Roman Holiday

A few weeks ago I went looking for something to read, something really good, because I was coming to the end of my Joseph Epstein books (see right-hand panel under "Books I've Read in 2008") and I knew whatever came next had to be fairly extraordinary. It didn't have to match Mr. Epstein's brilliance but it had to come close because Mr. Epstein has spoiled me. I've read six of his books of essays over the past few months and can't remember a time recently when I've enjoyed myself so much, reading-wise.

I can remember times, just not recently. When I was in my late-teens, I discovered Pauline Kael's movie criticism, and I devoured it. Those books sit on my bookshelves still, old, tattered, revered. My copy of I Lost it at the Movies is itself a tribute to my love of Ms. Kael's writing: the binding has come apart completely, so often has it been opened, and what was once a book is now just a stack of loose sheets of paper. To read it one must pick up each individual sheet from the right-hand stack of papers, read it, turn it over, read that, then place the sheet atop the opposite left-hand stack. I will not - I cannot - part with it; it is one of the building blocks of my adolescence, and it contributed greatly to my lifelong love of old movies. At the age of fifty, I don't take her word as gospel as I did when I was twenty - I have my own views these days - but no other critic could so ruthlessly and entertainingly pan a movie the way she could, and no one could explain why a great movie was great like her. She died a few weeks before 9/11, and, in the answer to where were you when the planes hit the Trade Center, I was in my office at my old job, reading some of the online tributes to her, when the phone rang. Seven years after her death, she remains a controversial figure - a lot of people loved her, some hated her - but what is also true is, though she has thousands of imitators, she remains the greatest movie critic of them all.

Later, as I've mentioned before, during the years of my political zeal (from about my mid-twenties until I was near thirty) I eagerly read all of George F. Will's political writings. I still read his columns, and he remains as engaging as ever. No one shaped my thinking on political and cultural ideas as Mr. Will has. Again, I disagree with him now here and there - he remains a Burkean conservative, while a libertarian streak seems to be predominant in my thinking these days - but he was (and is) the profoundest thinker among the pundits, the most interesting prose stylist, and, like Ms. Kael, can be entertainingly ruthless when provoked. Again, if we were ranking modern political thinkers and writers, it would be hard not to place Mr. Will at the top, or very near to it.

It was in one of George Will's columns where I first heard the name of Peter DeVries, perhaps the finest comic novelist in America during the mid-twentieth century. I've read some twenty of so of Mr. DeVries' books, each and every one delightful. My wife used to say she always knew when I was reading Peter DeVries because it was the only time when I laughed out loud every few minutes (though she'll have to revise that thought now that Mr. Epstein is on the scene.) DeVries is for the most part out of print, which is a shame. His books may seem to some a bit dated now because they rely heavily on the sexual and cultural zeitgeist of the periods they were written, but he remains readable for his humor and his humanity, and the sheer fun of it all.

I would also place Janet Flanner is my pantheon of favorites. Ms. Flanner was the New Yorker's correspondent in Paris from the magazine's founding in 1925 until her retirement in 1975. For half a century she informed New Yorker readers of the goings-on in the City of Light in her biweekly "Letter from Paris", filed under the pen name "Genet" (Harold Ross, the magazine's founder and first editor, who hired Ms. Flanner for the post, apparently thought "Genet" was the French version of Janet.) I'd heard of her before we travelled to Paris in 1998 but had never read her. It was the following year, in a small used-book store on the Upper West Side in New York City that I discovered her. Actually, my wife stumbled upon one of her Paris Journal's and brought it over to me. I read the first few pages and I was hooked. I bought the book and, over the next few years, read all her published writings, including her reports from other areas of Europe, and the collection of her letters. She was at her best in the early years, before left-leaning politics started informing her thoughts, but through it all there is the clear, crisp, lucid prose detailing her unsentimental observations about the city she loved. I too fell in love with Paris during the eleven days we spent there and her writings help spark my continued interest. Indeed, one of her essays so captured my fancy that it became the basis for my first screenplay. Along with a few other titles, I plan to reread her entirely, taking notes as I go, before our next trip to that most lovely of cities.

Would I love all these writers as I do had I picked them up now rather than at the time I did? Probably not. Ms. Kael came along when I was young, impressionable, and eager to learn. The sparkle, the rhythm, the fever, in her prose spoke to me at the time. It might seem a little overheated to me if I were to be introduced to her now. Mr. Will, as I've mentioned before, came along during, if fact was instrumental in, my conservative awakening. Ms. Flanner came at a time when Paris was still fresh in my memory; my ardor for the city had not yet begun to subside. Discovering her when I did, as I did, was a bit serendipitous. Peter DeVries, well, he was just good, naughty, fun, which I still, and hope I always will, have a taste for.

