The Traces: An Essay

by Mairead Small Staid

MP3 CD Format The Traces  is a ranging inquiry into the seductions of memory and travel, the fragile paradox of desire, and the art of making meaning from a life. Mairead Small Staid's debut,  The Traces  is a work of memoir and criticism that explores the nature of happiness in art, literature, and philosophy, structured around a season spent in Italy and a reading of Italo Calvino's  Invisible Cities . Poised between plummeting depressions, the author considers the intellectual merits of joy and the redeeming promise offered by the beauty, both natural and manmade, that surrounds her. Traveling from Florence to Rome to Capri,  The Traces  draws on the fields of physics, history, architecture, and cartography, spurred by thinkers from Aristotle and Montaigne to Cesare Pavese and Anne Carson.

Genres: Essays, Memoir, Audiobook, Travel, Nonfiction

252 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2022

Reviews

[Grey · Rating 5 out of 5]

i stumbled upon this book in one of my favorite bookstores and just felt this odd... need? for it. and that feeling was so, so right. This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever had the honor of reading—Staid writes with unflinching honesty & a touch of melancholy that echo in my bones. It is odd, reading a book that is based around when the author was twenty while currently being twenty, and this time, it is perfection.

why did i love this so?
maybe it is that I have realized my own obsession with eros through this book; the ways in which that need to be in a state of want has left me in a state of lacking. maybe it is that i have only recently learned to bear witness to the perfection that can be found within longing. maybe it is that i dream of soft days spent wandering italy. maybe it is that my happiness remains elusive and comes in fits and starts. maybe it is my own experience with depression. i do not know. i do not need to.

take a few days.
walk through these essays.

[Rebecca Manery · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Traces: An Essay will be especially appreciated by people who've read Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (and if you haven't yet, what are you waiting for?). Staid uses the structure of Calvino's work, but also quotes and comments on Invisible Cities as she describes her memories of being a college student studying art history in Italy. In one of my favorite chapters, Staid also provides lyric descriptions of several other European cities in the vogue of Marco Polo's surreal travelogue delivered to Kublai Khan in Calvino's novel. Along the way, Staid meditates on the nature of happiness, art, love, literature, writing, and depression, quoting an impressive cadre of writers and philosophers from Aristotle to Anne Carson. This can make for dense reading at times, but promises the reward of noticing some previously overlooked detail on a second (or third) reading.

[Ishan Vashishta · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a while I was a bit confused by how the various references (Anne Carson, John Berger, and of course Italo Calvino) intersected with the author's own narrative, until I realized that Desire (from Carson's _Eros the Bittersweet_) was the thing tying it all together. Carson talks about there being some "third thing" between a lover and their beloved, and this third thing is the catalyst for the lover's desire.

In Italo Calvino's _Invisible Cities_, the three poles of this "love triangle" are a fictional Kublai Khan, a fictional Marco Polo, and that fictional Kublai Khan's empire. Khan wants to understand his empire, but it remains distant from him because he is only able to hear about it through the anecdotes and stories of Marco Polo. Thus Marco Polo becomes the "third thing" between Khan (lover) and his empire (beloved)

In the author's story of her own trip to Italy, the three poles of this _Eros_ -style love triangle are actually the author (lover), the author's past (beloved), and the faculty of memory (the third thing between the two). The author wants to be closer to her own past, but is limited by the questionable fidelity of memory, thus the past becomes something desired but always distant

Despite loving the overall structure of the book, it was not all great for me. In particular, there was one chapter (_Cities and Names_) in which Staid attempts to write in the tone and style of Calvino's Marco Polo as she describes the various cities she visited while in Europe. I understand what she was going for, but it didn't fully land for me.

[Cordis Paldano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was initially hesitant to read this book, as it draws from Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities," which I had not particularly enjoyed on my first encounter with it. However, once I began reading The Traces, I found it impossible to put down.

This book is part travel memoir, part meditation on happiness, but it also weaves together ideas from Aesthetics, Greek Philosophy, Poetry, History, Architecture and even Physics.
And the prose... the prose was quite simply gorgeous, the scenes are deeply moving and the book as a whole, throbs with narrative power.

