A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character, and...Goals! [Hardcover]

Tim Parks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 10, 2002

After 20 years of living in Italy, Tim Parks, whom Joseph Brodsky, has called "the nest British author working today," spent a full year following the fortunes-and misfortunes-of the Verona football-oops! Soccer-club. Here is his rollicking report. Fro Udine to Catania, from San Siro to the Olimpico, traveling with the fans and the players from the tip to the toe of Italy, Tim Parks offers a highly personal account of his relationship with a country, its people, and its national sport.The fans, as always are accused of vulgarity, racism, and violence.The police are ambiguous, the journeys exhausting, the referees unforgivable, the anecdotes hilarious.In a world stripped of idealism and increasingly bereft of religion, Parks suggests that soccer offers a new and fiercely ironic way of engaging with the sacred.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

arks (Italian Neighbors; Tongues of Flame) sets a daunting task of analyzing the life and mindset of a soccer fan in the wake of Nick Hornby's runaway hit, Fever Pitch, which is to many one of the finer books on soccer. He takes the reader on a tour of Italy, supporting his adopted home team of Hellas Verona through a season in Serie A. Parks in part sets out to examine the Italian national consciousness through the lens of Verona supporters. "The north-east of Italy, Verona in particular, is stigmatized as irretrievably racist. It is also considered bigoted, workaholic, uncultured, crude and gross." Hellas Verona have prided themselves on never having a black player on the pitch (until recently). Their fans shout monkey chants whenever an opposing black player touches the ball. It's a disgraceful part of soccer behavior that is well worth exploring, and this is when Parks is at his best. "I suggest... that the frequent talk about `defeating' racism on the terraces is a mistake. The word `defeat' only provokes the hardliners. They don't come to the stadium to think of themselves as defeated." When he applies his social criticism, he is able to engage on many levels, but when Parks gets caught up in play-by-play analysis he loses focus and his story. He travels with the team's fans in old creaky buses, singing songs and drinking beer. Parks's fanaticism toward lowly Hellas Verona is not unique, and the supporters are not the worst of Italy. Parks's prose often sings with the bravado of the terraces, but the result is at best a draw.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Soccer, Italian-style, is an obsession for many. Joe McGinniss documented his passion for the sport in his 1999 book The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. British author Parks (An Italian Education), a 20-year resident of Verona, is equally enthusiastic about the game (known as football outside the United States) but chooses to focus more on the fans than on the actual sport. This unexpectedly personal account describes his demented devotion to the Hellas Verona football club, which he followed around the country for a year, documenting every one of the 34 matches. While detailing his loyalty to the club, Parks also reveals his admiration for Italy, frequently discussing the character of its people, its national and local politics, and the inexplicable violence of soccer fans. Unfortunately, all but the diehard soccer fan will find this book a bit of a slog, somehow more exhausting than exhilarating. Recommended for libraries where there is an interest in soccer. Janet Ross, formerly with Sparks Branch Lib., NV
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1 edition (June 10, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559706287
• ISBN-13: 978-1559706285
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #197,288 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Chievando Scudetto!, November 8, 2002

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character, and...Goals! (Hardcover)

Part travelogue, part mediation on the Italian national character, and part football memoir, Englishman Parks' diary of his season with the fans of Hellas Verona is a muddled but generally enjoyable hodgepodge of anecdotes and musings. A lifelong football fan, twenty year resident of Italy, and fluent speaker of Italian, Parks is an ably accredited guide to the myriad mysteries and intrigues of Italian professional football. His method was to attach himself to the hardcore fans of his local club and go to every home and away game in search of... well, something...

In doing so, Parks excels at recreating emotional highs and lows and retelling specific anecdotes experienced over the course of the season. However, by attaching himself to these fans, he places himself in the uncomfortable position of riding along with some of Italy's most racist fans. He tries to deal with this a number of ways, from placing them in a broader context of a nation absorbing large numbers of refugees, to attempting to show that the racist cheers actually represent a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy brought about by sensationalist journalism. Neither approach is very credible and it's a shame that Parks kind of dances around it. More insightful is his analysis of the fans as self-appointed pariahs/Davids, sort of a mix of "Nobody likes us, and we don't care" and "It's us against the world."

As the season progresses, and Parks travels around Italy, one gets a very keen sense of the deep regionalism that exists in Italy. From politics to chanted terrace insults, there's a prominent theme of disdain for the "other". Other overall themes are lacking, as might be expected from a book written on the fly, but for the careful reader, there are some strong bits where he gets into corruption both in football and Italian society, or his meditation on the psyche of the referee. Another fun aspect to the book is that it contains a plethora of vile Italian insults and terrace chants, which are often quite hilarious.

One thing that is a bit off about it, is that is only obliquely references Joe McGinniss' excellent book The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro, in which McGinniss also recounts a year following an Italian. It's a shame, 'cause the two books take quite different approaches (McGinniss is an outsider to soccer, can't speak Italian, and follows the team from within), making them rather complimentary. On the whole, I found McGinniss' more enjoyable, and more likely to appeal to the general reader, although neither author is very good at describing action on the pitch. In any event, both paint a picture of league riddled with corruption, game fixing, and bribery, which begs the question of why anyone would bother caring deeply about it?

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life on the "curva sud" with a real fan, March 9, 2003

By 

Peter Lorenzi (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character, and...Goals! (Hardcover)

An English academic, living and teaching in Northern Italy for the past twenty years, Tim Parks offers a colorful, rich, detailed account of a year (2000-01) following his historic local football club, Hellas Verona. This is a week-by-week, blow-by-blow account, up close and very personal. He starts as an interested observer and becomes a believer.

Better that this is written by a man of letters than by a journalist or a sportswriter, Parks at times becomes perhaps literate in studying the passion behind the football fans who seem to live and die by the fortunes of their favorites. Best of all, Parks chose a season that provided a riveting conclusion to a season of ups and downs. Sadly, a quick look at Italy's Serie A standings in early 2003 finds Hellas mired in mid-level Serie B.

Hellas fans are, at times, boisterous, irreverent, profane, vulgar, and, among the hard core, loyal to a fist fight and to a fault. Seeing them week by week, after a crazed introduction on the first, mind numbing rod trip to the south, Parks offers the insight of an Englishman not unfamiliar with football hooligans but also willing to try to understand the mind and life of the devoted Hellas fan.

Enjoy the passion.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ultimately nothing profoundly new here, June 23, 2005

By 

Brian Maitland (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character, and...Goals! (Paperback)

It's not that this isn't a good book but if you've read any of these "follow the club for a season" book, it really offers nothing new other than following a team in another nation. Yes, we find out that all supporters seem hung up on chldish racist/sexist comments/chants. I did like the fact he incorporated Web site BBS postings as many of those were a laugh.

I mean, I do get the whole group mentality male bonding deal that soccer fandom is all about but what i really wanted to know more than anything from this book was why Italian soccer is so popular yet so mindnumbingly dull to watch. How many 0-0, 1-0 matches does Italian Serie A produce? I wanted to find out why a vibrant and colorful culture of fandom (and food, art, fashion, politics, etc.) can somehow produce possibly the worst excuse for entertainment on the soccer pitch ever.