La Bella Figura: A Good Way to Die Laughing
I’m in the middle of reading Beppe Severgnini’s new “La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind,” and can’t stop laughing. If you’re interested even slightly in Italian logic, you’ve got to pick this up. A sample: “Yet Italy is far from hellish. It’s got too much style. Neither is it heaven, of course, because it’s too unruly. Let’s just say that Italy is an offbeat purgatory, full of proud, tormented souls each of whom is convinced he or she has a hotline to the boss. Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis.” I was chuckling before I’d even made it through the Table of Contents: “The Highway, or the Psychopathology of the Stoplight,” “The Hotel, Where Singular People are not Content with a Double Room,” “The Store, the Field of Lost Battles,” and “The Eat-in Kitchen, the Nerve Center of Domestic Counterespionage.” Flashback! I’ll be back when I stop giggling. And to answer your question, yes, of course we want to go back. Duh.
