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi, 2006, etc.) considers his forebears. The author's mother, Elizabeth, was a bright, pretty girl, a bit flighty in her youth. Her father was a self-made, well-regarded, WASP-y law professor. Stille's grandfather was a clever, philandering dentist, and his name, Kamenetzki in the Russian shtetl, became Cammenschi in prewar Italy. The family immigrated to New York when Mussolini enacted anti-Jewish racial laws. After service in Italy during the war, their son, Mikhail (Misha to the family), found his calling as the American correspondent for the leading Italian newspaper. His pen name, "Stille," became the family name. At a party (for Truman Capote), Elizabeth encountered Misha (aka Ugo Stille), prompting her to leave her feckless husband for her new, sophisticated suitor. The author examines the relationship between these charming and brainy people from disparate upbringings, noting how she was neat and organized, while he was irascible and sloppy. There were sexual tensions in their world of literati and hipsters, and Elizabeth struggled mightily with her decision to stay in the marriage, which often descended into separations. The author presents a history of considerable scope, exploring in the process the relationship between life and literature: "Life is infinitely complex and messy, and literature works the opposite way: through the distilling and fixing of things into a limited number of words and pages that then (one hopes) takes on a life and meaning of its own." Though Stille's rare stabs at humor may be a bit wan, he depicts the histrionic partners in a truly mixed marriage with sharp insight and affection. A memorable study in contrasts, recounted with understanding and verve.

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September 1, 2012

"One evening in May 1948, my mother went to a party in New York with her first husband and left it with her second, my father." Now there's a great opener. Award-winning author Stille presents more than the portrait of a tempestuous marriage. His father was a celebrated journalist whose family had immigrated to Italy from revolutionary Russia, his mother was a charming Midwestern WASP, and their life story captures the sweep of the 20th century, the crossing of cultures, and a world in upheaval.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
Chances are, everyone's family history is fascinatingchock-full of tragedy, romance, and astonishing secrets of every variety. All it really takes is a keen observer of human behavior, an avid researcher, and a memoirist of considerable talent like nonfiction author (Excellent Cadavers,1995, and The Future of the Past, 2002) and New Yorker contributor Stille to forcefully communicate the unique trajectory of an individual clan. Stille reaches back into his family's past in order to tell the story of his parents and of his own literary and cultural heritage. When his mother, a married midwestern WASP, met his father, a Russian-born, Italian-bred Jewish journalist, at a New York cocktail party in 1948, sparks flew, and another incredible family journey, mired in the past but pointing toward the future, began. Stille places his parents' often tumultuous relationship into multiple contexts, examining it intimately from personal, historical, and cultural perspectives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)