Malaparte: A House Like Me - Hardcover

McDonough, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609603787 ISBN 13: 9780609603789

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, 1999

Synopsis

Of this special limited edition, one hundred copies have been produced, numbered 1 to 100, and signed by the author, Michael McDonough. Malaparte: A House Like Me (Limited Edition) offers an extraordinary look at Malaparte, the man and the house. Often called the most beautiful house in the world, Casa Malaparte in Capri, Italy, is dramatically sited on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It was home to Curzio Malaparte (1898-1957), the Italian writer who designed the building. A perpetual enigma, he still confounds nearly all who care to look. Actor, novelist, poet, filmmaker, soldier, playwright, journalist, political figure, prisoner, composer, charmer - inventor and revealer of truths - Malaparte associated with Mussolini and Stalin, vilified Hitler, and admired Mao. He was a journalist in London, a collaborator with the Surrealists in Paris, and a war correspondent in Berlin and on the Russian front. Casa come me, he called the building - house like me - inviting endless speculation as to what meaning lay within. Much as Picasso, Breton, Pound, Eliot and Godard discovered the house and its legendary owner earlier in the century, such international personalities as Robert Venturi, Emilio Ambasz, Willem Dafoe, Steven Holl, Michael Graves, Peter Eisenman, Arata Isozaki, Louis Cha, Carla Fendi, James Wines, and Karl Lagerfeld have created this special portfolio embodying unique insights into the controversial artist and his provocative home. A work of art in itself, Malaparte: A House Like Me includes a series of photographs produced especially by the renowned Italian photographer Mimmo Jodice, archival materials and documents, poetry, original art, letters, memoirs, commentaries, and an original musical score. Organized and edited by noted architect, designer, and writer Michael McDonough, this remarkable book ultimately celebrates Casa Malaparte's enigmatic contradictions, seeing it as a living literary work, an autobiography, and a mysterious tabula rasa: a house that lives in myth.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

rte: A House Like Me offers an extraordinary look at Malaparte, the man and the house. Often called the most beautiful house in the world, Casa Malaparte in Capri, Italy, is dramatically sited on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.  It was home to Curzio Malaparte (1898-1957), the Italian writer who designed the building. A perpetual enigma, he still confounds nearly all who care to look. Actor, novelist, poet, filmmaker, soldier, playwright, journalist, political figure, prisoner, composer, charmer -- inventor and revealer of truths -- Malaparte associated with Mussolini and Stalin, vilified Hitler, and admired Mao. He was a journalist in London, a collaborator with the Surrealists in Paris, and a war correspondent in Berlin and on the Russian front. "Casa come me," he called the building -- "house like me" -- inviting endless speculation as to what meaning lay within.

Much as Picasso, Breton, Pound, Eliot, and Godard discovered the house

From the Back Cover

"Only McDonough...could assemble the international cast of writers, artists, architects, actors, film critics, and historians who await us at the foot of the grand trapezoidal staircase of Curzio Malaparte's casa."
-- From the foreword by Tom Wolfe

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarkson Potter
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0609603787
• ISBN 13: 9780609603789
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200