Category: Language

Things du jour

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

Quote of the day

“I am not a recluse. I live like an unsociable person; it is different. People get on my nerves.” 

— Brigette Bardot, actress, animal activist 

Book of the day

“Bel Canto,” Ann Patchett’s 2001 novel about love, opera and hostage-taking, is one of those contemporary classics you should have read but never got around to, and now, 25 years on, it feels too late. It’s not. I started this book five years ago and put it aside for inexplicable reasons. That diss has haunted me and last week I gave “Bel Canto” another shot. The result was transcendent.

The plot is a small knot that unravels beautifully: A throng of international guests have gathered at the mansion of the vice president of an unnamed South American country for the birthday celebration of a Japanese businessman. A world-famous American opera soprano has been invited to regale the group, and soon, through her exotic talent and beauty, becomes the cynosure of the story. The party is abruptly crashed by leftist guerrillas looking to kidnap the nation’s president, who rather comically skipped the party so he could watch his beloved soap opera at home. Stymied, the invaders take the revelers hostage for what starts as hours, then weeks, then months. Thus the mansion becomes a human incubator, a constellation of international players, some of whom align as unlikely allies, others as peculiar romances fraught with forbidden yearning. It’s a rich tapestry that echoes the diners trapped for months in a similar mansion in “The Exterminating Angel,” Buñuel’s classic takedown of the gilded class. But Patchett is a gentler, less partisan observer, underscoring the universal languages of music, love and language itself for something divine. The book is so meticulously engineered — the many characters are spryly choreographed — and so big of heart that it dashes hopes of ever writing your own novel because it couldn’t brush these literary heights. There’s the hitch: You almost hate “Bel Canto” because it’s so stupid good.

Movie of the day

My love affair with Iranian cinema is long and varied, spanning Jafar Panahi’s charming debut “The White Balloon” to Abbas Kiarostami’s rigorously philosophical “Taste of Cherry.” Spare, talky and played mostly by untrained actors, the films are often covertly political, critical of the Iranian regime in as coded terms possible, secret messages packed with time bombs. But Panahi has used his recent movies for brazen broadsides and as such they are banned in his home country. Yet the director shrewdly snakes around these restrictions and his latest moral thriller “It Was Just an Accident” won the Palme d’Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It’s a bold gesture tracing what happens when a band of former political prisoners kidnap and confront the man they believe brutally tortured them during their imprisonment. Amid the moral complexities of revenge — do they even have the right man? — comes relief via mordant humor and absurdist touches that goose the overall lunacy. (Note the wry allusions to “Waiting for Godot.”) Panahi has made a tough and moving portrait of keeping one’s humanity in an impossible situation. Its stubborn ambiguity is a hallmark of Iranian cinema, and this one’s a classic. 

Drink of the day

That’d be Mr. Pickles Gin. My newly discovered sip is named for the distiller’s pitt bull rescue, Mr. Pickles, who nobly emblazons the spirit’s label as the official mascot and makes me like it that much more.

Time to taste. Open the senses to a bouquet of dog urine. No. The fragrance is lovely, the gin superb. Its aroma is juniper, citrus, pepper, with a whiff, I think, of dill. It owns a strong herbal flavor with earthy undertones and tinges of orange, pepper and, aptly, a speck of dill pickle. And I swear on Mr. Pickles’ fuzzy head that is not just the power of suggestion. Made in Oregon by Wolf Spirit Distillery, the drink features 12 botanicals, including green tea, blood orange, pink peppercorns and marshmallow root (I have no idea). If it’s not as grand and complex as my revered Monkey 47, which boasts a whopping 47 botanicals and that I drink neat, Mr. Pickles will be a snappy refresher during the dog days of summer.

Photo of the day

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. This one speaks four words: I am so screwed.

