Customer Reviews

Venetian Dreaming

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I read this book on the plane back to the USA from Venice, where I had been (for the first time) for about a week on combined business and pleasure. I was captivated by the city and was hungry for anything more to read about it, so I picked up Venetian Dreaming at Marco Polo airport before boarding. I was surprised by the extremely negative reviews of the book, although I can understand the reasons for their criticism. I had read a fair amount about Venice and its history before the trip and wandered the city through crowds and quiet back streets and canals for a few days. From that perspective, it was interesting simply to read a description of many of the same places and a few more facts that weren't in the guidebooks.

At the next level, it was interesting to read an account by someone who acted on the fantasy many visitors to Venice have and move there for an extended period of time. Here we find Weideger moving to a city where she knows no one and trying to establish a social network. As a professional writer, she has the potential to move into literary and artistic circles, and she attempts to do so with some success. I too was struck by her brutal characterization some of the people she meets. Actually, I should say her attempts to do so, because Weideger has a journalistic style of writing that lacks depth in characterization.

I was reminded somewhat of A Sun Also Rises which to me was a boring book about bored inhabitants of an artistic colony who are searching for something to do. However, Weideger's colony is more interesting because Venice provides a focus of past glories and present problems in contrast to Hemingway's troupe of self-indulgent drunks. Yes, Weideger is trying to work her way into the inside of Venice, and yes, she lives in an artificial world because, after all, she hasn't just move to Venice, she also is going to write a book about it. But in doing so, we meet characters who are part of what is left of Venice, and in contrast to what some reviews have implied, some of these characters are interesting and admirable.

And then on another level, we become acquainted with Weideger herself. No, she doesn't seem very happy. And apparently a precondition for continuing to live together with "H." is that she can't really write about their relationship. But do we care? And we find that Weideger's lack of flexibility alienates her from her landlords, yet she doesn't seem to have any insight into this. Again, her journalistic style makes it easy to take sides with her landlords, who are interesting people.

Finally, we are left with a matter-of-fact account of one writer's year in a world that stopped turning in 1797 with the death of the Venetian Republic. It's not an uninteresting read.

A better title would have been "My Evil Venetian Landlords". Paula Weideger recounts her off-again, on-again, life in Venice renting an apartment in a 17th-century palazzo. Those of us obsessed with Venice will read anything set there, but this will give you relatively little about Venice and relatively more than you want to know about Ms. Weidger's ability to get the best of her landlord.

If you or I lived such a life, and kept a diary about it, the diary might be just as full of the petty annoyances of our day-to-day lives: squabbles with the landlords, constant annoyance with malfunctioning appliances, down-the-nose observations about the fashion choices of other women, and a general self-obsession. It's what diaries are for, in a way. Weideger's error is not in having written 300+ pages of self-obsession but in publishing it.

I'm not sorry I read it (that's how much of a Venice-lover I am), but the rest of you might be better off heading for the local library than opening your wallet for this one.

Venice is my favorite city, and I am always interested in the lives on those who have been fortunate enough to live there - sort of to "test drive" if I could do the same thing. But the author goes out of her way to alienate and offend so many people that I don't really think there's much to be learned from her.
Even the descriptions of Venice are so fraught with her insecurities, opinions and prejudices that you don't get a good sense of the beauty and wonder of the city. Just lengthy diatribes about her landlord, her computer, her apartment, her neighbors, her problems with this person and that person etc. etc.
Anybody fortunate enough to have the flexibility to live in a different city for a period of time should take a little bit of flexibility and a decent sense of humor with them. The author seems to lack both, and this makes the book very difficult to read without wincing.

As one who has lived in Venice for twenty years, and who knows the characters described in the book, (almost without exception in unflattering terms), as well as the places and experiences described, I can only wonder if Ms. Weideger had managed to learn Italian before attempting to write a book about Venice and the Venetians, if she would have been able to present a more positive picture. I found, like a previous reviewer, that the book was indeed a "wallow in self-pity."
It is too bad because the author writes extremely well, but she has a negative, almost hostile edge to her prose that colors the entire book.

If you're hoping to find a book that takes you along on a personal and joyful discovery of Venice -- this isn't the book for you.

Paula Weideger has produced a memoir that's nothing more than a wallow in self-pity and a collection of acid-laced comments on the people who have had the great misfortune of passing through her orbit.

Between the occasional paragraph relating some tiny snippit of Venice's history or describing some particularly beautiful or obscure discovery; one has to endure Weideger's on-going tirades against her landlady, the perceived slights of nearly everyone who crosses her path, the social pretensions of her Venetian acquaintances, and diatribes concerning the tourist schlock for sale in local shops. All the while -- loudly exclaiming her newly found and undying love for the city.

Otherwise -- Weideger fills the pages whining about the continuous stream of ingrates taking advantage of her at every turn, her unhappiness at not getting her way in all things, badmouthing the looks or fashion sense of nearly everyone, and relating tales of her social exploits which are nothing more than marathons in name dropping.

There's very little here that's thought provoking, or even interesting -- unless you're the type who enjoys non-stop windging (in which case, you'll love the blatant play for the reader's sympathy at the end of the book.)

