Non-Fiction Books to love Comics |
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Peter
Ackroyd Venice: Pure City Coming as is does with an attached TV series, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Peter Ackroyd is here merely 'doing a Da Mosto' and starting to read the book does little to stifle these cynical suspicions. Ackroyd's similar, though much larger, book about London is a well-reputed recent attempt at summing up a whole city, its history, people and character, using a chronology-mangling and artfully random chapter structure. It worked for London (although not for me) but here it results in more of the same for readers of many books about Venice. After a brief intro dealing with the foundation the chapters do the usual stuff with topics like stone, art, water, trade, myth-making, sex, hubris and decay. It's all done very readably, much more readably than usual in Ackroyd's non-fiction in fact, which often tends towards somewhat self-conscious flights of style. And if you've never read a history of Venice, or any of the variously formatted meditations on its unique features (of which a fair few are reviewed on this page) you might learn much here. A chapter on nature in Venice, its lack and its incursions, makes fresh reading, but then when talking of the smuggling in of nature in the grain and fossils within its stones and pillars Ackroyd fails to mention San Giacomo dell’Orio - a rather glaring oversight, this church being fossil-flecked-column central. Maybe his research assistants, credited prominently in the acknowledgements along with only his editors, didn't venture that far out. He quotes from two sources new to me, aside from the usuals like Sanudo and Coryat. One of these is one James Howell, who has the same surname as my Mum, so maybe I'd better get family-tree checking. The book's central thesis is that Venice is a prison and that Venetians have ever been docile and more inclined to be part of a larger whole than individuals. This allows him then to posit the convents and the Ghetto as Venices in miniature. I'm not entirely convinced myself. A readable 400 pages, I suppose, but disappointingly unspecial. Louis Begley & Anka Muhlstein Venice for Lovers A bit of a librarianly quandary with this one. It is made up of three parts - one short story, one piece of travel writing and one piece of lit-crit. So, should it go with the fiction or here? Well I've gone with the librarians who catalogued the copy I've just read. Mr Begley wrote Mistler's exit - a novel I didn't like, and here he turns in a short story again full of self-love and the admiration of rich people. But these themes take a back seat here to some pretty overt wish-fulfilment erotica. The primary early lust-object is again a college-days sweetheart, who spurns our hero, despite the influence of Venice, and later becomes more than a bit of tart. Lovely. The second part, by Begley's wife, is about the restaurants that the couple have become recognised regulars at. It's more about people than food, and is the best part of this book. In the third piece Begley looks at how great authors have used Venice, with lots of big quotes and plot spoilers. His examples are Henry James, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann and, of course, himself. My case rests. |
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John Berendt City of Falling Angels When this was published in 2005 reviewers tended to dismiss it as muck-racking and gossipy froth. The book mostly concerns itself with the devastating fire at the Fenice opera house, and the subsequent investigation and typical Italian flurries of accusation and innuendo. The other major strand concerns Jane Turner Rylands, who Bernedt accuses of being a scheming necrophile in general, and an embezzler of Olga Rudge in particular. The controversy over Rylands attempting to get the Ezra Pound letters and papers out of Rudge, Pound's mistress, for a song is explored in much detail. Rylands (the wife of the director of the Guggenheim) subsequently exacted some small revenge when she published her second book of Venice-set short stories, called Across the Bridge of Sighs. One of the stories features an unscrupulous American journalist called Cad Peacock who gets his eye spat in, and the stories evidently contain more thinly-veiled unfavourable portraits of people who condemned her over the Pound business. Aside from these two attention grabbers there are portraits of people - important and eccentric - who live, move, and shake in Venice today and, I think, it provides a useful update to all the books about Venice as it was. When I read about and admire, say, Palazzo Barbaro I sometimes wonder how it's surviving into our Century, and this book tells you. You'll also learn about pigeons, rats, Woody Allen and the wear and tear caused by film crews in fragile palazzos. I'll admit, though, that when I got to the bit about the restoration of the Miracoli church and the bickerings within Save Venice I started to more fully appreciate the criticisms that, in the face of the beauty of Venice, to concentrate on the festerings underneath is a perverse choice. I skipped much of this section as it was contributing