Books I’m not ambivalent about

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

“Transcription”

I could see this happening to me: On the way to interview a very important person, you drop your phone, i.e. your recording device, into a sink filled with water. Phone ruined, you are forced to interview the person without a recorder, a fact you fudge by reconstructing the confab from memory for your article, a high-wire act and any writer’s nightmare. Novelist Ben Lerner — who’s also a gifted poet and has been dubbed the “most talented writer of his generation” — uses this premise as a springboard to something timely, profound and ineffably transfixing. A novel in name only — think the brainy consciousness streams of Rachel Cusk — the 130-page “Transcription” presents a nameless narrator and two other men in conversations about art, life, friendship, fatherhood and technology amid the backdrop of early Covid. Plot is nebulous and tricky to summarize, but the brilliance at work is distinctly Lerner’s. (I’m an avid fan of his novels “Leaving the Atocha Station” and “10:04.”) Lerner writes deceptively plain prose with a wizard’s wand — simple on the surface, yet each hypnotic line peels layers of insight and meaning. It’s all mesmerizingly meandering, to a destination both uncommon and rewarding. 

“Lost Lambs”

In this sharp and irreverent new novel, Madeline Cash flips notions of family, marriage, community, church and capitalism to expose their crawly underbellies. It’s prickly, spot-on, strange. And hilarious. The book’s many moving parts include an open marriage that veers to amorous calamity; star-crossed trysts; a trio of precocious teens that grazes danger in a vile adult world; a tech billionaire whose dealings are creepy at best; and a church Father whose hands may be scandalously dirty. Cash trains a compassionate bullseye on those creatures called teenagers and a cynic’s bead on the perilous pact of matrimony. (“The biggest conspiracy of all? This whole love thing,” a character sniffs.) But Cash isn’t cruel. She exudes empathy and openly likes her characters — the ones that deserve it. “Lost Lambs” is frothy literary fiction, until it’s not. It is droll and buoyantly written yet lands the well-placed left hook. I can imagine it becoming a four-part Netflix series, a smart, soapy, surreal dramedy starring Ben Stiller and Laura Linney. If it happens, I won’t watch it. I’ll stick to the book. The book is always better.

Three humor collections by Sloane Crosley

David Sedaris is the standard-bearer of comic essays. I believe this is wrong. I believe he is drastically overrated. I believe he is rarely actually funny. I believe his prose is limp. I believe his professional persona is as confected as a Girl Scout Samoa. You know who’s wittier, hipper and more stylish? Sloane Crosley, who’s written three collections of humor essays that impressed me enough to sit down and commit hosannas. Her first collection, “I Was Told There’d Be Cake,” is best. It also has the best title. Although “How Did You Get This Number,” her second book, and “Look Alive Out There,” her latest collection (from 2018), also have wry, hooky titles. Part-journalism, part-memoir, Crosley’s essays are first-person escapades, experiential and anecdotal and typically relatable. They bristle with razor observation and social commentary. Here, she mordantly muses about her only slightly embarrassing collection of plastic toy ponies. There, she riffs on her fraught city-girl excursion to Alaska, where, in an SUV, there is one guy among many women: “He is our lone star of testosterone in a galaxy of chick.” She deconstructs the bizarro experience of playing herself on “Gossip Girl” and takes merciless stock of her dating life. It’s not all playtime. Crosley doesn’t duck drama and high stakes (her queasy adventures in altitude sickness are almost contagious). Like Sedaris, some of Crosley’s situations and interactions smack of exaggeration or plot-propelling fancy. Such is the plight of the mass-consumed writer — feed the beast. Though the humor is a soft weave, coolly conversational, she can be overtly jokey, and the jokes rarely clank. Her voice is reliably amusing, cut with a measure of snark that gives her sweet prose a tangy kick.

“Flesh”

In minimalist language so parched it’s practically puckered, David Szalay spins a story of the classic Solitary Man, a Hungarian immigrant in England named István who embraces a nearly non-verbal solitude as a shield against a world of discomfort. We follow this modern existential character from his cringey deflowering as a teen to his coupling with a rich married woman and decades beyond. Szalay’s tensed prose mirrors the character’s isolation, which occasionally sees shafts of light. While his interior life remains unexamined — his disaffection can be frosty — István is no cipher. He’s a well-drawn loner, a compelling picture of alienation. He’s also something of a symbol, a metaphor for class, urban malaise, the gesture of empty sex and deep loss. (It’s telling that his extravagant cigarette habit is a key character trait.) István fascinates by dint of what he shows as much as by what he withholds. What’s so remarkable about “Flesh,” which won the Booker Prize in 2025, is a descriptive precision and drum-tight realism that would make Hemingway beam. Grim and gripping, it’s a master class in control.

Marseille? Oui, oui!

