The Italians

The Italians
By Doug Dowd

Luigi Barzini wrote a book with that title back in 1964. I read it as I was preparing to spend my first year in Italy in 1966, as a Fulbright prof in Bologna. Barzini was an experienced Italian journalist, and his book was a marvelous “Baedeker” for seeing Italy, but more especially its people. This is written by and from the point of view of an outsider—an “outsider” who has lived many years in Italy, is married to an Italian woman, has now, an Italian family: still, an outsider.
It is written for those who plan some day to visit Italy, and meant to induce others to do so. The peoples of every society have what may be seen as defects and virtues and quirks—Italians, not least; we Yankees, not least. What seems to set the Italians off from most others, for me, is that the virtues concern the most vital elements of life, while the defects cluster around essentially trivial matters...
Italy, though it (presumably) became a nation well over a century ago, remains a society where one’s region, city, or village defines one’s identity as much as or, for some, more than being “Italian”: the differences between a Neopolitan and a Roman or a Venetian are large indeed, and not only in terms of dialect, or cuisine.
I have lived and work in Bologna on and off since 1966; mostly on, since 1983. Bologna is a university and high-tech town—a smaller San Francisco (or larger Seattle). Its university celebrated its 900th anniversary a few years ago, and it is known as a place where one eats well: “la cittá dotta e grassa.” It has the highest per capita income of any major Italian city, and, until recently, had had a left government uninterruptedly since 1947; it is relatively the least harsh city concerning matters that raise blood pressures elsewhere (gays, immigrants, the homeless). Those Bolognese whom I regularly see—friends, family, tennis companions—are comfortably well off.
So: the validity of my observations for even the rest of the North, let alone the entire South, is much reduced—but not, I think, too far off the mark. I begin with what is fundamental.

Family and Eating and Property

Those are the fundamentals in Italy, irrespective of region, income level, or gender. As a San Franciscan, and one who has spent some time in the U.S. rural South, I have been struck by the similarities in all these respects between the Italians and, surprisingly, the southern U.S. blacks and the San Francisco Chinese; and, as well, in one other: all three tend to talk a lot among themselves and to do so dramatically). The differences among and between those three groups are, of course, also substantial. Still...
Family
In the USA we—that is, our politicians—talk a lot about family in election years, but neither our personal nor our sociopolitical lives are much concerned with our—let alone others’—families. Part of this has to with our geographic mobility (item: I know fewer than five people in San Francisco who were born there); but that mobility is also enhanced by the weakness of our family ties (item: my wife has six brothers and sisters; all live in Bologna). Part of it has to do with the callous individualism seen as a virtue in the USA. And there are other reasons.
Be that as it may: I have known more than a few Italian families; though strife and hard feelings are evident from time to time, what is always true is that the family has a solidity to it, that there is genuine and heartfelt concern among and between the members: they may not always like each other, but they clearly care for one another, and act on it. Doubtless there are exceptions; in the USA the exceptions (in my observation) work the other way, in the fewness of families that are closely-knit.
Eating
Were I forced to choose the one cuisine to stick with for the rest of my life, it would either be the Italian or the Chinese. (“Ah!” you say, “the French this and that, or....” But I’m talking about a lifetime, every day.) The Italians really love food; they pay attention to its every aspect, beginning with the basics. To an Italian, the pasta—to a Chinese the rice—is treated and discussed as though life itself were at stake (and, in some sense, it is); and is it sheer coincidence that spaghetti’s history began in China?
I play tennis fairly regularly, both in the USA and in Italy. One takes a shower, afterwards. I have heard lots of talk about women and some about politics in U.S. locker rooms, but never a conversation about food; it is the complete opposite in Italy: recipes to try, this or that trattoria, availability of ingredients...food!
It is quality not quantity that is the focus, of course. Also: though few Italians would sit down to a dinner without wine (which enhances the flavor of the food, and vice versa), before dinner nobody would drink booze (which dulls the taste buds). USA: vice versa (although less so, nowadays, for some).
Among the several dismal trends assaulting Italy (Clintonism-Reaganism in its politics, not least), one is that the young people (mostly those in their teens) are coming to be “americanized” regarding food—they crowd into McDonald’s (of which there are 34 in Rome alone)—and not only food. A larger tragedy awaits.
At least some young people in their 20s have not yet been contaminated by mad hamburger disease. Two of our nieces had us over for a modest dinner last evening. The main purpose of it was to discuss with Anna, my wife, the menu for a festa for all the nephews and nieces at our place a few days from now. For me, the first such festa was just 15 years ago, when Anna wished me to meet her ten nephews and nieces. They ranged in age from 10 to 15. I can’t remember what we ate.
(Except that I tried to help by cooking an exotic food for them, sweet potatoes with marshmallow. With considerable embarrassment, everyone tried—but try as they could, for all their natural politeness, ultimately the potatoes remained very much non-eaten.)
This time there will be 18 of us—a few children plus a few mates.
The festa is designated as an aperitivo. In the States that would mean a couple of crackers and a scotch, a gin, or, in California, a Chardonnay. Not here. This is the menu:

