Now with stunning illustrations and color photographs, this newly expanded edition of In Maremma recounts David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell’s restoration of a dilapidated 1950s farmhouse in southern Tuscany. Beautifully written, witty, and concise, it recounts the process by which they became initiated into a part of Italian life foreigners rarely see. The pleasures of the olive harvest and picking wild asparagus are juxtaposed with the vagaries of political corruption and self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Landscape and weather provide the stuff of reverie, as do the benefits of boredom and the longing for peanut butter. A celebration and exploration of a little-known part of Italy, In Maremma is a fond if sometimes critical corrective to other more rapturous portrayals of Tuscany.
Amazon.com Review
Thanks to authors like Peter Mayle and Frances Mayes, a whole subset of travel memoirs is now devoted to the theme of restoring old houses in Europe. While most authors use the home as a vehicle to examine the surrounding culture, David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell tilt their measure decidedly on the side of home decor. "Nothing tells you more about a people than their houses," Leavitt and Mitchell write, as they set out to "construct a past based on our own private notions of comfort, upon which we could glance with pleasure in some hypothetical future." While initially daunted by the task of restoring a country house in bureaucracy-plagued Italy, the two dive in with gusto when they find Podere Fiume (River Farm) in Maremma, a little known part of Tuscany. Unlived in for more than 20 years, the farmhouse's downstairs is composed entirely of animal stalls, complete with stone troughs, while its two acres are lined with olive and fruit trees and a small creek. The authors tell of tapping into the Italian tradition of craftsmanship, taking on iron-fitters, lamp and lampshade makers, wood carvers, and furniture restorers. They design their own couch, reconstruct an 1803 fireplace, and commission a copy of an 18th-century Venetian bookcase with secret doors for CDs. They even recount the paint colors and fabric designs they consider. Needless to say, the density of detail they devote to their decor will mostly be of interest to those who pour over design magazines like House and Garden and World of Interiors, as the authors do. Fortunately, they also devote some of their short but precise chapters to humorous and telling bits about Italy--the habits, feuds, and "poetry and madness" of Italian bureaucracy--as well as to portraits of some of their more interesting neighbors, such as Pepe the iron-fitter and Pina the restaurateur. Written from the point of view of expatriates who live among but are not of, In Maremma offers an interesting, sometimes overdone and other times right-on-target portrait of a less glamorous if no less interesting part of Tuscany than Frances Mayes's. --Lesley Reed
From Publishers Weekly
Novelist Leavitt and Mitchell (co-editors of The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories) relate their first two years restoring and inhabiting a run-down farmhouse in Maremma, the poorest and (to tourists) least-known province of Tuscany. Each short chapter describes a different aspect of their lives there, from the incredible lengths of red tape involved in obtaining a driver's license (a holdover, according to a local restaurateur, from the fascist government's inclination "to make private life as difficult as possible, to discourage independent thinking") to "sheep jams" on the roads, for which local procedure is to drive right into the middle of the herd. The authors find that, in this "most boring of all European countries," "one grows to love boredom." Indeed, the authors can devote eons to decorating and landscaping. But they also "profit... from such old-fashioned... diversions as reading, listening to music, gardening, painting, doing jigsaw puzzles, cooking, playing with the dog." The character sketches generally illustrate the country's leisurely pace, e.g., their architect Domenico, when faced with a problem, suggests that they "study" it ("Study,' in Italian, is synonymous withput off'"). Although much of the book, replete with rapturous descriptions of furniture, drapes and paint, might be better suited to Elle D‚cor, the nuanced, sometimes funny depictions of the people of Maremma and the premium placed on quality of life are worthy of authenticity-hungry travelogue readers.
Description:
Now with stunning illustrations and color photographs, this newly expanded edition of In Maremma recounts David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell’s restoration of a dilapidated 1950s farmhouse in southern Tuscany. Beautifully written, witty, and concise, it recounts the process by which they became initiated into a part of Italian life foreigners rarely see. The pleasures of the olive harvest and picking wild asparagus are juxtaposed with the vagaries of political corruption and self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Landscape and weather provide the stuff of reverie, as do the benefits of boredom and the longing for peanut butter. A celebration and exploration of a little-known part of Italy, In Maremma is a fond if sometimes critical corrective to other more rapturous portrayals of Tuscany.
Amazon.com Review
Thanks to authors like Peter Mayle and Frances Mayes, a whole subset of travel memoirs is now devoted to the theme of restoring old houses in Europe. While most authors use the home as a vehicle to examine the surrounding culture, David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell tilt their measure decidedly on the side of home decor. "Nothing tells you more about a people than their houses," Leavitt and Mitchell write, as they set out to "construct a past based on our own private notions of comfort, upon which we could glance with pleasure in some hypothetical future." While initially daunted by the task of restoring a country house in bureaucracy-plagued Italy, the two dive in with gusto when they find Podere Fiume (River Farm) in Maremma, a little known part of Tuscany. Unlived in for more than 20 years, the farmhouse's downstairs is composed entirely of animal stalls, complete with stone troughs, while its two acres are lined with olive and fruit trees and a small creek. The authors tell of tapping into the Italian tradition of craftsmanship, taking on iron-fitters, lamp and lampshade makers, wood carvers, and furniture restorers. They design their own couch, reconstruct an 1803 fireplace, and commission a copy of an 18th-century Venetian bookcase with secret doors for CDs. They even recount the paint colors and fabric designs they consider. Needless to say, the density of detail they devote to their decor will mostly be of interest to those who pour over design magazines like House and Garden and World of Interiors, as the authors do. Fortunately, they also devote some of their short but precise chapters to humorous and telling bits about Italy--the habits, feuds, and "poetry and madness" of Italian bureaucracy--as well as to portraits of some of their more interesting neighbors, such as Pepe the iron-fitter and Pina the restaurateur. Written from the point of view of expatriates who live among but are not of, In Maremma offers an interesting, sometimes overdone and other times right-on-target portrait of a less glamorous if no less interesting part of Tuscany than Frances Mayes's. --Lesley Reed
From Publishers Weekly
Novelist Leavitt and Mitchell (co-editors of The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories) relate their first two years restoring and inhabiting a run-down farmhouse in Maremma, the poorest and (to tourists) least-known province of Tuscany. Each short chapter describes a different aspect of their lives there, from the incredible lengths of red tape involved in obtaining a driver's license (a holdover, according to a local restaurateur, from the fascist government's inclination "to make private life as difficult as possible, to discourage independent thinking") to "sheep jams" on the roads, for which local procedure is to drive right into the middle of the herd. The authors find that, in this "most boring of all European countries," "one grows to love boredom." Indeed, the authors can devote eons to decorating and landscaping. But they also "profit... from such old-fashioned... diversions as reading, listening to music, gardening, painting, doing jigsaw puzzles, cooking, playing with the dog." The character sketches generally illustrate the country's leisurely pace, e.g., their architect Domenico, when faced with a problem, suggests that they "study" it ("
Study,' in Italian, is synonymous withput off'"). Although much of the book, replete with rapturous descriptions of furniture, drapes and paint, might be better suited to Elle D‚cor, the nuanced, sometimes funny depictions of the people of Maremma and the premium placed on quality of life are worthy of authenticity-hungry travelogue readers.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.