Venice-Manhattan and the routes of the world

A memoir

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Venice and Manhattan are linked by strange oppositions and similarities, duplicities and attractions; most of the author’s life was divided between them. The encounter of Venetian and American culture in the second half of last century brings about the dis-patriation of many artists, scholars, and intellectuals. A flywheel movement is established between the two cultures and ways of life, between looking out and staying home, as had happened to Americans in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. After 1968 and the Vietnam War – which caused opposition and aversion – when the U.S. became a social and cultural establishment, wider relations and exchanges were established with Anglophone, ‘emerging’ literatures and cultures around the world, from Canada to Australia to South Africa, thanks to National Research Council sponsorships, literary prizes, and publishers in search of new voices. A serpentine, winding perspective supplants the previous bilateral movement, involving oceans and continents that encompass the whole globe. The story of such occurrences, which becomes representative of contemporary cultural shifts, is told in a lively way and in an autobiographical key, involving significant historical and artistic characters, key-figures and episodes spanning the last sixty years. The conclusion is at Cape Horne, where the Pacific and Atlantic waters clash in turmoil, adding an unexpected dimension, geographic, literary, and otherwise, to a progress from Venice to Manhattan and the rest of the world.

  • Anno: 2020
  • Formato: 17 x 24 cm
  • Pagine: 264
  • Illustrazioni: in bianco e nero
  • Rilegatura: brossura
  • ISBN: 9788855200288
  • Prezzo: 14,00 €