Here is an amusing jaundiced Italian view of the American Tuscan "invasion".

San Francisco Chronicle
David Armstrong
Sunday, October 10, 2004

With the scorching success of "Under the Tuscan Sun'' -- the charming book, not the giddy, helium-infused movie -- the American infatuation with Tuscany came to a full boil. Since then, Tuscan cookbooks, guidebooks and still more memoirs by smitten Yanks have crowded bookstore shelves. It was only a matter of time before a more jaundiced view emerged, and the inevitable backlash set in.

"Too Much Tuscan Sun: Confessions of a Chianti Tour Guide,'' by Dario Castagno with Robert Rodi (Globe Pequot, 268 pages, $14.95) tells the American-Tuscan love story from an Italian perspective. The author is a good-natured anecdotalist who writes at an ambling pace, but some jaundice is in evidence. That figures, though. As Castagno, a guide who escorts well-heeled Americans around Chianti and other parts of Tuscany, points out, Tuscans can no longer afford to live in the gentrified farmhouses that sell to affluent newcomers. That leaves the bemused locals feeling left out in their own homeland.

In brief, easily digestible chapters, Castagno tells some very funny stories about often-ignorant and occasionally exasperating foreign tourists:

One visiting couple, convinced that Dario must be the Latin lover of fond fantasy, tries to set him up with their college-age daughter. Another couple, declaring Italian food to be much better back in America, repairs to McDonald's with their Diet Cokes rather than inhale all that pasta and wine and those funny stewed hare dishes. A Yank asks what the Italian word for cappuccino is, and another visitor, after viewing Renaissance art, is impressed that so many splendid paintings were done by an artist called circa.

In short, "Too Much Tuscan Sun'' is not so much about the Ugly American as the Hopelessly Clueless American.

Castagno, who wrote this book, his first, with the help of Chicago novelist Robert Rodi, saves his most scathing comments for bargain-hunters who decide they simply must own a rustic home in the Tuscan hills -- not because they have any love for the area but because it would be a status symbol back home. Castagno, by contrast, does love the area, and his descriptions of seasonal cycles and benign countryside characters convey a finely tuned sense of place.

'Tuscan Sun' craze burns some Italians
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