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A review by jennifer
My Venice and Other Essays by Donna Leon
5.0
I bought this book not because I am a particular fan of Commissario Brunetti—although several years ago I did read one and enjoy it—but because I am a fan of Venice, a city I fell in love with when I spent a university semester abroad there.
While I enjoyed Leon's reflections on Venice—the trash, the tourists, the bureaucracy, the beauty—the most striking thing about the writing is how unflinchingly herself Donna Leon is, which seems to vary between outrageous to the point of unlikable, mildly prudish, and utterly charming. A case in point for the last is this passage from her essay, Italian Men: “Most interchanges between a man and a woman here, whether they take place between a woman and her lover or between a woman and the man who sells her cheese and prosciutto, are charged by some mutual recognition of, at however wild and improbable a distance, sexual possibility…and so with pecorino comes a compliment, with the stracchino a smile that lights the heart and speaks of what might have been.”
Here was the Frances Mayes version of Donna Leon I had subconsciously been expecting of this book. But she doesn’t stick around for long. In her assessment of how tourism is ruining Venice, Leon dares to compare tourists to terrorists. Granting that terrorists “do kill people” she goes on ask:
“Shall we consider aesthetics? Okay, terrorists do run around in plastic flip-flops and pajamas, often wearing kitchen towels on their heads, but are they not thin and wiry, often handsome? They do not crowd into basilicas and museums in their Bermuda shorts and tennis shoes, nor has one ever been observed with a plastic water bottle or wearing an iPod and a baseball cap while ostensibly observing the Pietà.”
This passage—to say nothing of her essay later in the book, No Tears for Lady Di—puts her in a class of political incorrectness rarely seen today in American media. But then I realized what was going on. Donna Leon wasn’t trying to win me over with a charming and unexpectedly soft take on the Italian male. She wasn’t trying to make me like her. She was just writing it like she saw it, whether about Italians, or romantic opera, or the terrible tourists. For Ms. Leon, a professed technophobe who included an essay on her belated adoption of email in the book, hasn’t been reduced to a validation-seeking drone, tweeting and tapping her life away on social media. And for this I liked her all the more.
While I enjoyed Leon's reflections on Venice—the trash, the tourists, the bureaucracy, the beauty—the most striking thing about the writing is how unflinchingly herself Donna Leon is, which seems to vary between outrageous to the point of unlikable, mildly prudish, and utterly charming. A case in point for the last is this passage from her essay, Italian Men: “Most interchanges between a man and a woman here, whether they take place between a woman and her lover or between a woman and the man who sells her cheese and prosciutto, are charged by some mutual recognition of, at however wild and improbable a distance, sexual possibility…and so with pecorino comes a compliment, with the stracchino a smile that lights the heart and speaks of what might have been.”
Here was the Frances Mayes version of Donna Leon I had subconsciously been expecting of this book. But she doesn’t stick around for long. In her assessment of how tourism is ruining Venice, Leon dares to compare tourists to terrorists. Granting that terrorists “do kill people” she goes on ask:
“Shall we consider aesthetics? Okay, terrorists do run around in plastic flip-flops and pajamas, often wearing kitchen towels on their heads, but are they not thin and wiry, often handsome? They do not crowd into basilicas and museums in their Bermuda shorts and tennis shoes, nor has one ever been observed with a plastic water bottle or wearing an iPod and a baseball cap while ostensibly observing the Pietà.”
This passage—to say nothing of her essay later in the book, No Tears for Lady Di—puts her in a class of political incorrectness rarely seen today in American media. But then I realized what was going on. Donna Leon wasn’t trying to win me over with a charming and unexpectedly soft take on the Italian male. She wasn’t trying to make me like her. She was just writing it like she saw it, whether about Italians, or romantic opera, or the terrible tourists. For Ms. Leon, a professed technophobe who included an essay on her belated adoption of email in the book, hasn’t been reduced to a validation-seeking drone, tweeting and tapping her life away on social media. And for this I liked her all the more.