~ Chris ~ 3 Comments

The email contained bad news. My guide, whose ratings are off the charts, was bailing on our tour of Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. Cold comfort: He was enlisting a substitute guide in his place, someone named Ivanna, about whom I knew nothing. I pictured a comely Ukrainian woman, perhaps bespectacled, tall, sweet and ironic. 

A few days later Ivanna introduced herself via text: “I’ll be the little Asian lady with bluish hair, so I’ll be hard to miss!” 

Oh. Grand.

Trips are rife with hiccups, snags. This wasn’t one of them. Ivanna turned out to be a joy, a brainy fount of local knowledge, witty, thoughtful, considerate, with hair tinted a winning shade of cobalt. She’s young, Malaysian, went to Loyola University in Maryland and speaks three languages. She lives in Aix with her husband and children. In two brisk, stuffed hours, she led me down skinny cobblestone lanes and yawning boulevards, telling me scads about the city’s history, from kings to cathedrals, and where to get the best ice cream and ogle good art. 

This is the best of travel — the brain- and eye-popping excursions that crack open new vistas you could only wonder about. Topped with two scoops of lip-smacking ice cream. 

I was staying in Marseille for six days last week and Aix was an obvious day trip, as was Arles (Roman ruins! Van Gogh!), but more on that lovely town another time. Marseille and Aix are 39 minutes apart by train, yet worlds apart in complexion. 

Marseille: gritty and huge (France’s second largest city); slathered in graffiti and street art; assertively multicultural; set on a picturesque port; growling with speeding scooters and motorbikes; part Paris, part chaos.  

Aix: exuberant, medieval charm constructed of yellow and ocher stone; clock towers, boulevards and basilicas; fountains juiced by thermal springs; home of Cézanne (though, tragically, the city owns none of his paintings); boutiques and tranquil beauty.  

The dichotomy is dizzying. One thumps with rap and rock, while the other strolls, hands in pockets, whistling. Both are ancient —  at 2,600 years old, Marseille is the oldest city in France — and exude that quaint, sometimes ghastly, always intoxicating historical spirit that Europe seems to have a monopoly on. 

One of many famed fountains in Aix-en-Provence

Why Marseille, you say? Partly because it’s enjoying a moment right now, with hosannas in The New York Times to Condé Nast Traveler and beyond. A trend follower I am not. I did a day trip to Marseille in 2007 that spurred my urge to return to this bustling, bracingly diverse city. And so I did. And I’m glad. There you have it.

Marseille’s reputation for crime and grime is passé at best, slanderous at worst. Locals laughed with me when this was brought up, like, What are they talking about? Think New York, Chicago, San Francisco — they have their blights and trouble spots, but there are simple ways around that. And what’s a big city without some dirt under its nails? (My Fodor’s travel guide said my hotel was in an “iffy” neighborhood. I call bullshit. The crib and the hood are très cool.)

Marseille’s fabled Cours Julien district. It’s never met a can of spray paint it didn’t love.

Vaunted as a foodie’s paradise, Marseille let me down many times gastronomically. I tucked into good but never great dishes originating from France, Italy, Argentina, Tunisia and the Ivory Coast. Alas, with heaving disappointment, my maiden acquaintance with Marseille’s world-famous fish stew, bouillabaisse, was a bust. The fish was dry and flavorless, the broth bland and tepid, and this was at legendary bouillabaisse megastar Chez Fonfon. The soup and one glass of wine took me for a hundred US dollars. The web review I wrote back at the hotel is a seething tirade about getting rooked.

Where the food flopped, the people shined. My minor allergy to others is cured when I travel. Connections with locals are almost always tonic and nourishing, pulling me out of my fortress of solitude to swap world views and pleasantries. We laugh as we wrestle with our linguistic limitations — my French is pretty much non-existent, basically sign language — and commiserate when politics are broached, which gladly is not often.

Marseille from the hilltop Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica

My past as a film critic is my social super power. It uncorks an uncanny passion in people that’s rooted in the universal language of cinema. I had a half dozen lively conversations with local Marseillaise about their favorite films and filmmakers, from Tarantino to Tarkovsky and every indie and classic in between. France’s renowned love affair with the movies burns bright. (I stumped them all when I mentioned “Annie Hall,” however.)

