Zhuki and I sit out on the molo the whole night, watching the celebrations. Midnight comes and morning follows.
The next day.
And the next.
And the one after that.
And I look around, and I see that it is good.
Acknowledgments
I first went to Italy in 1992 at the behest of Christina Hieber, the same friend who dragged me to Poland for the first time. I was so taken with the country that I taught myself Italian and spent the next twenty years traveling to Italy whenever I could. The most significant of these trips was the summer I spent in Alassio as an au pair to the Gazzolo-Ienca family. It was there that I was first introduced to both daily life on the Riviera and the international congregation of calcio. Laura, Massimo, Pietro, and Carlo, thank you sincerely for all of your kindnesses then and since. I would also like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize for teaching Pietro and Carlo to chant “U.S.A.” during the 1998 World Cup; at the time, I didn’t realize how serious an offense this was.
Thank you to the rest of the Ienca, Gazzolo and Bonora families, especially Chicca, Sandro, Camilla and Carolina, as well as Susan Scott Hettleman and Stefania Bucci, who both showed me the magic of their own personal Italys. Thanks to Danielle Bonneau for initial research and Annie Hawes for her book chronicling her and her sister’s adventures in Liguria. For suggesting, checking and rechecking all things Italian, thank you to Camilla Bonora of Alassio, Charlene Floreani of Chicago, and Daniele Minisini of Bologna and Austin, Texas.
I have read several books on SO-chair in the past few years, but Paddy Agnew’s Forza Italia and Joe McGinniss’s The Miracle of Castel di Sangro were my favorites and the most informative for my purposes. Thank you also to Phil Imm and Michael Borisov for initial research, as well as to the Chicago Fire for access to practice fields and locker rooms. I owe an especially great debt of gratitude to my colleagues, Ian McCarthy and Emily Steffen, who used their calcio expertise and sensitivity to language in reading final drafts. Also, this book would not have been as much fun to write if it weren’t for all the calcio fans out there meticulously chronicling the minutes of matches, the miraculous goals, the fan club chants and the funniest segments of Have You Heard The Latest About Totti? I realize now that these are all labors of love and celebrations of life.
For my education in butchering, I am eternally grateful to Antonello Valdora and his parents, proprietors of Macelleria Valdora in Alassio, Italy, for patiently answering all of my questions and allowing me to take photographs of every inch of their shop. Thanks also to Bill Buford and Julie Powell, whose meticulous written descriptions of butchering saved me the time and grist of doing my own apprenticeship.
Dante is, of course, a major influence on this novel. San Benedetto is populated largely with versions of his characters, and I have incorporated some of his imagery as well. I still would not call myself a “Dantista” by any stretch, but for the knowledge of Dante I do have, I am most indebted to Anthony Esolen. His translation of the Divine Comedy inspired me and kept me going, and his annotations and explanations were as constant a guide as Virgil was to Dante. I was also fortunate to come across the writings and podcasts of Robert Barron. Without the wisdom of both of these men, Dante’s words wouldn’t have made much sense in either my life or my work.
The creation of this book has itself been a winding plot. Thank you to the students and faculty at the Ukrainian Catholic University in L’viv. It was because of them that in the summer of 2007, I ended up in a pasture in rural Ukraine, where I began to write this book in longhand. Thanks especially to Romcik and The Prince for dumpster-diving and recovering the first five chapters, which were inadvertently thrown away, and to Yuri Fil for inspiring the first chapter and for loaning out his name. The nickname Zhuki was also borrowed from a young woman I met there but have since lost track of.
From the first word of this book to the last, I have continued to teach at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School in Chicago, and I am grateful for their continued support as well as the support of the community at St. Clement Church. Thank you to my first readers, Lisa Cloitre, Lizz Graf, and the Petersburg Pig Cooperative, and to JP Fanning for a key detail.
The Hemingway Foundation, the PEN Foundation, and the UCross Foundation gave me the space, time, and courage to fight through the murkiness in the middle of the process, and I can’t thank them—the organizations and the individuals—enough.
Thank you to my friend and agent, Wendy Sherman, who, with her grace and integrity, has helped me navigate this new world intact. Thanks to Anjali Singh, who has without a doubt made me a better writer, and to Millicent Bennett, Wendy Sheanin, Anne Tate, Nina Pajak, and Julia Glass, for showing me their passion for books and being such strong advocates of this book in particular.
I am, as ever, grateful to my family and friends and especially my husband, Will, for his love and understanding, and for being the sturdy molo that I can both dive off and swim back to.
Finally, I would like to remember three of my classmates at Dartmouth—Gary, Dan and Mark—who left this world far too soon. Many times as I was writing this book, I heard each one’s vox clamantis in deserto.
About the Author
© Margaret Pasulka
BRIGID PAULSKA spent the summer of 1998 as an au pair for a family in Alassio, Italy, where she was first introduced to small-town Riviera life, the Italian obsession with soccer, and the butcher shop that features in her second novel, The Sun and Other Stars. Her debut novel, A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True, won the 2010 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Brigid currently lives in Chicago with her husband and runs the writing center at a public high school. Visit her website at brigidpasulka.com.
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A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
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Copyright © 2013 by Brigid Pasulka
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Interior designed by Ruth Lee-Mui
Endpapers drawn by Charlene Floreani
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pasulka, Brigid.
The sun and other stars / Brigid Pasulka.
p. cm.
1. Self-realization—Fiction. 2. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 3. Italy—Fiction. 4. Soccer stories. I. Title.
>
PS3616.A866S86 2013
813'.6—dc23 2012030403
ISBN 978-1-4516-6711-0
ISBN 978-1-4516-6713-4 (ebook)
Contents
* * *
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The Sun and Other Stars Page 34
