Angelina's Lips

Imagine the contours of an obsession.?The distance between Angelina's lips and the contours of a Laguna Beach sunset is not great. Angelina's Lips is a story of the main character, Umberto Umber?s, homonymal identity; a story of the search for what is not one's self.?There are many ways to recount such a loss: live through the opportunity of homonymity (the same as anonymity?), or roll to the edges and corners of a continent.?Southern California offers just such an opportunity, tucked on the edge of the Pacific (itself a contradiction) and, paradoxically, a terminus of sorts where life finds continuous renewal even if only on celluloid. As Angelina's Lips unfolds, the character Jamshid Kloster tells the protagonist Umber: ?If you?re interested in future novels, we must travel to the libraries of the future. The libraries of the future are the memories of the present, memories of travel, visitation, dialogue and observation, all of which accumulate their effect as they are translated beyond our own experiences and languages.?The intimacy of a memory travels via its retelling, as Conte has done with his, and as Roberto Buranello has done in his excellent recounting of it in English. -- Pasquale Verdicchio