A man goes to a psychiatrist. “I’m going to show you pictures,” the psychiatrist tells the man, “and you tell me what comes to mind.” The first card shows a circle. “Sex,” the man says. The second one has a square. “Sex,” the man says. The third has a rectangle. “Sex,” the man says again. “Is sex all you can think of?” the psychiatrist asks. … Continue reading Meritocracy

Via Nino Bixio, Viale Piave, Viale Vittorio Veneto, Piazza Cadorna, Via Lamarmora, Piazza Risorgimento, Piazza Cinque Giornate…. I should have looked at street names before writing my February column on finding and instilling Italian identity in my half-breed children. Neighborhood topography held clues to something I discovered after attending the presentation of the Italian edition of Christopher Duggan’s book “The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy since … Continue reading Duggan’s Italy

This volume should be required reading for anyone trying to make sense of contemporary Italy. Yes, it’s limited to World War I and yes, Hemingway covered the same territory in “A Farewell to Arms.” But you can find the answer to everything here, from why every town in Italy has the same street names — Diaz, Cadorna, Piave, Isonzo — to the country’s not always … Continue reading The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front

It has been a long time since a book made this reviewer smile. And if its cover blurb were any indication, you might not expect Uwe Timm’s “The Invention of Curried Sausage” to be an obvious candidate for the honor for doing the honors. A nursing home, a sausage stand on Hamburg’s gritty waterfront, Germany in 1945, a deserter, infidelities and a dash of concentration-camp-discovery … Continue reading The Invention of Curried Sausage

“Bad Blood,” the title a growing-up memoir by (now deceased) literary critic and feminist champion Lorna Sage, has a double meaning: Bad blood as in lingering antipathy and bad blood as in a primitive explanation of some families’ curses — In this case those of disruptive sexual impulses and troubled social adjustment. While some of the bad blood is strictly personal, much of it is … Continue reading Bad Blood: A Memoir

“Tell me about your life,” “I envy you,” or “How romantic,” people often say when they learn I live in Italy. Tell about my life? There is no romance in it. The enviable parts — economic stability, good health, lovely children — have nothing to do with Italy. Our old cleaning lady said it best: “Life is just so daily.” It’s daily wherever you are — … Continue reading Romance? Please…

My son has finished his first semester at boarding school. When Italian friends ask me how he’s doing, they barely disguise their hope that I’ve confirmed their predictions and become the “Unnatural Anglo-Saxon Mother from Hell.” I think they hoped I’d have a nervous breakdown, or at least start wearing black like the mother of a Camorra pentito who betrayed his own. No such luck. Not only … Continue reading What is “Italian-ness?”

Just when you think that you have read everything on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany and think there is nothing more to say on the matter or no new approach to take to it, “One Life” by Tom Lampert came along. Actually it is eight lives; eight “normal” — as in not well-known — lives under Hitler. There is a mentally unstable, female Jewish delinquent, … Continue reading One Life

I wonder if other readers have been in similar situations: At a recent dinner, a friend teased me about a man he had seen me skiing with. His comments were vulgar and silly and I responded by unostentatiously taking my plate into the other room for a second helping. Ignoring the other guests excoriating his bad taste, he followed me to the buffet table. “Dai, … Continue reading No Joke

I was disoriented this fall. Even with Halloween just around the corner, there was still no nip in the air to urge on certain autumn rites. When arriving cold sharpens time’s passing, small rituals can work their reassuring magic. In Italy, the rites consist of wearing stockings for the first time or doing my closet’s cambio di stagione. The rites of a Midwestern childhood were more … Continue reading Conga Line