Dark Heart Of Italy [Hardcover]

Tobias Jones circles toward the center of subjects that are not entirely polite to even bring up: cultural differences between Catholics and Protestants, the distinctions between Northern and Southern Europeans, and very specifically between the English and the Italians. The topics would be difficult ones for any writer to approach seriously because they are so riddled with stereotypes, prejudice and folklore. I thought Tobias Jones made very good job of it. He writes beautifully - you can tell immediately, in the first few lines of the book, that he is an exceptionally gifted writer and observer.

He starts with the useful and understandable idea that Italy is a visual culture, and that England is a verbal culture. Italy is beautiful, the Italians are beautiful, the art is breathtakingly beautiful, etc. England is not so beautiful. The light is bad. The art is not that great. The English culture is Verbal rather than visual.

The English read a lot. Italians do not read very much. Statistics are presented to support this assertion. Italy is a picture culture and quite susceptible (therefore) to television.

This is politically significant because Berlusconi is a television magnate - he owns or controls almost every TV channel. (Imagine Fox News on every channel in the US. And imagine Rupert Murdoch as President.)

The visual/verbal distinction seems to be a core idea of the book. It turns out to be a Catholic/Protestant divide; At one time, both England and Italy were more like modern Italy -- visual, artistic and deeply Catholic. Then came Henry XVIII, and the Anglican Church. The reformation was a verbal revolution against a religion based on striking imagery, and the revolution was made to work by massively printing and spreading the Word, i.e., the King James Bible. And insisting that the power of the Word was accessible to readers.

The difference between Italy and Britain is to be understood (in this book anyway) as the difference between a warm country where stories are told with pictures painted on the ceilings of churches - and on the screens of the TV -- and a cold country where stories are told with words. The verbal English are more informed, skeptical, argumentative. The artistic Italians are a little too beautiful and a little too credulous.

The author is caught up in the tension between his two cultures, image and word, ancient and modern. As an organizing principle, it actually seems to work pretty well; it seems to discover the roots of a lot of Italian behavior that would otherwise remain mysterious to the Anglo-Saxons.

He also suggests that the Catholic Church is the prototype, or template, for virtually every other important Italian institution: including football and especially the Law. Italy has more laws than any other country. As a canon, the law is incomprehensible to ordinary citizens, who must turn to lawyers to have the law explained. The role of the lawyer as an interlocutor, that is, as a priest, is emphasized. Similarly in football: the game is so complex as to be opaque. One turns to the referee for guidance, clarification.

Tobias Jones develops this idea, this strange parallelism between the Law and the Church, as a way to explain the essential lawlessness of Italy. It becomes apparent that the country is not only politically led but also owned by a man who appears to be outside the Law.

And once again football. The author really understands and relishes football and his chapters on the Italian obsession with this sport read beautifully at every level. Sportswriting. Sociology. Philosophy. They are just works of art.

Finally, the Jones does not insist on any of his working premises - he writes from inside the problem of trying to understand Italy, and where he is bewildered by the project, he successfully conveys this too. After a long essay into the surreal and dangerous political history of the 1970s, he has to simply walk away, write about something else, because this ferociously politicized history makes so little sense at the outset and --after intensive study-- even less.

The problem is, there is not much Italian perspective on history - you cannot stand on the platform of the present and look back at what happened, and analyze it coolly because it is comfortably over. It isn't over. The past is still boiling mad.

The Italian sensation of time is blurred and continuous - the past and the present co-exist. Events of many decades ago - murders, bombings, massacres, betrayals -- still have immediacy and political impact today. In this respect Italy is curiously like the Middle East, where one faction may berate another over events that occurred 8 centuries ago, or like the China, where people occasionally talk to their ancestors.

So there is a lot in this book. Image versus word. The church as a model for absolutely everything. Football. Television and Politics. And the past and present melded. I should add that Tobias Jones has a wonderfully light touch and a sense of humor that could only be described as Italian.

