John Berendt - The City of Falling Angels - Comment.

 

For anyone who has visited Venice, its charms and history physically pulsate through the air. In Berendt's runaway bestseller, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil", he submerged himself in the city of Savannah, Georgia, gaining access to the people and families that go back to the city's beginnings. This was a unique "travel" text, reading like a novel, strewn with strange and intensely interesting characters, which only an inspired novelist could dream up. These extraordinary characters, however, are all real people, who most continue to live and strive in that magical town. Berendt has brought this same sensibility; his journalist's flare for finding a good story, and submerged himself in the culture of Venice, again, uncannily gaining access to the city's oldest families, its aristocracy and legion of unconventional characters. This is a side to Venice that most of us would never see or experience.

Similar to "Midnight", The City of Falling Angels centers on a single event, in this case, the tragic burning of the famous Venice Opera House in 1996. The theatre was entirely destroyed, devastating the city's inhabitants and many people across the world. Berendt decided to stay in Venice and remained there for eight years until the theatre was painstakingly re-built, amongst mind-boggling bureaucracy, money-grabbing companies, ruthless public officials, and artists and the societies elite.

Many high-profile people have chosen to live in Venice over its long history and continue to do so today. The city has been the setting for some of the greatest novels in the last 500 years, Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice", Henry James' "The Aspen Papers", and Shakespeare's, "The Merchant of Venice" to name only a few. What is it about the city of Venice that inspires artists and writers to create their works of genius? The greatest self-proclaimed lover in history, Casanova, had his greatest and most memorable affairs in Venice. Lord Byron chose to live there and wrote lovingly about the city, and Ezra Pound chose to live and die in Venice, leaving his long-time mistress, Olga Ridge, who also passed away there at the age of 101. Berendt captures and connects Venice's present time charm with its rich history, illustrating that these cultural traditions continue.

What struck me about Berendt's book, was how so many people, foreigner's as well as the Venetians, care intensely, passionately about Venice. It is part of our past that must be maintained and remembered, because beauty is fleeting and fragile.

As some critics have proposed, this book does not position Venetians as the `other', a "race" to be studied as something exotic and otherworldly. Berendt's book is a tribute to the city and the people who love her. Anyone who has visited Venice wants to become part of her because of her rich past and her beauty...this book captures that feeling. This is a well-written, educational and highly entertaining tribute to one of the greatest cities in the world.