Finding Vitality, Vivacity in the Palette of Mexico

MEXICAN COLOR photographs by Amanda Seville Holmes, introduction and essay by Elena Poniatowska (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, hardcover, $35).

Near my Los Angeles home, in a largely Latino neighborhood, one shop has been painted pumpkin orange, another yellow and a third bright plum. There are houses as pink as carnations and as blue as the background on the word processing program I’m using.

When I first moved here from a bland Orange County neighborhood (haven’t some places there declared use of that namesake color a felony?) these eye-stinging statements rattled me. And, to be honest, sometimes they still do.

But whenever I feel that inner wince approaching, I remind myself how much I love Mexico, where decorative vivacity is as much the norm as human warmth and vitality.

The premise of this color-saturated coffee-table book is that Mexico’s climate and culture dictate its palette. “In Mexico,” the essayist writes, “we only know snow on the tops of our mountains, and white on the pants that some men wear and in the teeth that flash inside the darkness of a face.”

These photos are of blue altars and magenta walls and tables with all the colors of Diego Rivera’s sliced watermelons. “There is so much light in Mexico that even corn comes in four colors: white, yellow, blue and black,” Poniatowska says.

In the 16th century, German engraver Albrecht Durer wrote of the first artifacts brought back from the New World: “Never in my life have I seen things that fill me with more happiness.”

Poniatowska notes: “In European cities like Paris, Berlin, London and Dublin, lack of color means good taste.”

Chacun a son gout. To each his own.

Still, I consider myself blessed to live in a corner of the city that does not repress the celebration of dazzling color.

Quick trips

TIMELESS NEW YORK--a Literary and Photographic Tribute by Paul Coughlin (Universe, hardcover, $19.95).

The photos in this small book are sepia-toned. At first glance, the scenes are bleak: a flag snapping in the wind atop the Brooklyn Bridge; the Flatiron building reflected in a pool of water. Soon, though, the reader fills in his own colors, and brings her own emotions to the scenes.

For the unimaginative, inspirational triggers are provided, including this snatch of Walt Whitman: “Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me! . . . Stand up tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!”

AN ADVENTURER’S GUIDE TO HUMBOLDT COUNTY by J. Kahn (Grasshopper Books, $10.95, paper). From Klamath near the Oregon border down almost to Ukiah lies some of the most stunning and largely unknown landscape in the state. This is the best kind of guide: a personal, precise insider look at everything from tourist mainstays such as the Avenue of the Giants to swimming holes on the Eel River.

THE TRAVELERS’ GUIDE TO MARS by Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls (Cadogan Books, $6.95, paper).

You can’t vacation on the Red Planet yet. But because it’s a 309-million-mile round trip, and the windows for departure come only every 26 months, it may not be too soon to start planning. This fact-filled look at the fourth rock from the sun is also an amusing parody of travel guides.

FORD’S FREIGHTER TRAVEL GUIDE--and Waterways of the World (Ford’s Travel Guides, $15.95 paper).

For $10,806 you can book the owner’s cabin on a Leonhardt and Blumberg freighter for a 91-day trip starting and ending in New York, with ports of call in Georgia, Virginia, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Spain and France. This book lists dozens of similar trips, and gives the impression that passengers these days are treated better than the tractors and cases of Spam that are the ships’ real priorities.

Books to Go appears the second and fourth Sunday of the month.