Menu per La Festa
Round One
(accompanied by white wines, bubbly and not bubbly)
Panettone salato
A whitish bread with the circumference of a dinner plate, upended, with many layers, sliced so as to provide numerous small (irresistible) sandwiches of this and that. There will be of them.
Polpettine
What would be called meatballs in the States. In the States you’ve never had such meatballs, believe me.
Verdure crude
Raw carrots, celery, and the like, with a dip.
Round Two
(accompanied by red wines)
Lasagne verde
Lasagne (like tortellini, tortelloni, tagliatelle, and, I can believe, taste buds), were all invented in Bologna (as was mortadella, the “baloney” with the diameter of a foot or more, with little spots of fat and a light flavor).
Round Three
Sweets
A lemon ice (the original plan was for a godzilla of a chocolate offering, but I managed to talk them out of that), plus some biscotti, plus, of course, a large platter of fresh and dried fruits (and if you’ve never had dried fruits in Bologna, why not come over and get started?)

The party is scheduled to begin at 6 P.M. If the last ciao (see below) has been said by 10 p.m. I’ll be one surprised Yankee.
Some aperitivo! Still, some will then go out to eat a real dinner.
Property
The long pre-urban existence of Italy doubtless is influential in this regard (as, with variations, it is also for U.S. blacks and Chinese), but property—i.e., real estate—is close to an obsession for them. To own a piece of land, your house (or apartment) or, most desirably, more than one piece of land or house, and, most desirably two (or more) houses near each other—ah! that is most fervently to be desired, essential to the good life. And, for those in what in the States is called the “middle class,” that achievement is surprisingly common. This is another way of saying how important family is; parents and (grown) children and relatives live in a kind of physical closeness that would make the average Yankee’s (including my) skin creep: Gimme some space! Some might well put that on the list of “defects,” rather than “virtues.”
Those politically inclined will have noted that these patterns of life are more conducive to a politics of solidarity, or social consciousness, than the patterns of the USA. To say “more conducive” is not to say “sufficiently conducive” (and it is declining in Italy); but to have as little of sense of others as we have is dangerous, to one and all. No?
But there is more to the Italians than all that. Of course. Some of it is interesting, some of it funny, some of it irritating. What has struck me over the years is how that which is irritating is no more than that (and tends, in retrospect also to be funny), and is connected to the human characteristic of being imperfect. There is very little I have seen that is downright frightening, particularly when compared with the USA. Now, some of this and that and the other.

A Certain Schizophrenia

Italy was the first fascist society in history; and yet its people are among the most naturally anarchistic and humane I have known. I have come to the conclusion that what allowed fascism to come into being—given the substantial class struggle that preceded it—is that the social chaos (or call it indiscipline) normal to the Italian character makes it tempting (for many of those same people) to accept bureaucratic and regimenting ways and means as a way of getting on with life, in principle—while, at the same time, each individual does whatever can be done to evade those same rules.
Anyone who has ever gone to an Italian post office (where one also pays utility bills and taxes) will know what I mean: All Italians wish there to be order and fairness at the P.O. At the same time that almost all of them do their very best to beat the line. A universal characteristic, you will say; but in a U.S. P.O. those lines are almost always (if reluctantly) observed; and when not, easily brought to order. Not in Italy. In an Italian P.O. chaos is king and queen, aided and abetted by the behavior of the postal clerks, seemingly engaged in endless conversations among themselves, indifferent to the surrounding mess, and really taking their time—using “technologies” at their work that I can remember from my boyhood.
In short, Italians will not stand in line for anything; indeed, they seem to be unable to internalize the concept of doing so. Amusing in retrospect; however...
That same high individualism is more than noticeable as concerns auto traffic, whether in town or on a freeway. You think men in the States are machismo about their cars? Our behavior, bad as it is, by comparison, like that of one taking a driver’s test for a license, accompanied by a bureaucrat. At the wheel of an auto, Italian men (and not a few women, it may be said) are always proving something: they’re faster, stronger, braver, sexier, some goddamn fool thing or other, and let the devil take the hindmost.
When I first lived there, some decades ago, I used to marvel at the strange combination of driving skills, speed, and safety one found on the Italian roads. Just as you could be certain that every car was coming at you as fast as could be, it was also certain that it would stop in time (or miss you). They were very fast but, because skilled, not as reckless as they seemed. Now, however, they are indeed that reckless and also lousy drivers.
Item: at the intersection near our house there have been four serious crashes in the last two months or so. Until this year I never knew of one.
Item: This combines cell phones (see below) with driving: as I was entering an intersection with the green light, a driver came along, cell phone hunched up to the ear by shoulder, laughing, steering with one hand, smoking with the other, and had I not stepped back, this piece would have had to be sent down from above (or up from below). And, two weeks ago, while crossing a narrow and much trafficked street, while seeking to be sure I wouldn’t be hit by a car I failed to notice a cement anti-parking blob on the curb, tumbled over it landing on one bent-back finger and my cheek, rewarded by a few hours in pronto soccorso (emergency).
It is more dangerous to walk across a street in Bologna now—get this!—than in San Francisco. It used to be that if you were on a bike, you had nothing to worry about (not least because grandmothers and children were also on bikes). Now? Watch out! There are lots of accidents.
Nothing funny there.
That takes us to Italian men. Male children are “of course” favored throughout the world—to the point where, in China (only for example, unfortunately) if you’re born female, it’s likely your life ends soon thereafter. And, if not, it is hellish thereafter. In Italy (I refer to the North), if you’re a boy, you are spoiled. I mean spoiled. You are coddled and admired and favored—the works—until, if your head were not screwed on tightly, it would spin right off. You are treated that way by both mother and father, but particularly and always by la Mamma. And girls? Girls are socialized to become mammas.
So the boys and girls grow up, get married. The young man plays around with one and another young woman until, typically, he is getting close to (or beyond) 40. Then he marries. He wants children. They arrive. And after a few years of having a full family (or during or before) he’s also having affairs again (or still). Va bene?
Marriage is an untidy affair in the USA, too (I ought to know); lots of screwing around, divorces, heartbreak house, etc. But at least there are some of us who don’t see all that as being entitled. At least, if and when we have an orgasm, we don’t squeak “Mamma mia!”

Talking

If language and speech had not existed at the time Italy began—whenever that was—they would have invented them. And it may be said that were you to ask any Italian on the street—man, woman, child—what’s the best invention of all (given that cars exist already), as with one voice they would say: the cell phone. Except that it wouldn’t be one voice; it would be everyone, and all speaking at the same time (and, of course, they’d say it in Italian).
It starts pretty much at birth, and continues pretty much without interruption through—you can read that both ways—life. I do quite a bit of walking. In doing so, I pass lots of people. They are always talking. Most telling is that this is also true of an adult pushing a baby carriage; and, by the time that baby is able to speak, it’s a conversation: a real conversation, with the grandmother, the father, the mother, whoever, saying something, and getting a full reply. (Almost always begun with “Allora!”) And so it goes: boys and girls, adolescents, adults, all talking constantly.
And vigorously. I used to think, as I passed a couple or a group, they were having a fight of some sort. But no—it’s just dramatics. And did I mention the hands? So OK. We all use our hands a little. They use them a lot. They use them on the telephone, they use them on the telephone while driving (fast: see above).
Speaking of telephones, we dried-up Yankees talk for ten minutes on the phone and it’s a genuine conversation; but anything under 20 minutes for an Italian is an act of hostility. And that includes long distance—especially. And phone rates are at least double those of the States.
Or say you’re at someone’s home for an evening dinner, along with a few other couples. First, you’re not supposed to arrive until 8:30 P.M., and most get there just under 9 P.M. Then there’s a lot of this and that for a good 30 minutes before you sit down. And there are the antipasti (delicious), the primo (pasta), the secondo (meat, fish, or chicken) as basic, and then what we would call a dessert—two-to-four sweet dishes (an ice cream thingeroo, some cake, and always, fruits). And then some digestivo (something in the liqueur line) plus brandy or whiskey. And through all this, conversation, heavy conversation.
By this time, it’s past midnight. Unless it’s Saturday (which it usually isn’t) almost everyone has to get to some kind of work the next ayem at 8 or 9. Ishkabibble. Someone begins to make a move toward the door; so everyone glides that way. And, after 20–30 minutes of conversation (everyone with coats on all that time, inwardly weeping because the conversation is going to end), someone says the first ciao. I say the “first,” because—and this is now known as Dowd’s Law—one cannot get out the door unless a minimum of 100 ciao’s have been exchanged (I counted 135 one time). It is now past 1 A.M. God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world. Ciao, ciao, ciao...
And there’s la bella figura. This is kissin’ cousin to what Veblen called “conspicuous consumption, display and waste” in his Theory of the Leisure Class, using as his model the same folks Edith Wharton used. But in Italy it has its own variation, with different roots and flowers. The Italians really love beauty. They grow up surrounded by it—the medieval architecture, the statuary, the painting, the gardens, even the farms and their tree-lined roads. So when it comes to clothes and jewelry and furniture and the like, they want elegance, with no if’s and’s or but’s; and they pay for it, without thinking twice (or once?).
A lot of it is beautiful; some of it, to my jaded Yankee eyes, is straining at appearances. A truly elegant man’s suit (and obligatory necktie), for example, is something which gives two impressions (to me, at least): it look expensive as hell, and just as uncomfortable. And the same goes for shoes: very beautiful, really tight.
Women, on the other hand, wear gorgeous dresses and suits and scarves and so on, some of it pleasing to the eyes irrespective of culture, some of it just plain too much. Italy is right up there in the fashion world; alas, they can have it.
And the same goes for interior furnishings. (This is changing, as is everything noted above, not always for good reasons: the good reasons refer to Finnish imports, etc.; the bad to the fact that things are going to hell in Italy, too.) The 18th century lives: lots of marble (floors, too, of course), lots of gilt, lots of overstuffed things. Etc. Bella figura.