very little to both my understanding of Venice and my will to live. A mostly very readable book about Venice for our times, then, with all the benefits and disappointments that that implies. Bidisha Venetian Masters Under the skin of the City of Love OK, the problems first. Number one: what's with her not having a surname? She's not Kylie, or Prince. Secondly, why is the cover so crap? A drawing of generic, but unauthentic, Venetian-type domes. Getting beyond these minor trials one is immersed in the life of a young woman who decides to go live in Venice for a few months in 2004. She has a rich friend, who has very rich parents who live in a Grand Canal-side palazzo. She meets people, makes friends, eats meals and ice cream, and learns about the locals. She writes well and sharply about the people, and makes a very good go at the city itself and its buildings. (I'd never thought that the Frari church looked like Bourbon biscuits myself, but I'll have a compare next time I'm there.) There's very little actual art appreciation as such, which makes the title a bit confusing. (She also makes the daft mistake of mixing up the (small) Bellini altarpiece in the Frari with the (huge) Titian one.) Maybe it's to do with getting a symbolic masters degree in being Venetian? Dunno. The fact of our observer being more at home in bars and social gatherings, rather than art galleries and churches, is sometimes over-apparent - this is a book more full of evenings than daytimes. And the unrestrained pointedness of her evaluations of a lot of the people she meets makes you wonder at their reactions, and the warmth of her welcome back. She is also refreshingly unflinching in her portrayal of the misogyny and prejudice she encounters. This all gets more than a little out of hand, though, in the final section - a later visit for the Biennale - where her feminist rhetoric, hyper-sensitivity to perceived slights and bitchiness towards her friend's mother begins to leave a bad taste in the mouth. She has a rant about the only famous Venetian women being 'colourful poetry-spouting hookers' and the like, and how women artists were 'locked out'. She thereby fails to give any credit to Marietta Tintoretto and Rosalba Carriera, two admittedly rare exceptions, but no less worthy of mention and praise for that. If you can get beyond the bile, the book can be a perceptive and flavoursome Venice fix from a different perspective than usual. Or it might just make you flinch too much for real enjoyment. |

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Giorgio & Maurizio Crovato |
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Iain Fenlon Piazza San Marco If, like me, you look upon the Piazza San Marco as a crowd-infested nuisance to be passed through as quickly as possible then you, like me, may be in need of something to reawaken your fascination for what is arguably Venice's most important space. This book could be that something. The writing is much more elegant than we have any right to expect, the stories are well told, and the scepticism at the more far-fetched of these tales is refreshing. After a very interest-stirring introduction the chapters begin with the myths and early history of the Piazza and Venice. The fascinating conjecture here for me was how, having been founded well after the Roman Empire, Venice lacked the status that such ancient history conferred, and so the mythologically loaded story of St Mark and his vision, and his remains being brought to Venice, conferred some much needed theological clout and state-cred. We're then taken through the history of the piazza up until the present (tourist-infested) day. The chapters are themed with, for example, a chapter on the processions and rituals (including fascinating details of the doges' funerals) which is followed by one devoted to the traders, performers and scammers who have always been a fixture. Everything from the most important political events to ritual pig disembowelments and a Pink Floyd concert have happened here, with the performance of rituals and music and problems with traders and visitors being pretty much constant themes down the centuries. The last chapter ends with the observation that the problems facing Venice today are to be seen concentrated into the Piazza, with its shuffling hoards just happy to be there, to say they've been to Venice, and with little experienced beyond the café bands, the buzz and the pigeons. Which neatly loops us back to the start of this review. The photo below (from the book above) shows the Doge's Palace in 1915, with brick supports under the arches and protective scaffolding around the sculpture of Adam & Eve on the corner in case of bombing. ![]() |
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Judith