Paula Weideger does a disservice to the millions of people who go to Venice every year. She has creamed off the charm and left us with her social-climbing nastiness. I couldn't believe the way she trashed so many people, including some whom I have found to be delightful and certainly more charming than the impression one get's of Ms. Weideger. Such disparagement does not help us understand either her experience or the Venice she found. While obviously a capable writer, the author could have given us a book that feeds our interest in Venice, rather than leave us with the bones of her greedy feast.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth owed a needlepoint pillow, which famously, was kept on the sofa in her drawing room. It read: "If you don't have anything nice to say about someone - come sit by me!" She would have loved Paula Weideger.

Ms Weideger has written a book you won't be able to put down. Not because you're magically transported to Venice, or because Weideger's prose offers up glimpses of some secret or hitherto unknown corners of a majestic and beautiful city - you're not, and it doesn't; but because you simply won't believe the snide comments she manages to dish up on everyone.

Weideger seems to be burdened friends who always have ulterior motives, and with a husband who doesn't want to live in Venice. And, on top of that, according to Weideger, he apparently can't manage something as simple as buying vaparetto tickets. No wonder she's bitter.

Then there's the double-crossing landlady who substitutes patched sheets for the ones with embroidered coronets, and dinner guests who show up empty-handed. It's almost more than a body can stand.

Anyway, despite all the tribulation, I guess it's nice to know that Ms Weideger has a sense of humor. Why else would she call this whiney nightmare "Venetian Dreaming"?

Henry James said something to the effect that everything that can be said about Venice already has been. Unfortunately, that didn't stop Paula Weideger. This is undoubtedly the worst book set in Venice I have ever read or hope to read. "Set in," Venice, not "about" it: the only thing this book is about is its monumentally unappealing author. Previous reviewers have adequately described the persona Paula Weideger presents here-a spiteful, self-obsessed, incapable whiner who drags her mysteriously complaisant husband halfway across Europe essentially on a whim, who, in spite of her pride in her research about the city, is continually surprised by facts available in any decent guidebook (it takes three trips before she even notices that there is something bizarre about the Venetian address numbering system), who wastes her readers' time with an account of her computer tribulations, and who doesn't have a good word to say about anybody.

Is there anything good to say about her? Early on, it's possible to entertain the idea that Weideger is up to something clever. Just as "Paul Theroux," the disagreeable first-person narrator of Paul Theroux's books, is a fictional character related to Paul Theroux but not identical to him, perhaps Weideger has created an even more disagreeable character called "Paula Weideger," to breathe some fresh, ironic life into the I-found-paradise-in-Italy genre.

Not a chance. Theroux's game requires conscious craft and some authorial distance from the persona. Weideger has neither: her writing is so unselfconscious it's confessional. That's why reviewers have reacted so strongly to her as a person: instead of writing about Venice she's committed one extended act of unintentional self-revelation. It's like a blog between hard covers.

But wait, there's more. No previous reviewer has remarked on the real problem with this book-the sheer incompetence of the writing. I don't mean that the sentences are badly put together; for the most part they aren't. But that's journalism. A travel memoir calls for the tools of fiction-observation and curiosity. Weideger has neither. She seems to think that the way to tell you what something is like is to pile up physical descriptions, rather than selecting the details that convey significance. Naturally, this external style fails miserably when it comes to describing people. Weideger doesn't even seem to realize that it's possible to characterize people in terms of their beliefs and motives rather than their clothes. There's no better example than Weideger's husband, who's so undercharacterized we never even know why he accompanied her to Venice when he assertedly really didn't want to.

Possibly worst of all, Weideger has no sense of humor whatsoever (an earlier reviewer's remark to the contrary was dipped in sarcasm).

To give her her due, like a stopped clock she can't help but have the occasional insight. The church of the Gesuiti, across the canal from where she lived, is every bit the neglected marvel she says it is (it's still living down the bad rap it got from William Dean Howells in the nineteenth century). And Carnevale, commercial though it is, is vivid enough to bring her prose briefly into something like life. But do yourself a favor. Don't waste your time or money on this book. Read Jan Morris, or Martin Garrett, or Paolo Barbaro, or any decent guidebook instead. Better yet, go to Venice and see what Weideger missed.

From the lovely cover art and the description on the inside flap, this book seemed like it would be a transporting experience. Alas, they are deceptive. The book is dreadful. Many people have expressed a desire to live in Venice. However, not everyone is suited by nature of their personality. Ms. Weideger should have considered this before her decampment from London/New York. While I applaud her enthusiasm and energy, both of which are displayed in abundance, Weideger appears to have a particularly abrasive and angst-ridden personality that she does not hesitate to impose on those around her. While some of her historical insights are most interesting, they pale in comparison to the number of very boring details of computer glitches and caustic confrontations. Certainly, her opinions on art should be taken with a grain of salt (Carpaccio's delightful St. Jerome and the Lion is described as 'the most convincing depiction of fear I have ever seen.' Goodness, the lion looks about as dangerous as a labrador. I can only conclude the author has not spent too much time with Tintoretto) The needlessly cruel and sarcastic descriptions of various expatriates to whom Ms. Weideger was introduced are simply inappropriate. I certainly can understand why she was unable to make more friends in the city. After slogging through her book, I certainly had no desire to make her acquaintance.

I have to agree with most of the reviews here. I was looking for a positive, uplifting book about Venice, and instead found a really unpleasant book authored by a really unpleasant woman. Full of complaints and whining, she manages to criticize and denigrate everyone and everything she encounters. Never satisfied, she constantly communicates her sense of entitlement; unable to be satisfied, she blames everyone and everything around her. I hope the Italians don't consider her a typical American--she's an embarrassment. This book is a real disappointment and a waste of my money.