Description
An unconventional travelogue of three journeys taken to the Isle of Lewis and the South Uist in the Hebrides, taking the reader through the lives of people, past and present, while at the same time placing them within the context of Gaelic culture, religion, and local superstition.
The islands are seen as a continuum in which past and present occupy a single plane. ‘What happened a few thousand years ago,’ Kociejowski writes, ‘no longer seems so very far away in time. It is what islands induce in one, a sense of simultaneity, as well as the old penchant a fool might have for occupying several dimensions at once. And the people who inhabited those ancient places seem more and more like ourselves whereas, at times, our contemporaries become increasingly, troublingly, remote.’ And he continues, ‘Stories must have been told on the earthen floors of those Bronze Age roundhouses just as they would still be told at cèilidhs three thousand years later.’ A fire calls for stories. And yet within a time span of only fifty years, with the coming of electricity, mass media and smartphones, and with English as the dominant language, modernism threatens to quench that fire. Still, the author argues, there lingers in most people a desire to be told stories, a desire as ancient as oatcakes.
Praise for Marius Kociejowski
“Marius Kociejowski is one of life’s great questioners [and] The Serpent Coiled in Naples takes on some of the largest questions that come with searching for this stupendous city’s soul . . . The experience is more of an intellectual joyride than a standard history.”
—Claudia Roth Pierpont, New Yorker
“One of the engines powering [Kociejowski’s] writing is a poet’s relish for language, be it modern street lingo or ‘technically flawless’ fifteenth-century pornographic verse . . . The other is an omnivorous erudition.”
—Times Literary Supplement
“A Factotum in the Book Trade is memorable because a) it’s well-written, and b) it’s close in touch with the books . . . It’s an account of a life well, happily and grouchily lived.”
—Dwight Garner, New York Times
“An accomplished poet and beguiling essayist . . . [Kociejowski is] spiky and forthright in his views.”
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
“Eccentric, meandering . . . fascinating.”
—The New Criterion
“It is a witty tribute to a disappearing niche industry, and its wistful reflections complement its sense of passion for unexpected troves.”
—Foreword Reviews