In reading "The Dark Heart of Italy"(from a phrase by the famed author Carlo Levi) I couldn't help feeling uneasy about the author's comments and I too felt the discomfort expressed by some of the other reviewers. However, as I continued I also had to admit that the author was not exagerating; indeed, he reflected my own concerns (and those of countless Italians of every political orientation) over the future of Italy, the country where I was born and where the author, Tobias Jones has his own reasons for loving. For even as Jones is critical, his love for the undeniably beautiful things in Italy - the generosity and friendliness of the people, the philosophical approach to life and the beauty, natural and man-made, of the country are evident throughout.
In 1999, Tobias Jones was an English journalist who worked to the "Independent" of London. He fell in love with a girl from Parma (ironically the city where the biggest fraud in Italian financial history has been perpetrated by Parmalat). He is now married to her and he's moved to Parma from England. The book presents episodes in the time and space from the North to Sicily and from the civil war after 8th September 1943 to the reconstruction of the post-war period to the 'anni di piombo' (lead years) of the 70's. In January 2003, the book was released in england and it was accompanied by a report by Jones for the Financial Times entitled "My Italian television hell". I decided to immediately purchase the book, as I could not agree more with the author about the state - literally - of Italioan television and the way it reflects the general state of malaise of politics and culture. In Italy it caused an outbreak of comments, both positive praising th book and the author for his keen observations and just criticisms - moslty from the Political Left and the Centre,and violent hostility by the Government of berlusconi, which in typical and regrettable fashion threatened diplomatic protests. Ultimately what emerges form the book is that Cavaliere Silvio Berlusconi's recipe for success is to dress properly and don't pay taxes. No matter how anglo-saxon the observation, it cannot be denied that berlsuconi's government as Tobias Jones suggests in the book, has lowered legal standards and institutionalized certain forms of corruption. A review by John Foot published in the 'Guardian' noted that the Italian minister of finance announced the introdiction of the so-called" condono treasurer" (the pardon treasurer) allowing for tax evaders to be rewarded for their efforts, fully exposing the Banana Republic that Italy has become today.

Tobias Jones exposes a country that is currently under the control of a omnipotent government and I suggest that all those who want to learn about - or are ignoring - what is happening in Italy today and its dnagers to read this book. Unfortunately, as Prime Minister Berlusconi controls most of the Italian press and media (as if Ted Turner were President of the USA while still maintaing control of CNN and AOL-Time, Congress), it is difficult for books such as these to be written by Italians - though there are some that have never been translated in English. The Italian situation as Jones points out should be the object of scandal and protests. Some may complain about the lengthy discussion on soccer, but those who know and have lived in Italy will understand as the sport has become a true subsitute for religion-in the bad sense. Of course, Jones mentions the Media Mogul Prime Minister's own soccer interests as owner of the Milan team.

Overall, this is an important and timely book, which is also amusing in parts and ultimately, it reflects the author's love for Italians.

If your interest in Italy goes beyond travel guides to Tuscany, Florence, and Rome (which I have also reviewed on this website), you might find this analysis of Italian politics and society at the turn of the century very informative. Even while I was enjoying monuments and countryside in Venice and Tuscany, I found it hard to put down the sober assessment of Italian society and politics in this book which I picked up in a Roman bookstore.

For Jones, a British author, is not an occasional visitor to Italy, but instead spent four years travelling through the Italian peninsula seeking to unravel some of its enigmatic political institutions and attitudes. Much of the book is solidly researched and he extensively draws from numerous references in Italian which he translates himself. Knowing well that much of this beautiful country is well described elsewhere, he does not seek to prettify any of the issues he discusses, whether it is political corruption (a major theme of the book), religion, or football.

For example, his chapter on the workings of Italy's Slaughter Commission, a parlimentary investigation into a series of bloody bombings in Italian cities from the 1960s to the 1980s, is a chilling account of paralysis of Italian political institutions. Documenting the almost surreal investigation of the Piazza Fontana bombings of 1969, he observes: QUOTE The irony is that Italy, so painfully legalistic, is as a result almost lawless. If you've got so many laws, they can do anything for you. You can twist them, reaarange them, rewrite them. Here, laws or facts are like playing cards: you simply have to shuffle them and fan them out to suit yourself UNQUOTE

As the title suggests, this book is a far cry from the more bucolic images found in Italian travel guides. I found it highly readable and insightful.