RSSYou’ll fall for Venice in John Berendt’s decadent “The City of Falling Angels”
The City of Falling Angels. I mused at the title and turned the book over in my hands several times. It was an intriguing title, and then I noticed the author, John Berendt, who had written the lovely and enticing, wicked and clever Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. With that, I went off to purchase the nonfiction volume and learn more of Venice, a town of contrasts, high drama, and large and small intrigues.
The author opens with the devastating fire of the famed Fenice opera house on January 29, 1996, and uses this event as structure and symbol for all of the fair city in the remainder of the book. Seamlessly working between past and present, he weaves the events of the fire—consequences, construction, reconstruction, speculation, fact—with splashes of architecture, the biographies of known and unknown personages, and vignettes of art and history. Venice emerges as flamboyant, extravagant, cultural, and, above all, kaleidoscope-colorful. The fire represents all that is unique, from decadence to opulence, about this centuries-old city.
Read this book. Enjoy it for what it is: a brash, amusing romp through one of the great European cities. Berendt’s writing is great fun, slightly vulgar, highly detailed, quite specific, and very, very entertaining. The tone is not-quite-gossip, and very well suits this rather novel documentary. John Berendt captures the essence and core of what makes Venice breathe.
As an informational postscript, the book takes the title from the widespread crumbling of edifices. When a marble figure tumbled from a church, a notice was posted: “Beware of Falling Angels.” Apropos, don’t you think?