By Giorgio Di Marzo
Well, undoubtedly writing about Italy and the Italians in the worst possible way, with the worst possible words, highlighting the problems, emphasising the incongruities, magnifying the weaknesses, seems to be a most popular sport in the UK, as the one rule for selling books is: write what people want to read… Well, if anybody wants, instead, to read about Italy and the Italians not in order to find out that the stereotypes are real but in order, instead, to understand a people who has among his children Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, just to name a few of the greatest, but also in recent times Roberto Rossellini, Sofia Loren, Federico Fellini, Marcello Mastroianni, possibly the right publications will be others…
And here it comes: How to Live Like An Italian by the Italian journalist Annalisa Coppolaro-Nowell. Honestly the title is slightly deceptive, as by reading through the book no one will ever learn how to live like an Italian, as from the very beginning any reader will learn that, put it simply, Italy does not exist, hence the Italians do not exist! We, the Italians, are a melting pot of individualists in the smaller scale, which is often not even the regional scale but the city one, a heritage of our history when we had plenty of rich cities but no country. For us our flag means Italy to win the Football World Cup – and we are proudly quite good at attaining it!, but this means as well that any city or town or village a tourist can visit, he or she will be faced with different Italys, any place having its own history, tradition and, of course, food! That is why our cuisine is so reach and fascinating. And, behold! good food, looking good and being good in bed are strictly related…
If you, reader, take the hand of Annalisa you will be lead through a journey of discovery, where you may find that are weaknesses, our incongruities, our problems are in reality what render Italy and the Italians what they are. The journey is about Italy, of course, and why Italy is the way it is; but the journey is also interspersed with personal stories of Annalisa’s, married to an Englishman, which give a more real dimension of what the Italians are and the changes and forces that modify the fabric of our society and traditions in a unique way: the Italian way!
Let me close by quoting Graham Green, from The Third Man: “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock ...”
Long live Italy! And the Italians...
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