51 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Shimmering, bejewelled account - and yet...., September 24, 2009
This review is from: Venice: Pure City (Hardcover)
Yes, this is magisterial, beautifully written - but, typically of Ackroyd, too many questionable sweeping assertions sometimes impede the flow of what should be a rollicking good read. For every "wow!" there is a corresponding "huh?" It can be argued this is what makes Ackroyd unique.
If you know and love Venice, you'll enjoy this. If you don't, it will pique your curiosity. And you might agree with Shakespeare's Holofernes: "Venetia, Venetia, chi non ti vede, non ti pretia!" (Venice - whoever doesn't see you, doesn't esteem you.)
Let's start with the "wow!" Wide-ranging, learned and instructive. As with his
London: The Biography, Ackroyd dives headfirst into the water surrounding Venice's 117 islands, fishing for primal origins and finding it an elemental metaphor for the city. Chapter 2, "City of St Mark," deals with the refugees who settled there. Then comes the golden age of state power, commerce and trade. This also embraces the merchants of the Rialto and the Jews in the Ghetto.
By Chapter 6, Ackroyd is back in rhapsodic mode, with "Timeless City," including ruminations on the bells. The next section, "Living City," humanises the city, with fascinating subsections on Body and Buildings; Learning and Language; Colour and Light (fabulous work with the artists including Bellini, Tintoretto and Titan); and Pilgrims and Tourists. Then Ackroyd moves on to carnival and carnal aspects, including the "Eternal Feminine" (virgin and whore). Similarly, Sacred City considers heavenly and hellish aspects - which seem to win out in "Shadows of History" with its Death in Venice theme.
And now for the "huh?" factor. There's a lingering suspicion about some of the connections: is the mirror-like surface of the Lagoon like glass, which, conveniently made in Murano, stands as a metaphor for the City? Does Venetian satin, conveniently called watered silk, like the watery and "undulating" floor of St Mark's, echo the water surrounding the whole city? Are the pinky green stones of the buildings the colours of flesh and bone, thus personifying the entire urban building fabric? And is watery Venice a place of "liminal fantasies of death and rebirth?"
Some will be inspired, others irritated. But there's no denying Ackroyd's learning, creativity, gusto and grace.
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid and Interesting, December 13, 2010
This was a very pleasant read. He gets right down into the dialect and persona of the Venetian citizen and makes a pretty convincing argument that their City and its history molded their character and world-view. There is a good overview of how the city was built over time. Their amazingly successful political structure is explained. He comes pretty close to capturing and expressing the mystique of Venice. When I go there, it is always a chameleon. Sometimes as old, filthy and smelly as a destitute subway platform. Sometimes, as charming, and ageless as a dreamscape that unfolds before your eyes. It's a unique city. If you've been there yourself, this book will add to your understanding of what you've experienced; and if you haven't been there, the book will introduce you to a fascinating people and place.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
'Venice and Venice's Image are inseparable.', August 10, 2011
The variations in response to this book VENICE: PURE CITY by Peter Ackroyd are puzzling at best. Perhaps the history of the writer's output has polarized the readers. Perhaps the integration of emotional and intellectual responses in the history of the rise and present sate of Venice makes the book uncomfortable for some. This reader became immersed in the mysteries that surround the history, the socialization of a swamp, the creation of a city on water, the ingredients that create the flavor of Venice visually, aurally, the particular types of influences of art (painting and music and architecture et al) and the interaction of this city with the great minds of our time such as Wagner, Proust, Henry James, Freud, Thomas Mann, Benjamin Britten, John Singer Sargent and on and on and on -it is simply a feast for the mind in Ackroyd's brilliant prose and in the many drawings and photographs and reproductions of the art and the city that grace this book.
Yes, there are likely more focused and accurate history books that take the reader on a chronological voyage through the rise and development of Venice, and if that is what the reader desires there are many books available that do just that. But what Ackroyd does that is so fascinating is to relate the history thematically, bouncing back and forth with contemporary knowledge of the Venice we know as played against the Venice of the past - all smoke and mirrors and delectable commentary. There is more to discover about the blend of society and the church and the wars and the peculiar aspects of a part of Italy that is actually not joined physically to that country. Ackroyd gives fine insights to the immigrant status of the sectors of Venice that few others have the courage to define.
But perhaps the true appeal of this book is that it feels to be written for the same passionate reason that many of us, past and present, feel about La Serenissima. It is a difficult response to define much less to put into written book form. It is a feeling, a magnetic draw that once instilled in the mind and heart is very difficult to sever. As a critic in the LA Times comments '"Ackroyd -- the marvelously erudite and staggeringly industrious English writer -- [has compiled] an encyclopedic amount of general and arcane factual information and then [arranged] it less chronologically than thematically -- much as one might encounter it in the course of a long walk over fascinating terrain in the company of a knowledgeable but never pedantic companion. It's an experience rendered all the more agreeable by the independent turn of Ackroyd's critical imagination and lapidary quality of his prose." Perhaps then this book is for Romantics who love history - but who love Venice even more. Grady Harp, August 11
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