I've been to Italy twice but unfortunately, have never visited Florence. Now I can't wait to visit that city and say 'Che bello!'. Oh, and Calvino's "Invisible Cities"? I'll give it another chance, but this time with a bottle of Italian wine.

[Isabella Agostino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where do I start with this! Okay, well, first of all, anything that makes me want to retry Invisible Cities must be doing something right because Calvino’s text is…rich ! to say the least. So essentially this is an intellectualized re-telling of the author’s younger self on a study abroad in Italy, but it’s not Eat Pray Love-y.

Small Staid follows Calvino’s Polo and Khan, that’s the main link throughout the essay, and ponders on the nature of happiness in all of its evolutions alongside those characters, so there is a comfort in having that to fall back on and being able to expect them to show up to either start or wrap up a lesson!

Every section is extremely (extremely) thoughtful and well researched, bringing in art, architecture, literature, history and philosophy in a very accessible way. I was underlining every other page. She makes points. I had to be in the right space to fully absorb this so it took me ages, but I appreciate the postmodern approach and feeling like I was a grad student again:)

[Edie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love book clubs that introduce me to books I would have never read otherwise! The Traces is a gift. I enjoyed all of it while fully acknowledging parts were perhaps wordy, or not wordy enough, or a bit oddly paced. It was like catching up with a girlfriend over coffee. The conversation waxes and wanes, at times I listen with rapt attention and sometimes I catch myself glancing around the room. But at the end of the afternoon, I am so glad to have heard my friend's stories - my heart is full and my soul feels tended. While I never spent a semester abroad, many of my friends did. Perhaps that is why I didn't identify with the narrator but very much felt like the target audience. These are the stories my friends would have told me. Complete with the architectural asides. Thank you to the author for writing the book and a huge thank you to the book club for putting it in my hands.

[Jeff Carpenter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Traces is a trusty accomplice to have with you during the collapse of our culture. It is a wonderful wander through philosophy in the guise of a road movie (to Florence as a teenager) which is propelled by a maybe-love story.
It is the first book that could be put in the category of philosophy that I have loved. It repeatedly references several books, like Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, which I tried rereading and found them to be not nearly as interesting as what Staid has to say, floating along on their currents. Staid is a beautiful writer, proved by the fact that she can say more or less the same thing over and over and make it delightfully fresh each time she writes it. And make me want to reread her over and over again.

[Eliza Pillsbury · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though the prose could be somewhat laborious, I admire the way Staid examines the world and herself. I never knew where she was going next, not just geographically, as she retraces her steps around Florence and the European continent during her three months studying abroad in college, but between her myriad textual influences and fields of inquiry. I would recommend this book for travel enthusiasts and philosophy/lit-crit geeks especially, but more generally to anyone intrigued by Staid's premise: an investigation of happiness as an aesthetic struggle. (NB: I'm grateful to have gotten to speak with her at the Texas Book Festival this year. She was gracious in discussing my own work about my time in Paris.)

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Staid writes about architectural palimpsests and this book is a textual one, layers of memories of a semester abroad in Italy, other texts (Calvino, Carson, Pavese), works of art, history. I'm not sure if the central questions about desire or happiness are all that interesting, but I appreciate how Staid lets her obnoxious, cringey 20-something self be obnoxious and cringey but with at least a bit of self-awareness. Not more than a 20-something would have, though. It's quite well done in that way. I suppose this is what I wish Emma Cline's obnoxious, cringey 20-somethings were—super awkward and annoying but more thoughtful and less cruel.

[Zach · Rating 2 out of 5]

beautiful in a sickening way a la yknow. truman show. like Narcissus staring at his pool Stead snowglobes this singular part of her life obsessively and likes to shake it up and down and watch the snowflakes fall in all the different ways. as theyre known to do.

[ash · Rating 4 out of 5]

very enjoyable read! beautifully written and meticulously interwoven with literary criticism and personal experience. i wrote a similar piece for a final in grad school..perhaps i should flesh it out! feeling inspired! i want to go to italy!!

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous writing. I'm working on a real review. I'll share that here.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book!