ARMCHAIR JOURNEY
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 29, 2011
VeniceEdited by Heather ReyesOxygen Books, 256pp, $19.95WHENEVER some fool at a dinner party, thinking quite incorrectly that I have been everywhere, asks "What is the most beautiful city in the world?", without thinking I answer, "Venice".Regardless of whether Venice really is the world's most beautiful city it certainly is memorable and its magic has inspired a who's who of great writers.In this, the latest in Oxygen Books's City Pick series where short extracts are seamlessly blended into a compelling narrative about a city, the contributions include quotations from Jan Morris, Thomas Mann, Goethe, Henry James, Evelyn Waugh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mark Twain, Marcel Proust, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Charles Dickens, Patricia Highsmith, D.H. Lawrence, Daphne du Maurier, Simone de Beauvoir, Giacomo Casanova and dozens of lesser literary lights.Such a collection of writers leads inevitably to Henry James's observation about Venice in 1909: "There is notoriously nothing more to be said on the subject."It's a natural response, although not an accurate one. For those who love Venice, this book is genuinely unputdownable. You race through the quotes asking yourself, "Did Goethe really love the city that much?", "Did Waugh write so lyrically about the Grand Canal?", "Was Venice so impressive that Proust compared it to his beloved Combray?" and all the time marvelling as the city, with all its seductive magic, is evoked by some of the greatest writers.Of course, depictions of Venice are not all eulogies, as anyone who has read Du Maurier's Don't Look Now or Mann's Death in Venice can attest. There can be a darkness, produced by disease and claustrophobia, about the city and this is covered in this evocation.Why do I love the city? Because I love mooching and Venice is the ultimate mooching city. You can get lost, over and over again, and always be sure that around the next corner is a surprise a square or courtyard or alley. And yet you are never really lost. You will always find your way back to St Mark's. It is too perfect.
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald