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Good Reading : November 2013
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GOOD READING NOVEMBER 2013 47 WRITER’S LIFE Imagine the privilege of being able to walk into any kitchen in Naples, Italy, and sample its food. Picture chatting with professional cooks, pastry chefs and home- made-food-nurturing Italian mammas, with permission to ask them anything you want.You can even ask them for their family’s secret recipes, the traditional formulas and ingredients that have been handed down for generations. This privilege was given to me when I interviewed innumerable Neapolitans for my new book, Naples: A way of love. I talked not only to people with a love of food, but also to tailors with a passion for fashion, sculptors with a love of sacred statues, violin makers with an extraordinary ability to express their love of their language through music and women who pray to skulls they have adopted, which are housed under a church built in 1638 especially for them. Book ideas hatch in some of the weirdest ways and oddest places, and the concept for Naples: A way of love is no exception. I was sitting in a gorgeous café in Florence, Italy, with my dear friend Carla Coulson, who lives in Paris. Carla had just married her Italian boyfriend, and when our Florentine waiter got wind of her recent nuptials, two congratulatory, very strong and dry martinis appeared next to our cappuccinos. Free! (Oh, how the Italians love romance.) No problema that it was only ten in the morning. By the end of our martinis, Carla, one of the world’s finest photographers, had confessed that she’d always wanted to shoot a book on Naples. Would I write it? I didn’t hesitate. Of course! I’d lived in Florence for 16 years, had been writing about Italy for more than 30 years, but I had never reported on Naples. It was a wonderful opportunity that I couldn’t wait to grab. I came up with the title the night after our martinis, and I found the right voice for some sample text to a few of Carla’s photos of Naples. We sent the pitch to Penguin and by the end of the week we’d secured a publishing deal. It was all very exciting. But it was also a peculiar mission. After contacting the Australian Embassy in Rome, who in turn contacted the Minister for Culture and Tourism in Naples, we were given carte blanche – full powers – to go anywhere in the city to work out what the Neapolitans love and why. At the same time, we couldn’t sugar-coat Naples. Neapolitan reality is and has been full of hardship. Neapolitans live with great beauty and indelible sadness. The city has had far more than its fair share of natural disasters: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, plagues and floods. And there have been countless occupations by foreign powers. Naples is time-worn, one of the oldest constantly inhabited cities in the world. It’s a place where quietly rotting villas of astonishing magnificence sit next to boarded-up, ancient churches covered in graffiti. Our job was to report on as many aspects of the Neapolitans as possible and to be honest and frank about the city’s dichotomies. For example, Neapolitans have a deep faith in Catholicism yet are utterly superstitious about the evil eye, jealousy, hunchbacks, horns and chilli peppers. Most importantly, Carla and I had to look at how the Neapolitans celebrate life in their own unique way. On my first day in Naples I met Elena, the car guard. She is 76 years old and every day at dawn she stakes out her place in the car park of the University of Naples. Her job is to act as a lookout against thieves. ‘It’s not as if I could catch the robbers,’ Elena laughs. ‘I’m too old and rickety! I run as fast as I can to the university security guard and he calls the police.’ Lisa Clifford Carla Coulson 46_48_writers_life_d.indd 47 2/10/13 11:19 PM
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