Meanwhile, over at my hotel, the hipster joint with the hipster name, Mama Shelter Marseille, the music played loud on weekends, pure DJ slop stuck on the same crowbar-to-the-cranium beat. The throb carried straight to my fourth-floor room well past 1 a.m. and I found myself in grandpa grumpus mode, calling reception to complain. To my surprise, the next day they upgraded my room to a larger one away from the bar, and even gifted me two fat gourmet cookies and a bottle of apricot juice. I felt like a little boy. I thought it was the nicest thing in the world. I’ve never said merci beaucoup so many times.

A small Marseille port, lined with restaurants, including the notorious Chez Fonfon. A soup with a view.

About fifteen feet from the hotel is a tiny pizzeria, really rather a dump that’s mostly for take-out, where I got my final meal in Marseille. No more overpriced, underwhelming haute cuisine on this trip, I sniffed. 

Again, the people. The pizzeria is run by a stout, olive-skinned woman in perhaps her mid-forties with a handkerchief on her head and flour on her hands. I bought three plain slices and while they heated up we chatted in stilted English (she apologized for hers) about where I was from and she seemed happy for this foreigner’s patronage.

She told me her son had just visited Miami and loved it. She asked if I had been and I had to say I wasn’t a big fan of South Beach — the place reeks of douchebaggery, though I left that out — but that young men adore it and, for that, America is doomed. I left that out, too. She chuckled. I took my slices back to the hotel and bellowed a hearty Merci! Au revoir!

Later, after watching “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in French with no subtitles, I went to bed. I heard nothing but the occasional motorbike screaming down the narrow streets.

The city in its graffitied glory. Me, I love the street art. It has character, panache.

Quote of the day: depressing and disgraceful

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

“Research has associated smartphone use with ADHD symptoms in adolescents, and a quarter of surveyed American adults now suspect they may have the condition. School and college teachers assign fewer full books to their students, in part because they are unable to complete them. Nearly half of Americans read zero books in 2023.”

— The New York Times


Stuff, etc.

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

One of the cats died recently. He was kind of the rotten cat, the one that shreds up the carpet, craps where he feels like it and was extra aloof, like an Aviator-wearing rock star who hates giving autographs. Anyway, we’re saddened and miss the ornery fellow. I’m not sure what to do with his ashes: urn them nicely or chuck them over the fence at the squirrels. 

I don’t trust social media as far as I can spit. If I had a girlfriend, I’d ask her, quite nicely of course, to get off that shit.

Voyeurism is the opiate of the masses, not religion. Think about that for about four seconds.

Just guess who I think embodies all of these descriptives: racist, greedy, venal, petty, megalomaniacal, misogynistic, heartless, rankly sophomoric, vulgarian scum. Bingo.

I’ve planned a trip to Mexico City for November, but I’m so traveled-out right now, the whole thing sounds terrible. Five months is far off, so I should be refreshed by then. Thing is, the weather runs in the mid-70s to 80 in November and I’m barely any good over 70. I hate the heat; I’m a San Francisco wuss. I read that t-shirts and shorts are frowned upon in Mexico City, and I’m not a fan of them either. It sounds like when I was in sweltering India and everyone was swaddled in jeans and long sleeves. I wore jeans with t-shirts and I sweated like swine. Drenched. Two showers a day. I don’t want any of that crap. Maybe I’ll push the trip to December. Or January. Or never.

What I’m reading: “Demon Copperhead,” Barbara Kingsolver’s gritty, funny, unsparing ode to Dickens’ “David Copperfield.” The novel won a Pulitzer last year and rollicks with knockabout wit and wisdom and with more than a dash of social commentary about the sorry state of many of our states (opioids, poverty, detox). The damn thing’s a cinder block so it’s taking me forever to plow through, but it’s worth it. The title character, a teenage boy, both tart and talented, is one for the ages. He’s like a super smart Pig-Pen from “Peanuts”: brilliant but with a cloud of flies and dust buzzing around him. It’s his lot. But he’s one wily fighter, a scrappy, red-headed hero (hence “Copperhead”) in a bedraggled, Dickensian wasteland.

