It's Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, when ex-patriots, artists, and colorful bums are kings. A tiny stand selling empanadas near the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal streets is the center of the action for the shy narrator, an aspiring writer just out of college. At the stand he falls in with a crowd of kooky outcasts from Argentina who introduce him to their raucous adventures, melodramatic dreamsand women, particularly a tough little flamenco dancer from Buenos Aires. Charming and insightful, this deceptively simple novel is a tale told by a master. It is a wise coming-of-age story, full of joyand touched by heartbreak, that captures a special time and place with extraordinary empathy and humor.
The Empanada Brotherhood
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About the Author
John Nichols is the author of The Milagro Beanfield War and many other works of fiction and nonfiction. His most recent novel was The Voice of the Butterfly, published by Chronicle Books in 2001.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sweet elegy to a tasty slice of Greenwich Village past,
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This review is from: The Empanada Brotherhood (Hardcover)
The Empanda Brotherhood opens with the flash of quick action and flaming hot, to-the-point dialogue which (as it turns out) is a characteristic of the entire novel. After a half-dozen short chapters, I began to wonder if I had made a mistake buying this book: the characters are simplistic or simply vulgar, Argentinian immigrants whose lives are conditioned by gutter-talk (not my usual reading preference). But then--strange thing!--I began to think my way out of this dilemma; strange, I say, because thinking is not what the men do at the empanada stand, and yet, "Blondie," the narrator, storyteller, and observer--and the author's persona--does a lot of thinking. The empanada stand is where Blondie waits and watches and witnesses. Between the quiet, tender observations of Blondie, the reader can see that these rough characters really think and feel.
And it's absolutely clear that college-educated Blondie feels something for these proletarian-like working stiffs. At several points, I was sure that the rejection letters Blondie gets for his college romance novel (which later becomes The Sterile Cuckoo) tie him closely to these denizens of Greenwich Village. They have all failed in some way to find the American dream, but they dream in their own way--and that becomes the heroism of this novel. Unforgettably, music plays a large role in the subtle magic of this narrative. The flamenco guitar and dance beat out a tempo and waves of emotion. The dancer, Cathy, and the guitarist, Jorge, come alive visually on the page. The scenes in the dance studio create a counterpoint to all the silent pondering that weighs on Blondie's young heart. There is a kind of melancholy that characterizes this novel: lost youth, vanished friends, lost New York, music heard no more. I'd like to think that, like the dancer, the narrator Blondie has found the *duende* he seeks: that incandescent fire that burns us from the inside, the flame of life itself.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Hemingway/Miller Blend in the Village c. 1960,
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This review is from: The Empanada Brotherhood (Hardcover)
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Although this is called "a novel", it reads like an autobiographical memoir written by an older artist about his early days in a magnificently rich atmosphere surrounded by other would-be artists and assorted eccentrics. Hemingway's A Moveable Feast comes to mind while reading this book and this connection is supported as Nichols' has his characters mention Hemingway several times throughout the book. Also, Nichols' fondness for oddballs & eccentrics & ne'er-do-wells recalls Henry Miller. But Nichols transcends these influences and makes something that is uniquely his own for this is not simply an artist's memoir. What makes this such a unique reading experience is that this is not just another book about a young artist but also a book about the wistful unreality of expatriot (and other) communities that form and last only so long as their provisional meeting places (in this case an empanada stand) that serve as their ad-hoc centers last. So, along with being a novel about a writer's coming-of-age it is also a brilliant novel about the ephemerality of friendship, of love, of community and of life in general. And an excellent one at that.
The characters are each almost too eccentric to function. They are each damaged in some way: some are physically damaged and some debilitated by their larger-than-life passions or lack of money. Even though we slowly get to know that each has arrived in the village for his/her own set of reasons, these are not fully fleshed out characters. But this actually works just fine because in their respective states of exile the world does not seem altogether real for any of them and so it is fitting that they do not seem altogether real to us. The characters are less like ordinary humans anyway, and more like victims of their own fiery passions and unfulfilled dreams haunting the cafes and streets, and each of these exiled character's lives unravels right before the young writer's (and our) eyes. The many characters that are encountered, most of them Argentine, each leave a strong impression on the young unnamed writer who stands on the threshold of life but seems too fearful to actually enter into it, that is until the very last pages when he meets a young woman who initiates him into a world more real than the one he had imagined himself to be living in. The chapters are each very short, more like vignettes of long-stored impressions than like fully developed fictional pieces, but, again, this seems appropriate for the kind of book this is and the kind of characters these are. The entire book is like a series of casually recalled moments; of conversations with various characters ( w/ Alfonso the mathematics prof & movie buff, w/ Luigi the disfigured realist w/ no illusions about life & love); of foreign films that seemed to alter the very fabric of one's existence (Truffaut's Jules & Jim, Pasolini's Accattone); of one's first, and, seemingly strongest, attractions (the white-pantied flamenco dancer/petty thief Cathy Escudero); of intense friendships that are there one minute and vanish in the next; but that is the wistful nature of youth, that is the wistful nature of life, and that is the wistful charm of this book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sweet treat,
This review is from: The Empanada Brotherhood (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Well, it's really not the empanadas that gather the diverse crew together at the Greenwich village eatery. "Blondie" a recent college grad with a dream of becoming a writer narrates the tale of a diverse crew of brothers--and sisters.
There's Chuy, a boy-toy with only one hand, Eduardo and Adriana, who alternately love, then cheat on each other, and at the center, Aureo, the cook and confidante whose place is the center of the meetings. "Empanada Brotherhood" is a short read, but one you'll want to savor and share with friends who are needing a bit of spice in their lives. Or perhaps gift to the lover of 60s folk music and culture--or a fan of Latin literature.
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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empanada stand, grease bin, diaper truck, purple scarf Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
John Nichols, The Empanada Brotherhood, Cathy Escudero, Aurelio Porta, Carlos the Artist, New York, Washington Square, Greta Garbo, Buenos Aires, West Broadway, Sixth Avenue, Fifth Avenue, Carlos Gardel, Santa Claus, Greenwich Village, Forty-seventh Street, Eddie Ortega, Night Owl, Fourteenth Street, United States, Sullivan Street, Thompson Street, Mexico City, Jeanne Moreau, Spring Street New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
empanada stand, grease bin, diaper truck, purple scarf Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
John Nichols, The Empanada Brotherhood, Cathy Escudero, Aurelio Porta, Carlos the Artist, New York, Washington Square, Greta Garbo, Buenos Aires, West Broadway, Sixth Avenue, Fifth Avenue, Carlos Gardel, Santa Claus, Greenwich Village, Forty-seventh Street, Eddie Ortega, Night Owl, Fourteenth Street, United States, Sullivan Street, Thompson Street, Mexico City, Jeanne Moreau, Spring Street New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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