John Hooper - The Italians
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How did a nation that spawned the Renaissance also produce the Mafia? And why does Italian have twelve words for coat hanger but none for hangover?
John Hoopers entertaining and perceptive new book is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians. Fifteen years as a foreign correspondent based in Rome have sharpened Hoopers observations, and he looks at the facts that lie behind the stereotypes, shedding new light on everything from the Italians bewildering politics to their love of life and beauty. Hooper persuasively demonstrates the impact of geography, history, and tradition on many aspects of Italian life, including football and Freemasonry, sex, food, and opera. Brimming with the kind of fascinatingand often hilariousinsights unavailable in guidebooks, The Italians will surprise even the most die-hard Italophile.
From the Hardcover edition.
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ALSO BY JOHN HOOPER
The Spaniards
The New Spaniards
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
First published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2015
Copyright 2015 by John Hooper
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Photographs by Christian Jungeblodt
ISBN 978-0-698-18364-3
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
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Porta Pia . Glory and misery . The crux of the Italian problem . Islands, highlands and plains
Leos legacy . Goths, Lombards and Byzantines . A holy forgery . The communes . The Venetian exception . The medieval Mezzogiorno . The Italian wars and the Sack of Rome . Under foreign yokes
Two Italies... or three? . Civismo . A linguists playground . Superiority and sensitivity . The vincolo esterno . Of furbi and fessi . Fragile loyalties . The prime minister who vanished from history . Trasformismo
The Minister for Simplification . A plethora of laws (and law-enforcers) . Bureaucracy . Truth and verit . Mysteries and the misty port . Pirandello
Myths and legends . A phantom army . Pinocchio . Copiatura . Masks and messages . Opera . Padania declares independence . Dietrologia
The neo-Fascists bare arms . Style and look . Symbolism . Talking visually . Videocracy . Bella (and brutta ) figura
Treasuring life . A thick layer of stardust . Work and leisure . La tavola . The Mediterranean diet . Slow Food and fast food . A brief history of pasta . Foreign food... what foreign food?
DAntona and Biagi . A love of the familiar . Acts of God and acts of man . One step to the right . Conservatism, technophobia and gerontocracy . The BOT people . From catenaccio to gambling fever
A blurred line . The bloody end of Muslim Italy . Jews and ghettos . The Waldensians . Freemasonry . Blasphemy . The Lateran Pacts . Christian Democracy . A less Catholic Italy . Comunione e Liberazione . SantEgidio . Padre Pio . The testicles of His Holiness
Great-aunt Clorinda . From Mozzoni to the Manifesto di rivolta femminile . Gender and language . Veline . Desperate housewives . Ricatto sessuale . The influence of Berlusconi . If Not Now, When? . Change in (and on) the air . La Mamma : glorified but unsupported
Al cuore non si comanda? . A sexual revolution (within limits) . Sensuous she-cats and Italian stallions . Adultery . Prostitution . Contraception and the mystery of the (missing) unplanned pregnancies . Mammismo . Gender stereotyping . Homosexuality
An honored but changing institution . Divorce . The decline of marriage . The Italian family firm: myths and realities . The arrival of the badante . Stay-at-home kids: spoiled or just broke? . Amoral familism . Menefreghismo
From behind shades . Wariness . The Fox and the Cat . To ciao or not to ciao? . A love of titles . Mistrust . Alcohol (and teetotalism) . Narcotics
Il piacere di stare insieme . Guelphs and Ghibellines . From the Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club to Berlusconis AC Milan . Professionalism... and professional fouls . Gianni Brera and the footballing press . Il processo del luned . Fan radios . The ultras . Referees . Calciopoli
Possessive instincts . Catholicism and liberalism . Lottizzazione . Capitalism without competition . Protectionism . Shareholder pacts . Enrico Cuccia and il salotto buono . The never-ending tale of the foreign lettori
A relatively crime-free nation . What makes a mafia? . Cosa Nostra decapitated . The rise of the Camorra and Ndrangheta . Sciascias palm tree line: organized crime creeps north . An absence of trust and the legacy of Unification
How corrupt is Italy? . The role of patronage . A tolerance of graft . Corruption and corruzione . Nepotism . Everything in Rome comes at a price . The culture of the raccomandazione . The cost of graft . A renaissance of corruption
The navel of Italy . Abusivismo . Laws and conventions . Pardon and justice . The Sofri case . Slow-moving courts . The 1989 legal reform . Garantisti versus giustizialisti . The magistratura
Italy has a birthday party . Campanilismo and the frailty of separatism . Concepts of Italia . Diversity and disunity . Dialects lose ground . The north-south divide: perceptions and statistics . Italian-ness . Immigration . Racism . Sinti and Roma
Blue skies, blue seas... and unhappiness . Italys economic decline . Rules and change . The need for a dream . Jeps smile
A book like this is built on myriad observations and impressions rather as limestone is formed out of an infinite number of tiny shells. So my first and most important thanks go to all the Italians I have met over the years that I have spent in their countryfriends, neighbors and casual acquaintancesbecause it is their descriptions of themselves and their explanations of their society, their recommendations and advice, their hints and silences that have done more than anything to give substance to this work.
I first lived and worked in Italy, briefly, at the age of eighteen and might never have returned except for the odd holiday had it not been for Paul Webster, who in 1994, while foreign editor of the Guardian, suggested that I rejoin the staff of the paper as its Southern Europe correspondent based in Rome. When I left Italy again, five years later, I had no plans to go back and probably would not have embarked on the writing of this book had Xan Smiley, the then Europe editor of the Economist, and Bill Emmott, its then editor, not arranged for me to become their correspondent in Italy. Warm thanks also to Alan Rusbridger, then as now the editor of the Guardian, who proposed that I be shared between the two publications and later agreed to my taking a period of unpaid leave to begin the writing of this book. John Micklethwait, the current editor of the Economist, also agreed to that, and later generously offered me a spell of paid leave so I could finish what I had started. John Peet, who has been the Europe editor of the Economist for most of the time I have worked for the magazine in Italy, has been unstintingly tolerant of my periodic retreats into book writing.
In each of my spells as a correspondent in Italy, I have benefited from the hospitality of national newspapers: first La Stampa, and more recently Corriere della Sera . It has given me access to a wealth of information about Italy and the Italians. I am very grateful to those who edited these two papers during the periods in which I worked on their premises, Ezio Mauro, Carlo Rossella, Stefano Folli, Paolo Mieli and Ferruccio de Bortoli, as well as to the Rome bureau chiefs and Rome supplement editors who were my immediate hosts: Marcello Sorgi, Ugo Magri, Antonio Macaluso, Marco Cianca, Andrea Garibaldi and Goffredo Buccini.
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