Health, Education, and Welfare

The Italians (and most other Europeans) make us look like a pack of stupid fools when it comes to that trio. (As noted above, they’re on the American trip now, too. But they aren’t likely ever to plumb our depths.) Some comparisons...
Health
When I had the tumbling accident noted earlier, I spent those hours in emergency getting put together and having a CAT scan, etc. Cost: zero. Last summer in San Francisco I hurt my hands and had to get them bandaged in emergency, which took 20 minutes. Cost: $250. Take it from there.
In the USA, health care is a commodity. Most of us have some insurance (but most of that doesn’t cover much of what is needed, for most), over 40 million have none. Here everyone has it—even, in some informal way, foreigners: I’ve been in Italian hospitals several times, going back to 1966, and have paid either nothing or damn little. In Italy, health care is a human right. Period.
And perhaps one of their quirks helps to explain that. It isn’t that they’re more hypochondriacal than others; it’s just that they’re very protective of themselves and others. So: you see a little child in the park, and the temp is a little cool (pleasant to me), the kids are bundled up as though en route to Antarctica; as is true on the tennis court, as is true for adults walking around, as is true for the inside temp of the houses. I, in contrast, am seen as semi-suicidal because of my San Francisco ways.
Education
I only know Bologna. The elementary and high schools make those in San Francisco (by no means the worst-off city in the States) look awful. I’ve taught in universities for over 50 years. The young people I’ve gotten to know in Bologna who are in or have just finished high school strike me as being at least equivalent in knowledge to a third-year university student in the States. At that festa 15 years ago, I spoke to one 13-year old niece, asking her what she was studying and doing, etc. Quite naturally she answered, “Well, we’re reading about the Soviet Union now, and I’m doing a paper on Kandinsky.”
It may be—and it may not be—that some good percentage of U.S. university students are much better than the Italians in physics, math, and the like. But I’ll bet that their knowledge of the Soviet Union is confined to its horrors and nothing else and that they would think Kandinsky is the guy who works at the deli down the street. And that their knowledge of history (literature, etc.) wouldn’t get them a passing grade in second year high school in Bologna.
To which I add that in both the States and in Bologna I play tennis with those one can find on the courts, etc. Here my partners are or have been an electrician, a doctor, a baker, a train mechanic, an accountant, an Olivetti salesman, etc.; and the mix in the States is roughly the same. The players in the States are “nice guys,” and all that, but any conversation that goes beyond the little things of life doesn’t get very far (and I say nothing about the politics); in Bologna—in Italy generally—there is a level of information about their own society and the world that is hard to find in the States, even among professional people (including all too many in the university). In Italy there are many newspapers; they all take up a lot of space on the rest of the world, on cultural matters, on politics (over and above electoral matters)—and sports, too, of course. It is always easy to have a decent interchange on all the foregoing (even with my Italian); which is not to say that one is in agreement always, of course.
There is a level of knowledge, and a habit of thought in Italy that is much harder to find in the States. It’s not that they’re so great; it’s that we’re way below where we ought to—and need to—be.
Except for a few passing remarks, I’ve said little about Italian women here. I have more than a few thoughts in that regard, but one of the things I’ve learned in Italy is to keep such thoughts to myself: they sit in a pleasant, untroubled pool, with, perhaps, a certain amount of silt on the bottom. Italian women are very observant, very attentive: given the nature of Italian men (all men?), they have to be. As the old saying goes, “Why stir up muddy pools?”
But I don’t want this to end on anything like a sour note, for that’s not how I view Italy.
It is a far, far more civilized society than ours. And, even though it is catching up (or going down) with the USA all too rapidly, I don’t think they’ll ever match us in incivility, in rampant selfishness, in the acceptance, even the worship, of ugliness, in aggressivity at home or abroad, in loss of humanity; nor are we close to having their sense of decency and solidarity—although theirs, too, has room for increase.
In short, if this were a basketball game, as a people the Italians win hands down. (Especially when it’s time to eat.)
Postscript: The aperitivo discussed above took place last night. What could have been seen as exaggerations now stand as understatements. The various foods planned were in fact all served and entirely eaten, along with the scheduled wines and “desserts.” But not a few of the 18 nephews and nieces and spouses had thought it essential to bring with them food, wines, pastries and, one of them, a very large box of very rich chocolates. All eaten.
My forecast was that the evening would begin at 6 P.M. and (perhaps) end about 10 P.M. Begin at 6 it did, but it continued until 1:30 A.M. At that time there were still ten of the little ones present and talking among themselves as though the evening had just begun; they left only because I announced I had discovered an unexploded bomb in the bedroom. Even so, by actual count there were 226 ciao’s.
And it was an unforgettably lovely evening. For all.

Feb 14, 2000