The cat died; the dog thrives. Cubby the wonder mutt needs a bath and a haircut and those crunchy, coagulated eye boogers extracted, but otherwise the aging fella is in fine fettle. OK, he’s been doing the occasional “revenge pee” in the dining room, meaning when he feels abandoned he’ll whizz on the rug when no one’s around. Stealth urine is as bad as any urine, but it’s worse, because you know the scruffy rascal’s doing it with a puckish glint in his eye.

The drudgery, and joy, of writing

~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

Last month or so, I was reading a terrific book about the making of the classic movie “Chinatown” titled “The Big Goodbye: ‘Chinatown’ and the Last Years of Hollywood,” by Sam Wasson, and I had to grin at this quote from legendary screenwriter Robert Towne: “So much of writing is trying to avoid facing it.”

That’s hardly the most original thing uttered about the writer’s penchant for procrastination and craven dread of the blank page — Hemingway summed it up: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” — but it was a reassuring reminder that cooking up stuff for a readership, a nervously performative act, isn’t always a joyride, or particularly easy. It can be a grind. It can be depressing. It can sap the soul. 

But it can also be exhilarating and, when things are flowing, a blast. Well, let’s not get carried away. How about … satisfying? Said great journalist Russell Baker: “I’ve always found that when writing is fun, it’s not very good. If you haven’t sweated over it, it’s probably not worth it.”

I don’t know how you reconcile that dichotomy, the yin and yang of good and rotten, delight and drudgery, but they seem to jibe. There’s a fruitful friction. Good days, bad days, middling days. (That last line? Lazy writing. Bad writing. I left it there as a specimen of what can go wrong.) 

I always want to write, but once I sit down and face the empty page that sneers, “Go ahead, try and fill me,” I tend to constrict, choke, unless I’m especially inspired and know how I’ll begin and where I’m (generally) going. Those days are the exception. Right now, I’m winging it. I had that Robert Towne quote in my head and started riffing. (Help!) 

There’s no map. There’s only this: Get it down. The prose may be raw and bloody — embarrassing, eye-sizzling — but the ideas matter and the words, those painstakingly chosen few, will be chiseled out of the viscous blob of verbiage. Editors are helpful at this stage, and I’ve worked with many who have saved my prolix ass. But here on this free-floating blog I’m on my own. I am judge, jury, executioner. And I probably should have executed that sentence. 

Point is, writing, like any creative endeavor, is a messy enterprise, hard to do but at times truly rewarding (I have ten journalism awards that bear that out, he crowed). You have to dive in head first, and toil to make a splash. Taking pride in your work is mandatory — read tons, write multiple drafts, and use spell check for chrissakes — the only way you’ll do anything worth a damn.

First you must conquer that blank page, which requires actually facing the music, not dodging it, as Towne noted. I’m working on a writing project that I approach tentatively, with baby steps, not because I’m indolent but because I am, frankly, a little scared. 

There’s a cure for that. It’s simple yet courageous: Sit down, stare at the page, and bleed.

You must win the staring contest with the blank page. Despair is likely. So is reward.

Bro, brah, blah.

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

Despite the fact that my barber called me “bro” no fewer than twelve times — a word he’s never said in the four years I’ve patronized him — yesterday was fine and productive, a whiff of autumn in the air that had me breaking into brassy musical numbers on the sidewalk, à la Gene Kelly. 

The day went like this: My podiatrist speared a cortisone shot in my foot; it bled like a Tarantino movie, and I marveled at the carnage. I picked up Renata Adler’s great cult novel “Speedboat” at the library. And for lunch I tucked into an elephantine deli sandwich that about made me upchuck thanks to its gut-busting enormity. I felt ill the rest of the day and loved every bite of it. 

I also got a haircut, which brings us back to bro. Besides that it’s the go-to vocabulary of jocks, frat boys, rappers and illiterates who actually think they sound “street,” I don’t know why I loathe that word so much.

I just know that my barber suddenly using/abusing the modified noun out of nowhere was deeply distressing. He even did those lame hip-hop gestures — arms wide, hands contorted in faux-gang signage — as he said “bro” and — yes, it happened — “Yo, bro.”

What was going on? Four years and not once has he stooped to this phony street jive. I’m guessing he’s in his late thirties or early forties, too old for bro, fist-bumps and even, I’m afraid, “dude.” (The less said about “brah” the better.) Married with two young kids, my barber, who I’ll call Miles, doesn’t drink alcohol, so picking this up at a keg-soaked rager is at best categorically implausible. 

