It’s Photo Friday! Here at the eCool Compound we’ve been hanging with Rachel Donadio, writer and editor at the New York Times Book Review and former resident of Rome (Rachel is seen on the right side of this photo taken by Susan Sanders). We’re excited to announce that she’s agreed to be our guest blogger for today! So, here’s the word on Rome from Rachel:
Buon giorno a tutti! Whenever I’m back in Rome, I try to visit a particular trattoria I used to frequent when I lived in Monteverde, a quiet neighborhood on the Janiculum Hill. Much about the restaurant is non-descript, from the florescent lighting to the peculiar wall decor. But one thing definitely stands out: Dorina, the proprietor, hostess and all-around cultural dynamo who runs the place (see photo above - Dorina is on the left). A ferocious consumer of culture who talks at approximately 45 rpm, Dorina is as likely to recommend books and movies as she is the specialties of the house. In both, her taste runs toward her native Sardinia. Dorina is an ardent champion of Sardinian writers, who have been experiencing a mini-renaissance in recent years. This time around, she suggested three books, all of which have been well received in Italy:
Sardinia Blues by Flavio Soriga, a post-modern novel that looks at the island known to the outside world mostly for its rough landscape, ricotta products, kidnappings and vacation homes.
L’Uomo che vuole essere Peròn by Giovanni Maria Bellu, a novel with three narrative threads: one set among Sardinian immigrants to Argentina in the late 19th century, the others in contemporary Sardinia.
La Questua by Curzio Maltese, an investigation into what happens to the public money — now 1 billion Euros a year — that the Italian state gives the Catholic Church each year. Under the Italian Constitution of 1946, the state pledged to give “otto per mille,” or 0.8 percent of personal income tax revenues, to the church. (In the 90s, the law was broadened to include the Jewish Community, Methodists, Seventh Day Adventists, Buddhists and others.) The book is based on Maltese’s articles in the center-left daily La Repubblica and remains on the Italian best-seller list.
The books sound intriguing, but I can’t say I’ve been doing much reading on my vacation. Mostly I’ve been busy eating, looking at art, catching up with friends, window shopping (thanks, lousy exchange rate!) and going to the movies. I recommend the two Italian films that just won prizes at Cannes: Gomorra, Matteo Garrone’s Altmanesque take on Roberto Saviano’s book about the Neapolitan Mafia, the Camorra; and Il Divo, Paolo Sorrentino’s Tarrantino-influenced portrait of Giulio Andreotti, the seven-time prime minister nicknamed “il divo Giulio,” or the divine Julius, for his Classical forbear and his ability to emerge unscathed from many of Italy’s darkest legal thickets.
The endless complexities of Italian politics — so much intrigue, so much stasis, so much corruption! — are enough to give anyone a permanent headache and an even worse heartache. The more I understand Italy, the more it unsettles and disarms me. Luckily, many things help take the edge off. For every political failure, for every over-crowded bus and irritable shop clerk, for every late train and poorly marked route, for every ill-lit painting in every mismanaged public musuem, for every heat spell and sudden rainstorm, I recommend, in equal parts: coffee, pistachio gelato, pizza bianca, fresh cantaloupe, aranciata amara, mozzarella di bufala, the smell of jasmine, the sound of seagulls, umbrella pines, bougainvillea, seventeenth-century sunsets. Not to mention: the Pantheon, the view from the Fontanone on the Janiculum, the Caravaggios in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, the Via Giulia, and Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, where the young god forever pursues his beloved even as her fingers sprout into bay leaves before our very eyes, as cinematic a sculpture as was ever made.
Italy is in many ways the opposite of America. Everything is impossible here — except for pleasure.
Alla prossima!
