Venice Is a Fish: A Sensual Guide [Mass Market Paperback]

Tiziano Scarpa (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2009

One of Italy’s brightest literary lights reinvents travel writing with a seductive, intoxicating celebration of the magical saltwater city

“Venice is a fish,” writes Tiziano Scarpa. “It’s like a vast sole stretched out against the deep. How did this marvelous beast make its way up the Adriatic and fetch up here, of all places?” Paying homage to his native city in a lyrical and evocative style, he guides readers down tiny alleys, over bridges, and through squares, daring us to lose ourselves, forget the guidebooks, and experience Venice as Venetians do.

Venice Is a Fish provides no hotel ratings or museum hours. Instead, in a delightful initiation, Scarpa tells us how to balance while standing on a gondola; where lovers will find the best secret hiding places; the finer points of etiquette and navigation during an agua alta; and how best to defend ourselves from the pitiless beauty of one of the world’s most stimulating cities. Open Venice Is a Fish, and Scarpa’s magnificent images, secret history, and hidden lore unfold like a treasure map of the senses.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Prolific Venetian writer Scarpa pledges not to name a single hotel, restaurant, bar or shop in this delicate yet supple book, a chain of linked and sensuously translated essays about the one of the world's most unusual and historical cities. He focuses each chapter of his tour through different parts of the body. He begins with the feet before moving up to the legs and heart. The translation renders even the most basic descriptions wonderfully tactile. Only eventually does Scarpa move on to the more obvious sights, sounds, tastes and smells. The main text is just over a hundred pages, but a 40-page coda takes it into the lit-crit realm by way of a micro-anthology of Venetian texts that includes samplings from the author's other works. Scarpa is better known in Italy than America, but that could change with this brief book, which captures Venice as only words and language on the tongue of a native can. (Aug.) ""
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“Venice is a Fish is a gorgeous tribute to one of the strangest and most beautiful cities on Earth. Was it Henry James or Mary McCarthy who said, 'There is nothing new to say about Venice?" Tiziano Scarpa has proved them both wrong.”
-Erica Jong

“For as long as Venice has existed, people have been writing about her, yet Tiziano Scarpa brings a remarkable freshness to his lively descriptions and explanations of the essence of Venice.”
-Jane da Mosto, co-author of The Science of Saving Venice

“Scarpa’s approach is from the soul, not the mind. [This book] says more about Venice than you’d ever imagine.”
-Independent on Sunday (UK)

“Plenty of practical advice to steer a tourist through the city, and fascinating insights into its customs and history…a lovely introduction to a magical city.”
-Sunday Express (UK)

“A splendidly fishy guide to Venice from a witty and imaginative writer. To write originally about Venice must be one of the greatest challenges a writer can take up. Every year, hundreds of books on the city are published, but none resembles this one.”
-Independent (UK)

“A beautifully written book with one of the most refreshing insights into Venice that has ever been published. You’ll be gripped from the first line…”
-Italy Magazine

“This is a very unsettling guide to Venice. It contains the addresses of no museums, hotels or restaurants. In Venice is a Fish, the author invites the reader to partake in sensual experiences that will enable her to discover the most intimate facets of the city. It's a funny initiation ceremony where one learns how to stand on a gondola, to cross barefoot muddy canals and caress eyes shut the faces of statues. Tiziano Scarpa's intelligence is a delight. Using stylistic audacity and literary remixes, he carries off an ambitious intellectual enterprise.”
-Elle (France)

"A short, wonderful ode to the city. To touch it, feel it, describe it in all its bends and angles, to caress the myth, this is the aim of the writer. He ends his stroll in the 'Venetian langour' with these words that constitute a declaration of love: 'There is no better place than this one." -Le Figaro --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Gotham (November 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592405029
• ISBN-13: 978-1592405022
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,855,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Ode to Venice, January 25, 2009

By 

Loves the View "Louise" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Venice Is a Fish: A Sensual Guide (Hardcover)

This is an unusual book. To my knowledge, it's a whole new art form. It has the elements of a Hallmark gift book and at the same time those of an underground travelogue. The beauty of Venice is given in prose that rivals that of Maupassant (pp 117-124) whether it is about the vistas, the architecture or scatological issues unique to the city (pp.69-77).

The writer clearly loves his topic and the translator the art of translation. (Not having read the original, I presume Shaun Whiteside has coined new words to express Scarpa's intent, for instance: pulchroactive - love it!)

There are ruminations on street names. There is advice for the casual traveler on canal crossing fares. There is description of the faded glory, the decaying infrastructure, the art and the past glory of Venice.

This is a fascinating, idiosyncratic volume. Will Gotham/Penguin be producing similar volumes on other small but famous cities?

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a Travel Guide - but a Poem of Homage, August 8, 2010

By 

Andrew J. DiLiddo Jr. "Big_Man_BigHeart_Fine_... (Maryland USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Venice Is a Fish: A Sensual Guide (Hardcover)

The author tells us straight out what this book is and is not. It is not a travel guide. He exhorts us not to explore Venice in typical travel guide fashion. This advice is worth the price of the book alone. He tells us the sections of Venice that are loaded with tourists and encourages us to go elsewhere. The author is creative and he seeks for us to be creative in our approach to visiting and getting to know the "real" Venice. Other tidbits in the book are helpful. Scarpa points out that most Itlaian cities are divided into sections, or areas, referred to as "quarters". He teaches us that in Venice there are not four quarters (quartieri)like most Italian cities, but, instead, six sections of Venice referred to as ""sestieri". (page 10) Additionally, if you know some Italian language and plan to use it in Venice, the author helps us a little with that by taking Italian words for features of Venice and correlating them with words from the Venetian dialect we are likely to encounter upon our arrival. Travel guides and Italian phrase books generally lack dialect. His poetic description of how buildings are held up or how foundations of buildings in Venice are constructed is not too architectural or scientific, but, descriptive, poetic, yet interesting and insightful. It painted a picture in my mind and I learned something that will stay with me.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Big Disappointment, April 28, 2010

By 

Toni A. Mckeen "Lover of the Renaissance" (Connecticut) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Venice Is a Fish: A Sensual Guide (Mass Market Paperback)

For someone who has been to Venice and absolutely love the city, I found this book to be a big disappointment. It was light on content, I found the chapters...heart, hands, nose, to to be stretching a thin point.

He tried to be poetic but it came out contrived. An example: "In Venice the same clould drops slanting bucketloads on a campo, but hits the narrow calli with well-aimed arrows of rain; the drops suddenly ease away, and yet this gutter floods, the canal beyond is covered with little cirlces, as though a billion anglers were casting off at the same moment.