Writing Venice

Once again I found myself killing time in an Airport, given that I can’t afford an overpriced and let’s face it gaudy Burberry or Louis Vuitton bag or a Bulgari necklace I, as I always do, retreated to the bookstore.  There amongst the airport editions of the latest bestseller (is it me or should 50 shades of grey always have been a softback?) were a good number and by no means comprehensive display of Venice books.  I began to wonder if Venice is the most written about place in the world.  Do the books on Rome, London, Paris or New York even compare to the Venetian cannon?     

As well as travel guides there are; history books, sumptuous art books, architecture books, the expat replanted or fish out of water books, the come to Venice and fall in love books (which I stay away from being a cynic when it comes to romance,) cookbooks and novels set in Venice.  Very few of these books, certainly of the ones available in English, are written by Venetians.  Obviously there are more books in Italian and I am beginning to get to the point where I can start to read parts of them but the amount of English speaking Venitophiles are astounding.  There has always been Anglo Venitophiles, Brits, Americans etc who came to Venice and added their jottings to the literary story of the city.  People like Byron and Shelly for whom the decay and faded glory of the once great republic provided ample inspiration.  Or the venerable John Ruskin whose work documenting the beauty and uniqueness of Venetian architecture kick started the endeavour to preserve the city that continues to this day.  Ruskin was one of those people (a bit like myself) who was captivated by the place and famously spent his honeymoon in the city largely abandoning his wife to spend his days drawing and documenting city’s buildings.  The resulting “Stones of Venice” has become one of the classics of Venetian writing and something I can’t get through it.  I’ve tried a couple of times but so dry and humourless does Ruskin seem that he just comes across as a bit of an insufferable bore.

Today the process of foreigners writing about Venice continues and I wonder if the likes of Byron and Ruskin began a process of intellectually taking Venice away from the Venetians and turning the place into a museum.  So much has been written about the place that I wonder if you really need to get on a plane, and pay inflated hotel rates to experience it.  When you do make it there will your romantic expectations leave you disappointed with the reality of crowded streets and tourist menus.  People who set pen to paper tend to do so out of love or curiosity so there is a tendency to over romanticise the city.  Maybe that is what the public wants – the fantasy of gondolas, glass and masks.  Perhaps that’s why there aren’t or we don’t read so many local voices. 

The reality of Venice is much more fascinating than the romanticised version and I find that the city has a host of delights and pleasures that no writer that I have as yet read has captured that.  I would love to read something that explores the mundane and even the sheer bloody annoyances of the place but maybe that’s not what we want maybe we need Venice to be our fantasy.