Friday, December 22, 2006

Beppe Severgnini's 'La Bella Figura': A fun Ride with a Slap Happy Bus Driver

The ANNOTICO Report

'La Bella Figura': Into the Italian Psyche

World Hum

December 21, 2006

In his latest book, Beppe Severgnini riffs on stadiums, cappuccinos and the Italian relationship to the stoplight. Lauren Grodstein finds the book a fun ride, but also like traveling in the company of a slaphappy tour-bus driver.

Reading Beppe Severgninis La Bella Figura is a lot like riding a tour bus with a manic, distracted driver. Subtitled A Field Guide to the Italian Mind, Severgninis slim volume is more of a helter-skelter expedition through the highways, airports and cell-phone habits of modern Italia, a place that, he continually reminds us, bears little resemblance to the terracotta-hued Italy of tourists dreams.

Severgnini, a columnist for the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, was named 2004 European Journalist of the Year (an award for which, sadly, there is no North American equivalent). In 2003, he trained his journalistic gaze on the United States in the best-selling Ciao, America!, assessing such Americana as air-conditioning, Klondike bars and yard sales. In La Bella Figura, he attempts a similar appraisal, only this time of his own country and its remarkable inhabitants.

Italy is a soft drug peddled in predictable packages, he writes. Italia, on the other hand, is a maze. Its alluring, but complicated. In Italia, you can go round and round in circles for years.

Unfortunately, the same could be said for Severgninis book, which makes the same points again and again, as if it were written for a particularly forgetful audience. The first time the author mentions that Italians are sexy, exasperating and intelligent, for instance, the reader is inclined to believe him. By the seventh or eighth time, the reader starts to wish all those sexy Italians would just leave her alone.

Severgnini is also full of provocative statements but loathe to offer anything more concrete than an anecdote or opinion to back up his arguments. When discussing the recent hits to the Italian economy, he writes, for the first time, thirty-somethings are worse off than their parents. According to whom? Severgnini gives us, as the Italians would say, niente.

Still, there is fun to be had here, mostly in the authors memorable descriptions of Italys outdated pensiones, chaotic stadiums and first-thing-in-the-morning cappuccinos. He also includes a funny riff on the Italian relationship to the stoplight, which presents an opportunity to reflect.

What kind of red is it? A pedestrian red? But its seven in the morning. There are no pedestrians about this early. That means its a negotiable red; its a not quite red. So we can go.

Perhaps inevitably, in writing about Italians, the author compares them to Americans, who in his imagination are mostly frozen food fanatics in sensible shoes who love comfortable chairs and gambling. Its possible hes right about AmericansIm sitting in a comfortable chair this very minutejust as its possible that Severgnini is right about his sexy, intelligent, exasperating Italians. But if he is, then it would be wonderful to know more about his compatriots, and how they became the way they are. But Mr. Severgnini, Italian to the core, would rather exasperate us.

Lauren Grodstein is the author of the novel Reproduction is the Flaw of Love, and The Best of Animals, a story collection. She lives in Brooklyn and is a professor of English at Rutgers-Camden.

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