Homage to Iberia: More Spanish Travels and Reflections by Gerry Dawes

John Dos Passos: A Tale of Madrid, La Plaza Santa Ana, Jorge Manrique, Pastora and Why We Love Spain!

2012-01-06T07:43:00.000-08:00

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John Dos Passos: A Tale of Madrid, La Plaza Santa Ana, Jorge Manrique, La Pastora and Why We Love Spain!

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ROSINANTE TO THE ROAD AGAIN
Copyright, 1922, George H. Doran Company, New York
I: A Gesture and a Quest

Telemachus had wandered so far in search of his father he had quite forgotten what he was looking for. He sat on a yellow plush bench in the café El Oro del Rhin, Plaza Santa Ana, Madrid (see related story on Cervecerías in the Plaza Santa Ana), swabbing up with a bit of bread the last smudges of brown sauce off a plate of which the edges were piled with the dismembered skeleton of a pigeon. Opposite his plate was a similar plate his companion had already polished. Telemachus put the last piece of bread into his mouth, drank down a glass of beer at one spasmodic gulp, sighed, leaned across the table and said:

"I wonder why I'm here."

Cervecería Alemana, Hemingway Hangout
Gerry Dawes copyright 2011

"Why anywhere else than here?" said Lyaeus, a young man with hollow cheeks and slow-moving hands, about whose mouth a faint pained smile was continually hovering, and he too drank down his beer.

At the end of a perspective of white marble tables, faces thrust forward over yellow plush cushions under twining veils of tobacco smoke, four German women on a little dais were playing Tannhauser.

Smells of beer, sawdust, shrimps, roast pigeon.

"Do you know Jorge Manrique? That's one reason, Tel," the other man continued slowly.

With one hand he gestured to the waiter for more beer, the other he waved across his face as if to brush away the music; then he recited, pronouncing the words haltingly:

    'Recuerde el alma dormida,
    Avive el seso y despierte
    Contemplando
    Cómo se pasa la vida,
    Cómo se viene la muerte
    Tan callando:
    Cuán presto se va el placer,
    Cómo después de acordado
    Da dolor,
    Cómo a nuestro parecer
    Cualquier tiempo pasado
    Fué mejor.'

[O let the soul her slumbers break, 
Let thought be quickened, and awake;
Awake to see
How soon this life is past and gone,
And death comes softly stealing on,
How silently!
Swiftly our pleasures glide away,
Our hearts recall the distant day
With many sighs;
The moments that are speeding fast
We heed not, but the past,—the past,
More highly prize.]

"It's always death," said Telemachus, "but we must go on."

It had been raining. Lights rippled red and orange and yellow and green on the clean paving-stones. A cold wind off the Sierra shrilled through clattering streets. As they walked, the other man was telling how this Castilian nobleman, courtier, man-at-arms, had shut himself up when his father, the Master of Santiago, died and had written this poem, created this tremendous rhythm of death sweeping like a wind over the world. He had never written anything else.

They thought of him in the court of his great dust-colored mansion at Ocaña, where the
broad eaves were full of a cooing of pigeons and the wide halls had dark rafters painted with arabesques in vermilion, in a suit of black velvet, writing at a table under a lemon tree.
Down the sun-scarred street, in the cathedral that was building in those days, full of a smell of scaffolding and stone dust, there must have stood a tremendous catafalque where lay with his arms around him the Master of Santiago; in the carved seats of the choirs the stout canons intoned an endless growling litany; at the sacristy door, the flare of the candles flashing occasionally on the jewels of his mitre, the bishop fingered his crosier restlessly, asking his favorite choir-boy from time to time why Don Jorge had not arrived.

And messengers must have come running to Don Jorge, telling him the service was on the point of beginning, and he must have waved them away with a grave gesture of a long white hand,while in his mind the distant sound of chanting, the jingle of the silver bit of his roan horse stamping nervously where he was tied to a twined Moorish column, memories of cavalcades filing with braying of trumpets and flutter of crimson damask into conquered towns, of court ladies dancing, and the noise of pigeons in the eaves, drew together like strings plucked in succession on a guitar into a great wave of rhythm in which his life was sucked away into this one poem in praise of death.

