Volume 3, Number 2 · September 10, 1964
Italy: Italian Style
By Denis Mack Smith
The Italians: A Full-Length Portrait Featuring Their Manners and Morals
by Luigi Barzini Jr.
Atheneum, 376 pp., $6.95
We know that it is impossible to characterize a whole nation, and yet perhaps most people half-unconsciously possess an ideal image of their country as if it had special national characteristics. Frenchmen and Italians above all seem to take collective introspection seriously, and in Italy, where self-love vies with self-hatred, it can be savagely honest. Mr. Barzini has spent a great deal of time discussing his countrymen in cafés and newspaper offices. His book is like good talk, witty, unpretentious, escaping from logical difficulties in laughter, often instructive, never for one moment a bore. He is especially illuminating about foreign visitors and their not always admirable reasons for liking Italy. Even where it is hard to agree with him about Italians, one can be fascinated by the author himself, by his notion of what he would like the Italian character to be, or what he would like foreigners to think it is. And usually one does agree even when he contradicts himself: if Italians are one thing and its opposite at the same time, he shows the complex reasons why it is in their nature to be both.
Review, 1500 words
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