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Anthony Valerio
 
New Book launch--Tuesday FebruARY 6M 2024.
 
Just in. About Valerio's Confessions Professor Nerenberg says:
 
"These confessions, mine, Walter Michael Gregory's, center on the interstices between soft and hard literary porn as they were known in the 1960s and 70s."
 This is the kernel of Anthony Valerio's salty and sweet, romping short book, Confessions of an Aspiring Pornographer. Trying to survive as a writer in New York City, Wally joins Ern Billions, Bonita Guggenheim, and Tad Browning as a staff writer at Porn/Prose, where, on spec and on commission, they write porn for hire. And "for hire" is part of the title of the pseudonymous Wally's best-known effort, This Body for Hire, which also has a place within the pages of Valerio's Confessions. Things are hard and soft in so many ways and directions. Among the hard are the winter of 1979, the rules of copyediting that Wally learns at Ern's knee, the lead of the Number 2 pencils he uses to ply his trade as a writers and editor, the concept of one-way staircase that disappears behind anyone who climbs it, the black laces of Sister Morisella's hard-soled black shoes. Among the soft we can group the heart of Anonymous, the hooker Wally invents as the first-person narrator of This Body for Hire, the pillowy arms and bosoms of the women his single mom Caroline surrounds herself with, the rounded characters of the notes Caroline the wordless uses to express herself. Pastiche reigns supreme as genre in this book that pivots between hard and soft, between first and third person narrator, between the writing hand and sober, dignified copyeditor's font and type. Delightful and witty, Confessions of an Aspiring Pornographer is unafraid to own its Times Square-in-the-1970s setting.
Prof. E. Nerenberg, Wesleyan University

Review of Confessions

The Semmelweis Project

image of a hand sanitizer with female sign, created by Dave Barry
image Semmelweis, the Women's Doctor, created by Dave Barry

you hear about post partum book completion depression, at least this writer feels it now. Spinning an important tragic yarn like Semmelweis with years of energy, belief, good will, extention into the universe, and then, one day, stop, the way the new mothers who contracted childbed fever, which  causes and mean of prevention he would discover, those mothers' hearts stopped, and sometimes their newborns, too, their breathes ceased and, in the end, Semmelweil went mad, some say from persecution, others late-stage syphillis, still others by infecting himself, running into a surgical theater which location he was able to recall, and cutting himself  then immersing his bare bloddy hands deep into the corpse. In all likelihood, this feeling could arise also after writing a comedy, a musical.

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Michelangelo in Bologna II

Another day should not pass without Daisy seeing with her own eyes three sculptures by the young Michelangelo here in Bologna. He was nineteen years old and lived here for eleven months—October 1494 – September ’95-- so he experienced the seasons in the Emilio-Romagna valley, the winters damp, cold, and the winds blow and hold  Read More 
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Michelangelo in Bologna

a Wednesday, off to see early Michelangelos with my own eyes. A marble angel--height 51.5, and a statue of Saint Proculus of Bologna which purportedly presages the David--are located in the Basilica of San Domenico. An Asian couple and I arrive at the door at the same time only to discover that the Basilica is  Read More 
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Origin of Georgio Vasari's (1511-1574) LIVES OF THE ARTISTS

"At that time I went often in the evening, at the end of the day's work, to see the above-named most illustrious Cardinal Farnese at supper, where there were always present, to entertain him with beautiful and honourable discourse, Molza, Annibale Caro, M. Gandolfo, M. Claudio Tolomei, M. Romolo Amaseo, Monsignor Giovio, and many  Read More 
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The Last Supper & Peter Luger's Steak House

Viewing Leonardo da Vinci's painting The Last Supper in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan is like eating a porterhouse steak at Peter Luger's Steakhouse in Brooklyn, New York. You need to make reservations weeks, months, in advance. The actual viewing and eating require planning, forethought, like rehearsing a death-bed scene.
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Bologna's Two Towers

Today took a walk and got lost on Via Zamboni. There was the church of Mary Magdalene and I went in and prayed and meditated on Mary Magdalene and felt the love Jesus had for her and she for him. Though I have loved many women in this one lifetime, not one has ever  Read More 
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Feast of the Immaculate Conception (2)

The second item on the papal itinerary today was a visit to St. Mary Major Basilica (Santa Maria Maggiore) to venerate the image of Mary known as the "Salus Populi Romani," which is an icon depicting Mary and the Christ child, over the altar of the Pauline Chapel (Cappella Paolina).
I have written about  Read More 
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Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Today, December 8, Italians celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. All Catholics from recently baptized infants to men who, as a rule, do not go to church, which, in our entrada, comprised the majority of our men, the belief being that god would be more receptive to the prayers of our women more so  Read More 
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JFK Remembered in Italy

Remembering JFK from Italy (1963/2013)
Ferruccio—called Ruccio-- and I together that day 50 years ago, in late afternoon Italian time, in Bologna. Today we arrange to meet at that city’s Porta Castiglione, named for the author, diplomat, soldier and courtier Baldassarre Castiglione (1478-1529), best known for his book, The Courtier. Italian streets have memory.  Read More 
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Elizabeth Taylor in Italy

You could hear the pride in Daisy’s voice and see the delight in her eyes when her Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese fellow players are reluctant to speak their native language in my company, and she says: “O go right ahead. He understands perfectly.” I understand some. Misunderstanding much has perhaps affected my  Read More 
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