    Nuestras vidas son los ríos
    Que van a dar en la mar,
    Que es el morir....

Telemachus was saying the words over softly to himself as they went into the theatre. The orchestra was playing a Sevillana; as they found their seats they caught glimpses beyond people's heads and shoulders of a huge woman with a comb that pushed the tip of her mantilla a foot and a half above her head, dancing with ponderous dignity. Her dress was pink flounced with lace; under it the bulge of breasts and belly and three chins quaked with every thump of her tiny heels on the stage. As they sat down she retreated bowing like a full-rigged ship in a squall. The curtain fell, the theatre became very still; next was Pastora.

Strumming of a guitar, whirring fast, dry like locusts in a hedge on a summer day. Pauses that catch your blood and freeze it suddenly still like the rustling of a branch in silent woods at night. A gipsy in a red sash is playing, slouched into a cheap cane chair, behind him a faded crimson curtain. Off stage heels beaten on the floor catch up the rhythm with tentative interest, drowsily; then suddenly added, sharp click of fingers snapped in time; the rhythm slows, hovers like a bee over a clover flower. A little taut sound of air sucked in suddenly goes down the rows of seats. With faintest tapping of heels, faintest snapping of the fingers of a brown hand held over her head, erect, wrapped tight in yellow shawl here the embroidered flowers make a splotch of maroon over one breast, a flecking of green and purple over shoulders and thighs, Pastora Imperio comes across the stage, quietly, unhurriedly.

In the mind of Telemachus the words return:

Cómo se viene la muerte
Tan callando.

Her face is brown, with a pointed chin; her eyebrows that nearly meet over her nose rise in a flattened "A" towards the fervid black gleam of her hair; her lips are pursed in a half-smile as if she were stifling a secret. She walks round the stage slowly, one hand at her waist, the shawl tight over her elbow, her thighs lithe and restless, a panther in a cage.

At the back of the stage she turns suddenly, advances; the snapping of her fingers gets loud, insistent; a thrill whirrs through the guitar like a covey of partridges scared in a field.

Red heels tap threateningly.

    Decidme: la hermosura,
    La gentil frescura y tez
    De la cara

    El color y la blancura,
    Cuando viene la viejez
    Cuál se para?

She is right at the footlights; her face, brows drawn together into a frown, has gone into shadow; the shawl flames, the maroon flower over her breast glows like a coal.

The guitar is silent, her fingers go on snapping at intervals with dreadful foreboding. Then she draws herself up with a deep breath, the muscles of her belly go taut under the tight silk wrinkles of the shawl, and she is off again, light, joyful, turning indulgent glances towards the audience, as a nurse might look in the eyes of a child she has unintentionally frightened with a too dreadful fairy story.

The rhythm of the guitar has changed again; her shawl is loose about her, the long fringe flutters; she walks with slow steps, in pomp, a ship decked out for a festival, a queen in plumes and brocade....

    ¿Qué se hicieron las damas,
    Sus tocados, sus vestidos,
    Sus olores?

   ¿Qué se hicieron las llamas
    De los fuegos encendidos
    De amadores?

And she has gone, and the gipsy guitar-player is scratching his neck
with a hand the color of tobacco, while the guitar rests against his
legs. He shows all his teeth in a world-engulfing yawn.

When they came out of the theatre, the streets were dry and the stars
blinked in the cold wind above the houses. At the curb old women sold
chestnuts and little ragged boys shouted the newspapers.

"And now do you wonder, Tel, why you are here?"

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About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand prize in 2009 and received the Association of Food Journalists 2009 Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.

Mr. Dawes is currently working on a reality television

series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Culinary Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@hotmail.com

Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel: Pamplona Portraits from the Past: Alice Hall, Matt Carney, Derry Hall, Big Dave Pierce, Chris Humphreys, Joe Distler, Jimmy Hollander, Davey Crockett, Donnie Spicehandler, Charles Patrick Scanlan, Tim Hatfield, Noel Chandler, Jesse Graham, Ray Mouton & More

2012-01-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

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Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel: Pamplona Portraits from the Past: Alice Hall, Matt Carney, Derry Hall, Big Dave Pierce, Chris Humphreys, Joe Distler, Jimmy Hollander, Davey Crockett, Donnie Spicehandler, Charles Patrick Scanlan, Tim Hatfield, Noel Chandler, Jesse Graham, Ray Mouton & More (Click here to view the photographs.)