Martin No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice A book about what it is to be a Venice-lover, written by a Venice-lover, for other Venice-lovers. What's not to love? Well, a tendency to tweeness, the coverage of some familiar ground, and a certain lack of depth. But set against this we have some spot-on analysis of what makes us Venetophiles tick and some undeniably witty writing. She covers topics like the famous visitors and the hated Napoleon, but also the pitfalls of the property market and the books and films that we obsessives pore over. Her precise analysis of the impossible route of Katherine Hepburn's canal-jumping vaporetto in Summertime will strike a chord in most of us, I imagine. You'll find yourself grinning often with self-recognition, and the realisation that you're not the only Venice obsessive to do the sometimes sad things she describes. She pretty much nails the joy of posing regally on balconies overlooking the Grand Canal, for example - a pleasure that pretty much beats sex, I think. It's a cosy read rather than a challenging one, but a pretty much essential one for all of us members of its intended readership, no matter what stage of the ongoing relationship we're at. Predrag Matvejević The Other Venice This is the sort of book that has a blurb saying that it promises to 'utterly reconfigure the Venetian cityscape'. But don't let that put you off. What it is is a collection of short chapters each dealing with an odd aspect of Venice's rich and hidden tapestry. There's a piece about the weeds that grow out of the cracks in church walls and another about an eccentric old Venetian who stands in the same sotoportego every day and spouts fragrant 'facts'. Other topics include Venetian bread, fragments of pottery emerging from the slime of ages, barbers, and paving stones. An intriguing and entertaining read but rather lacking in real substance , I thought. A cake of a book, rather than a full meal. |
Carlo Moretti Venice - Her Art-Treasures and Historical Associations This is a guidebook of 1871, available as a facsimile reprint published by Elibron Classics. It's interesting how early the pattern for guidebooks to Venice was established. This book, like many that followed, takes up the first third of its length (following a brief history) with Piazza San Marco and the Basilica. This is followed by a trip up the Grand Canal which picks out the important palazzos to left and right but here has no pictures or maps, presumably relying on the reader's gondolier to name the buildings, if not to know too much about them. Also fascinating is how the buildings of the 18th Century were described as being 'in the architectural style of the fall'. Jan Morris
A Venetian Bestiary A slim volume dealing with the creatures associated with Venice and to be found in its history and art and on its streets. Birds, sea creatures, cats, dogs and some more mythical beasts are all to be found in here. There's the winged lion, the portentous birds, the horses that were once ridden and the bronze horses that were stolen by and from Venice. There's a chapter on the cats, of course, with a few famous moggies, including Nini the Frari cat and the unfortunate sole victim of the San Marco campanile collapse. This chapter also points out how Venetian artists have all failed satisfactorily to portray a convincing cat, despite the fair number of memorable dogs that they managed. A small book, then, but one full of tasty nuggets. (I speak of gold, not of chickens.) |
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Hidetoshi
Nishijima Memories of Venice |
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John Julius Norwich Paradise of Cities Venice and its nineteenth-century visitors This book looks at Venice from the fall of the Republic in 1797 through the nineteenth century - the period during which the city had to begin to come to terms with its new role as a city defined by its visitors. It's appropriate, therefore, that it does so through the lives of famous visitors and foreign lovers. After a chapter each devoted to the fall and Napoleon, we get straight down to a quartet of Englishmen, none of whom were exactly paragons of Victorian wedded stability. Chapters for Byron and Ruskin are followed by a chapter devoted to two chaps named Brown who kept their dalliances with handsome gondoliers very secret, for many years, unlike Baron Corvo whose later indulgence in the same predilection, a little more openly, scandalised the British ex-pat community. John Julius deals well with these, more private, aspects of lives whilst also keeping and broadening our interest with the less racy details and observations. Later chapters deal with the Siege, Sargent, Whistler, Wagner, Henry James and Corvo. (Very few plain and domestically blissful home lives here.) This period chimes nicely with our melancholy and faded-glory view of Venice and so this is unlikely to be the last book to deal with this century, but it is the one to beat. John Julius was once asked my Venice Questions |
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Sarah Quill
Ruskin's Venice The Stones Revisited |
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Heather Reyes
ed. city-pick Venice
Tiziano Scarpa
Venice is a fish A cultural guide |
Toni
Sepeda Brunetti's
Venice
Nicholas
Woodsworth |
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Like no other
city Venice encourages the creation of big and gorgeous books.
There's
the glitz of the Palazzi, the grandeur of the Grand Canal, and the glowing
colours of Venetian painting.
Heavily illustrated and well produced
books on these topics can't help but be objects of desire.