La bella figura a field guide to the Italian mind
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English Italian |
| Published: |
New York :
Broadway Books,
c2006.
|
| Edition: | 1st U.S. ed. |
| Subjects: | |
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Table of Contents:
- Day 1: Malpensa -> Milan: The airport, where we discover that Italians prefer exceptions to rules
- The highway, or the psychopathology of the stoplight
- The hotel, where singular people are not content with a double room
- Day 2 & 3: Milan: The restaurant, one way of sitting in judgment
- The store, the field of lost battles
- The nightspot, where foxes turn into peacocks
- The condominium, a vertical space for oblique obsessions
- The eat-in kitchen, the nerve center of domestic counterespionage
- The bedroom, the bathroom, and how hard it is to find space of your own
- Day 4: -> Tuscany: The train, where many talk, few listen, and everyone understands
- The museum, beautiful women on the walls
- Television, where the semi-undressed signorina acquires a cloak of significance
- Day 5: Tuscany: The countryside, where we show that Italians are the world's leading manufacturers of emotions
- The Italian piazza, a tool with more cutting edges than a Swiss-army knife
- The window, framing fantasies that are sometimes cut short by a shutter
- Day 6: Rome: The bank, a confrontation of confidence and cold feet
- The office, the opera house of orderly anarchy
- The shopping mall, a taste of America delivered to your door
- Day 7: Naples: The sidewalk, or on collective individualism
- The automobile, and fumbling on the fold-down seats
- The travel agency, where the nation flexes its flippancy and pampers its patriotism
- Day 8: Sardinia: The waterfront, the convoluted charm of a liquid frontier
- The beach, a bare outline
- The garden, seclusion in bloom
- Day 9: Crema: The barber, the newsstand, and the town as a lifebelt
- The monument. And yet it moves
- School, the workshop where shared memories are made
- Day 10: Crema -> Malpensa, via San Siro: The church, where we will ruminate on the moral menu
- The stadium, notes on social gastroenterology
- The horizon. In other words, give us back Columbus
- Epilogue: A letter from America.