Homage to Iberia Slideshow by Gerry Dawes ©2011

2012-01-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

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Images of Gerry Dawes's Spain from Homage to Iberia:
A Sequel to James A. Michener's Iberia: Spanish Travel & Reflections

Note to potential publishers: These photographs--digitals only for now--represent only a cross-section of Spain. The final selection to be used in the book will be drawn from my large archives of digital photographs, from thousands of transparencies taken over many years and from new photos including re-shooting some of these as the book develops. No photographs are to be reproduced or used without explicit written consent from the photographer.

(Click on the arrow to activate slideshow, click on the lower left corner box to turn captions on or off; double click on the image box to go to a Picasa web album page where, by clicking on "slideshow," you can see full frame images .)

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James A. Michener's Iberia: Travels and Reflections - Some Quotes from Jim Michener, with My Comments & Thoughts on the Iberia as I am Preparing My Own Book, Homage to Iberia

2010-07-14T09:53:00.000-07:00

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On the Fourth of July, 2010, after our visitors, Rozanne Gold and Michael Whiteman, had gone, my spousal equivalent, Kay, and I went to Cold Spring, New York to watch the fireworks. After the fireworks, we walked up Cold Spring's main street and found a few shops open, hoping to make some sales from people killing time until the traffic cleared out.

We went into the Mikkonoma antiques-art-books-miscellany shop when I saw a pile of books, including two stacks of James Michener's novels (you can't make this stuff up!) and a paperback Fawcett Crest edition of Iberia: Spanish Travel and Reflections, which I purchased for $3.79 (the original price on the cover was $3.95).

My hard-bound copy of Iberia is autographed by Jim Michener and some 25 people mentioned in the book, most of whom I had met in Spain because I had read about them in Iberia, which in my early years in Spain was my handbook for exploring the country. I have read and referred to my original paperback copy so many times that it is falling apart, so I purchased a replacement figuring it would come in handy as I am writing the rest of Homage to Iberia.

The day after the trip to Cold Spring, I began reading Iberia again to re-acquaint myself with how Michener saw Spain and, since I incessantly underline passages in the books I read, I thought it would be interesting to extract some of Michener's observations and reflections about his travels in Spain and comment on some of them. My notes (and I will include some of my photographs occasionally to illustrate what Michener is writing about), which will be added to as I re-read Iberia, are below:

July 7, 2010 From the Introduction, p. 17 Burriana (near Castellón de la Plana, north of Valencia).

On the food that Michener got from the bargeman who took him ashore at Burriana from the Scottish freighter he was on, as it was taking on oranges to be made into marmalade back in England.

"I paid my bargeman for my share of food. I can taste it yet: anchovies, which have always been my delight, hard bread, harder cheese, and red wines. How good it was, how honest in its Spanish quality. . ."

". . . I could rely on the fact that, if only for a moment at the beginning, if only for a moment, I had been allowed to see deep into the quality of Spain. I saw toiling men, the congenial peasants, the straining beasts (the ocean-swimming oxen that towed the barges of oranges out to the ship-GD), the honest food. I smelled the salt of the shore, the oranges of the inland fields, the burning chicory that passed for coffee, the sourness of the red wine, the harsh seductiveness of cheap anchovies. It is this Spain that has been with me through the years, and whenever in subsequent visits I have again come close to that particular vision I have felt at home."

2010-02-21T21:56:00.000-08:00

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Part I About Homage to Iberia: A Sequel to the James A. Michener Bestseller, Iberia

Part I-a More Detail About Homage to Iberia

Part II Book Outline and Excerpt

Part III The Market for Homage to Iberia

Part IV Competing Titles

Part V Publicity and Promotion

Part VI About the Author

NOTE: James A. Michener’s letter of endorsement, which has been authorized to be used as a foreword, is shown on p. 4-5.

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Part I: About Homage to Iberia:

2009-02-21T17:52:00.000-08:00

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Homage to Iberia is the Sequel to James A. Michener's Bestseller, Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections

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Sheep on a high Castilian plain in the province of Burgos.

The late James A. Michener, author of Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections (Random House, 1968), wrote the foreword and gave his written endorsement for Homage to Iberia.

This proposal details the endorsed, authorized sequel to James Michener’s Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections, a nonfiction book written by one of the twentieth century’s best-known and best-selling authors about his adventures in Spain over several decades. A New York Times bestseller, Iberia is still in print and has reportedly sold more than 800,000 copies and has been read by an estimated 2,000,000, including many who have traveled to Spain with the book as their spiritual guide.

Three years before he died, James Michener provided a written endorsement to renowned hispanophile Gerry Dawes, authorizing him to produce a sequel.

Dawes’s book, entitled Homage to Iberia: More Spanish Travels and Reflections, will bring readers up-to-date on many of Michener's colorful characters in Iberia Michener’s classic and the author will share his own rich adventures in Spain during the 40 years since Iberia was written.

Dawes’s book will come at a time when interest in and travel to Spain have exploded over the levels experienced in the 1970s when Michener’s book was at the height of its popularity. Michener's Iberia and scores of other books have drawn millions of people to Spain since Iberia was published in 1968. Many of those people who visited Spain because of these books became enamored of the country, have traveled there multiple times and thousands own property there. American travels in Spain reached more than 1,000,000 annually at the peak of tourism in 2008, but more importantly some 50,000,000 people visit Spain each year and the majority of those people speak English either as their native tongue or as their second language.

Homage to Iberia will appeal to hundreds of thousands of died-in-the wool Spain aficionados, readers of Michener's Iberia (approximately 800,000 copies sold, and read by an estimated 2,000,000 or more), fans of Michener's books in general (which sold millions upon millions of copies) and armchair travelers who can't travel there in these economic times, but still want to read about it. And, even though the world is undergoing difficult economic times, which prohibits travel to Spain for many--though, at this writing the dollar was stronger against the Euro by about 10% and off-season round-trip flights from the U.S. to Madrid were under $500--they will still want to read about the country and the price of a book is within their reach.

Homage to Iberia: More Spanish Travels and Reflections will be a colorful, well-researched, non-fiction book written in the first person by an expert on Spain who has been traveling to the country for thirty years, collecting adventures, experiences, impressions, anecdotes, and information on Spain’s people, history, culture, gastronomy, and wines.

Gerry Dawes and Iberia

While serving in the United States Navy in southern Spain in the late 1960s, Gerry Dawes read Michener’s Iberia, a big, wide-ranging book drawn from the Michener’s four decades of travels through Spain.

During and after his Navy service (he stayed in Spain for another six years after his discharge), Dawes, using Iberia as his handbook, met and became friends with many of the people about whom Michener wrote. In fact, his original copy of Iberia has been signed by more than twenty of the people Michener described. Dawes even apprenticed with Robert Vavra, the photographer of Iberia, and plans to use his photography to illustrate Homage to Iberia.

Self-portrait of author Gerry Dawes as a pilgrim in Santiago de Compostela.

Partly because of his Iberia contacts, including Robert Vavra and the late matador-artist John Fulton, Gerry was able to stay in Spain for eight years. Since that time, Gerry Dawes has traveled to Spain nearly one hundred times, averaging half a dozen trips per year for the past decade alone.

Dawes is considered one of America’s top experts on Spanish food and wine, but his experiences run far deeper than gastronomy and vino. He has also become a widely published (and widely quoted) food, wine, and travel writer and photographer, who has published articles in the New York Times Sunday Travel section, Food & Wine, Food Arts, Wine News, World of Fine Wines and among others.

Churros con chocolate at the Chocolatería San Ginés, a Madrid institution.
This sinfully delicious combination is said to be a hangover cure, probably because so many people
at Spanish fiestas often have churros con chocolate before going home after a night of revelry.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

Txutxos (chuchos), custard-filled pastry with carajillos (café espresso with a shot of rum or Spanish brandy)
at Bar Pinotxo, La Boquería, Barcelona. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

Gerry Dawes not only has the credentials and writing ability to make Homage to Iberia a great book, he has the wherewithal, the contacts and, most importantly, the passion to make Homage a vivid reality. He has close connections with a wide range of Spaniards, from the president of Valencia to titled nobility, bullfi ghters, chefs, and winemakers. He is also well-known to an incredible cast of characters, such as those who run the market stalls in places like the incredible La Boqueria market in Barcelona, and even the living statues along Las Ramblas, Barcelona’s famous pedestrian street that is the communal parlor of one of Spain’s greatest cities.

