Overview
āSoon that was my nickname for HervĆ©, what with my habit of italianizing the names of my nearest and dearest ā¦ Hervelino: that didnāt make me think so much of HervĆ© as of us both. The word might not seem like much but it was him and it was me, he took it for himself.ā
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Mathieu Lindon met the writer and photographer HervĆ© Guibert in 1978. The nickname Hervelino marked the start of their friendship, which was cemented a decade later by the years they both spent in Rome. Guibert was a pensionnaire at the Villa MĆ©dicis starting in 1987; Lindon became a fellow pensionnaire the next year, and the two would stay in Italy until 1990. These Roman years are at the heart of this autobiographie Ć deux that alternates between humor and melancholy. Guibert had just learned that he was HIV-positive and would die not long after returning to France and rising to fame with his searing masterpiece To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Lifeāin which Lindon himself was a character.
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Hervelino is a book about the difficulty of writing and speaking about someone beloved and revered. In recounting their time in Italy, Lindon contends with the impossibility of writing about Guibert: āTo write about Rome is to skip over everything I donāt dare to write because itās so hard to make sense of HervĆ©.ā Hervelino is a story of a singular friendship, and of the books read and shared by the friend who was loved and lost. As it closes with each inscription Guibert wrote for his friend Mathieu and with Lindonās present-day commentary below it, what remains are shards and fragments of a friendship sealed by illness and death, enshrined by literature and love.
This book title, Hervelino, ISBN: 9781635901702, by Mathieu Lindon, Jeffrey Zuckerman, published by MIT Press (September 13, 2022) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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