Jenna Schnuer | Peter Mayle | literary device | Basilicata

Authors shape their work one calendar page at a time. By Jenna Schnuer

Already fretting over all those to-dos you're planning for 2007? Take a break from your life and check out one of our favorite trends in publishing: "year of" books. Ever since Peter Mayle first published A Year in Provence back in 1990 (yes, it was that long ago), authors aplenty have used that handy-dandy unit of time as their framework of choice for books about their doings. We checked in with three "year of" authors to see why this time frame is such a useful literary device and what made their year in question memorable.

This is your second "year of" book, and you're working on your third. What is it about a year that works for you? It took me a long time to figure out it was a suitable framework. I tend to be rather impulsive, and I do love travel. Then my wife said, "You know, I don't get to join you on enough of these trips. Why can't we try a different rhythm altogether? Why can't we pick one place and go and live there for a good chunk of the year and focus a lot more on its authenticity, on its heritage, on why it's important, and bring back more resonance, bring back the deeper story about the people who live there, about their customs, about the way they see life?"

How far into your first "year of" title, Seasons in Basilicata: A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village, did you realize the difference between the kind of reporting you've done in the past and what you were doing then? All the way along. I [knew how to] do a big piece with many layers and levels on a region in a month or six weeks. I kind of knew how to touch the bases, but I hadn't been able to express the authenticity of places in depth. What I was looking for was, "What can we learn from these places before we lose them?" [The places I write about in these books] all have the seed of their own decline already fermenting.