Quale Press -- Field Report by Dennis Barone

Field Report
by Dennis Barone

ISBN: 978-1-935835-02-8
Perfect Bound, $15.00
Publication Date: May 2011
5 x 8 inches, 102 pages
FICTION/PROSE POETRY/MEMOIR

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Field Report begins in affirmation and ends in doubt. Between start and finish there are archaic dictions and near-invented languages, simplistic jokes that a seven-year-old might tell and visions of what might be astonishments. One sentence states: "What wondrous things words" — what, the optimal word here, turns the statement toward a question, one left long unanswered. The twenty stories in this book comprise a field report filed by an anthropologist, providing a concise and complete outline of culture as seen through the tri-lens of sensation, perception and vision. Along the way some pancakes, frogs and gelato get mixed into our favorite pot — or is it plot? One particularly effusive informant offers a wealth of information — passionate in its despair, and the reader might find it — in response – not too late to consider the world presented in Field Report with a touch of mercy.

From Field Report...

From the beginning of the story The Rook, The Rampant Lion, and the Crown

We turned out the gate of the late nineteenth-century Liberty style Villa Spinelli, turned left up the Via Costantinopoli, then right onto the Via Foria and made our way to the highway out of the city. We noted concrete slab housing that makes Soviet architecture look brilliant, the surprising size of the Alfa Romeo auto factory, and then farmers' verdant fields.
Felice narrated, telling us some things we had heard before, some new, and some that we could not understand. He said that Liveri is a wealthy town for it grows and harvests the hazelnuts for Perugina candies. But as we exited the highway and entered the outskirts of Nola, the region appeared more blighted than blessed. This industrial region must be the toxic "triangle of death" that I had read about. Later on in the afternoon I would see that Nola center has many historic buildings and lovely shopping streets...