But I'm off track - what else is new? I began this post by mentioning that I needed someone really good to follow up on Joseph Epstein. Again, I wasn't expecting anyone as good as Mr. Epstein - who could be? - but just your ordinary writer simply would not do. I never expected to discover someone who approached Mr. Epstein in style, wit, talent, and sheer readability.

There is a Border's Book Store about a ten minute walk from my place of work. I pass it every day when out on my after-lunch strolls. I suppose you could call me a regular there. I don't stop in every day - some days it's simply too pretty to stop and browse through books - but I'm there a lot. Most often I'm looking at the new releases to see what's up. On other days I just browse the stacks, trying to find something that catches my ever-changing fancy. I'll pick up a few titles, find a comfortable chair, and scan through the first few pages of my selections, hoping something I've chosen engages me.

I stopped in a few weeks ago with the intent on finding something new. A Big History perhaps? You know, one of those thousand page tomes which cover a subject in its entirety. I've read a lot of these and when they're good I have no problem with the length; I let myself sink into the book, knowing I'll be living in that world for the next month or so. There are a few out that I'm interested in. I also browsed through some classic literature; Dostoevsky and Dickens. But it's just not the time for any of these; it's summer, I've just come off reading Mr. Epstein's delightful essays, and these possibilities all had an air of heaviness about them. Better I wait for the fall or winter for something so serious.

Then I found myself in the Travel section and saw this on the shelf: H.V. Morton's A Traveller in Rome. I'd never heard of the man but something intrigued me about the book immediately. I found my easy chair, opened the book - and I was hooked before the plane that carried Morton to Rome was even past the Alps. Published in 1957, it remains useful to any intelligent person who would travel to Rome and is interested in its past. You will not find recommendations here on where to stay, or what restaurants to eat at, nor will you find opening and closing times of the museums. Those things can be found elsewhere. But if you want to get the feel of Rome, to understand Rome and Romans, then there is no better place than this. Displaying an encyclopedic knowledge of the city's history and culture, sprinkling in some humor, wit, and an appropriate sense of awe, Morton takes you on a trip around the Eternal City that could not be more delightful. Every step he takes seems to evoke a memory, or a story from the city's past. Even a walk up the stairs with Morton, after a few confrontations with his hotel's balky elevator, is a delight:

For these reasons I often preferred to walk up the five flights of beautiful marble stairs. The exquisite steps of Rome are among my first memories: steps of marble and travertine, shallow Renaissance steps, so much kinder on the leg muscles than the steep steps of ancient Rome: steps curving left, right and centre from the Piazza di Spagna, as if to show you what steps can do if given the chance; noble steps up to S. Maria in Aracoeli; elegant steps to the Quirinal; majestic steps to St. Peter's and to innumerable churches, fountains, and palaces - the most wonderful steps in the world. Even the stairs in my pensione were poor relations of the Spanish Steps, and their marble treads and gentle gradient compensated me for those moments when the lift was cantankerous.

Later, we get this:

I could never tire of the old streets near the Tiber, to the west of the Corso. There is something worth looking at and thinking about every two yards....[o]ne is willing to forgive the Renaissance Popes many of their sins for the sake of the beauty they created and the genius they nourished. A great deal of the haphazard charm of old Rome is that its ground plan is mediaeval. The palaces of the sixteenth century were erected in the narrow streets of the fourteenth. Many of the great palaces have elbowed their way in apparently by sheer strength of character, and stand like great galleasses towering above some little mediaeval harbour. To pass, for instance, from the Campo de' Fiori to the Farnese Palace is to traverse several centuries in a few yards.

The second sentence in this last entry, to me, describes the entire book: "there is something worth looking at and thinking about every two yards". Every paragraph, every sentence, every step of Morton's journey, abounds with engaging and often fascinating observations, memories, and anecdotes. It is nothing less than an informal history of Rome, told by a man who has class, style, and erudition. We spent four days in Rome in 1997, not nearly long enough, but we visited many of the places Morton describes and oh, how I wish I had this book back then. How much more we would have gotten out of our trip. My wife picked up the book and read the first twenty or so pages - I've had to steal it back from her - but it hooked her too. We both badly want to go back now.

Morton, who died in 1979 at the age of 86, wrote dozens of other books, most of them travel writings of this type. He covered all of Italy, all of England (including a book exclusively on London, which sits on my table waiting to be read next), Turkey, and the Holy Land. I've got a lot to look forward to but for the time being I am content on my Roman Holiday, with Mr. Morton along as my guide and my friend.