Gerry Dawes’s Homage to Iberia

Along with descriptions of the historical sights, architecture, cities, people, sounds, smells, food, and wines of Spain, in every chapter Gerry will spin tales of his personal adventures and offer essays that give insights into Spain, its people and their character, and the country’s history, arts, and politics. There also will be a wealth of practical information about Spain’s fiestas, restaurants, wineries, and hotels, making Homage to Iberia the same indispensable companion that Michener’s Iberia was to inquisitive travelers in the 1970s (and still is to many). Gerry will introduce real people and historical characters and use quotes and anecdotes throughout to support the themes in Homage to Iberia.

The book will include the following:

— The signed foreword and personal endorsement from James A. Michener

— A foreword by a well-known personality with expertise on Spain

— Jacket quotes from luminaries who are experts on Spain and/or prominent figures in the worlds of gastronomy and wine that confirm Gerry’s expert status on Spain (sample endorsements available).

— Chapters that take place in every region in Spain, which will be of interest for Spain's 17 autonomous communities, each with their own regional government and budget. They are capable of buying a substantial number of books, as is Turespaña, the Spanish tourist promotion agency.

A blind American woman hugging Santiago at the Cathedral of
Santiago. Hugging the saint is the traditional end to the pilgrimage.

Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

— Updates on the original characters in Michener's Iberia, "the rest of the story."

— Unique encounters and interviews with contemporary experts on Spain that will be woven into the tapestry of the book

— Gerry’s perspectives on Spanish cuisine and wines, including experiences with specific restaurants and entertaining wine encounters in Spain

— Perspectives on the art of bullfighting and flamenco, and Spanish soccer mania

— 100+ artistic photos from Gerry’s own travels throughout the country

— A bibliography, as well as a glossary of general Spanish terms and food and wine terms

Book Length and Photography

The finished manuscript of Homage to Iberia will contain approximately 600 pages and 100-plus photographs, plus illustrations for the inside covers of the book and interior maps at the beginning of each chapter to orient readers and mark pertinent sites.

The color photographs, with tightly worded captions, will constitute a portrait of Spain that will be a book within a book.

Foreword and a Personal Endorsement from James A. Michener

Before his death, James A. Michener provided Gerry Dawes with a foreward and personal endorsement for use in any future publication of Homage to Iberia.

A scanned copy of Mr. Michener's original signed foreword and endorsement is availible below.

2009-02-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

Homage to Iberia:
More Spanish Travels and Reflections

Text & Photographs by Gerry Dawes

Inspired by James A. Michener’s
Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections

“In his nearly thirty years of wandering the back roads of Spain, Gerry Dawes has built up a much stronger bank of experiences than I had to rely on when I started writing Iberia. . . His adventures far exceeded mine in both width and depth. Truly he had a basketful of experiences that made me envious.” — James A. Michener, author of Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections from the Foreword by the late James A. Michener (Signed, stamped and witnessed verifying documents available.)

Gerry Dawes
17 Charnwood Drive - Suite A
Suffern, NY 10901
gerrydawes@aol.com

Cell phone: 914-414-6982
Teléfono movíl (durante estancias en España): (011 34) 670 67 39 34

Website: Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

Part II Homage to Iberia Signed Foreword by James A. Michener

2009-02-20T08:32:00.000-08:00

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Homage to Iberia: More Spanish Travel & Reflections

Foreword

by James A. Michener

Homage to Iberia: More Spanish Travels and Reflections by Gerry Dawes

John Dos Passos: A Tale of Madrid, La Plaza Santa Ana, Jorge Manrique, Pastora and Why We Love Spain!

Homage to Iberia Slideshow by Gerry Dawes ©2011

James A. Michener's Iberia: Travels and Reflections - Some Quotes from Jim Michener, with My Comments & Thoughts on the Iberia as I am Preparing My Own Book, Homage to Iberia

Table of Contents

Part I: About Homage to Iberia:

Part II Homage to Iberia Signed Foreword by James A. Michener