(Amusing aside: When Miles did those hip-hop hand gestures he was holding scissors, making him look like Freddy Krueger cackling for the kill. I kind of wish he killed me.)

Of course “bro” is simply short for “brother,” but it sounds like the utterance of monosyllabic dolts. It is largely the verbal currency of very young men and we should cut them some slack until they acquire a full grasp of the English language. Like now.

In the case of Miles, when he says bro with that oblivious grooviness, he’s suddenly reduced to a kid — a bro — himself. Maybe that’s the point, that slang keeps you young at heart. Heaven knows I’ve retained some embarrassing slang in my life, much that’s unprintable in a family blog. 

Miles might be on to something. He’s like a millennial Vanilla Ice, still trying to keep it real even at the risk of fatuity. I might not be a fan of whatever happened to him since I last saw him a month ago, but he’s still a good guy, a mighty barber and a voluble conversationalist (we talk world travel exclusively). It appears, I have to say, that our bromance rolls on.

Sicily and beyond …

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

My brother and I bought our widowed stepmom a two-week trip to France for April, which makes an unbroken streak of family travel, as my brother just returned from Madrid with his brood, I go to Sicily in February, and my brother and his wife hit Italy this spring to visit my nephew, who will be studying in Rome. 

It sounds all jet-setty, but it’s pure coincidence. We’re hardly the Roys of “Succession,” or the Kardashians of depression. We’re strictly economy — zero legroom and chicken curry meals swathed in foil. 

But it works. It gets us there. No matter if I don’t sleep a wink during a nine-hour redeye. They say it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. Bull dookie. It’s totally about the destination when you’re flying United. 

I go to Sicily in a month. Never been, but I anticipate the ancient splendor of Rome and the graffitied scrappiness and coastal beauty of Naples. It’s “Godfather” country, once infested with mafioso, and I’ve booked a tour that’s actually called “No Mafia.”

Yet, if you’ve seen the Denzel Washington action flick “The Equalizer 3,” which unfurls in Sicily and is operatically violent, you might think the Italian mafia, namely the homicidal Camorra, are alive and killing. “No Mafia”? How about “Uh, I’m Afraid-So Mafia?”

Harbor of Sciacca, Sicily

Though I’ve been to Italy a few times, I’m re-learning some basic words and phrases, like “Do you speak English?,” which is a big one for me. I ask that constantly in foreign countries, often in plain English, which is both foolish and boorish. In Sicily I will politely approach a local, clear my throat nervously, and ask, “Parli inglese?” (That’s: par-lee-inglesy.) And then, most likely, be promptly bopped on the nose.

I’m really not such a klutz in my travels. I tread lightly, mindfully, and rarely find myself in awkward tangles. I keep my trap shut, until I’m desperate for a small pointer. (“Mi scusi,” I might begin. “Where is the toilet?”)

We are travelers, my family and friends. I returned from Budapest and Kraków in October and I’m already greedily charting a post-Sicily trip. Where? I haven’t a clue. For the second time, I seriously considered Ireland, but research has again left me cold and bored. Besides Guinness and grass, what is there? A plethora of pubs? Some castles? Rain? Sheep? Elves?

I read an article, “20 Cool Destinations to Escape the Summer Heat” — ditching the heat is a huge selling point for me — and it includes Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Chile, South Africa and more. 

Chile sounds aptly chilly and attractively off the beaten track. (I’ve only been to South America once, Buenos Aires in July 2022 — our sweltering summer, their swooning winter.) At a glance, Chile in July offers snow skiing, wineries and temps in the low 60s. Heavenly. I used to ski madly back in California. Though if I try to ski at this late date, I’ll wind up with two broken femurs, four cracked ribs and a neck brace. 

Meantime, Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean, beckons. It’s awash in zesty history, a strange (and strained) relationship with mainland Italy, world-class cannoli, singular pizza, and a people I hope will brook a humble tourist’s blundering attempts at speaking Italian. A tourist who, spongelike, yearns to soak it up, metabolize it, then, months later, jump to the next place with almost juvenile impetuosity.

As the cliché goes, I’m like a shark: I have to keep moving or I die. That’s glib, but rather true. And if it is, I’m definitely a Great White — tenacious, voracious, and dying for an authentic pizza margherita.