Rome, is a metropolis of contradictions. These become increasingly clear to Anthony Doerr as he lives and works in the city for a year. Doerr, an award winning novelist from Boise Idaho travels to Rome with his wife and twin infant sons to take up a position as visiting writer at the American Academy in Rome.
While the process of writing his novel does not go as planned, he manages somehow, among tedious and time consuming household duties and tourist forays into the city, to produce a short story and later craft from his notes the book Four Seasons in Rome. This travel book is a wonderful compensation for the absence of a novel. Needless to say the writing is excellent and the observations acute.
Pliny the Elder
Doerr crafts a compelling travel book combining the difficulties of serving the needs to two very young and hence demanding boys with thoughtful consideration of the peculiarities of modern and ancient Romans, the proliferation of visual attractions and distractions and the descriptions of Pliny the Elder of the customs, history and natural history of the ancient world. Throughout his stay in Rome Doerr reads Pliny’s Natural History. It is a kind of encyclopaedia of ancient knowledge compiled in the years preceding his death in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. From this remarkable digest of information on the ancient Roman world Doerr draws inspiration for his appreciation of Rome as it is today. Like Pliny, Doerr has very broad interests in the city. He learns from considering the botanical as well as the archaeological, culinary, mercantile, architectural and ecclesiastical wonders of Rome.
The Pantheon
Among the many sights of Rome described by the author in the intervals between anecdotes of consoling upset infants at home, shopping for domestic necessities and pushing a stroller through the throngs at Pope Paul II’s funeral, is the Pantheon. It is the oldest (c.135 AD) intact covered Roman building in the city. He recites the facts of its construction, marveling at the transportation of the sixteen portico columns carved from stone quarried in Egypt. But in spite of, or perhaps because of the impressive statistics of the Pantheon with its concrete dome spanning 143 feet and with a hole or oculus in the center of twenty-seven feet in diameter, it is a building that Doerr rightly says is about wonder. He accurately and succinctly captures what the visitor feels on first entering it. “You walk through the gigantic doorway and your attention is sucked upward to a circle of sky.” He says that “the space is both intimate and explosive: your humanity is not diminished in the least, and yet simultaneously the Pantheon forces you to pay attention to the fact that the world includes things far greater than yourself.”
The Seasons
As the seasons pass, the rhythm of life in Rome changes for Doerr and his family. His infant sons learn to walk and sleep providing some respite for exhausted parents. The weather slowly turns from bitter cold to stifling heat and the Doerr’s gamely make-do with their modest household effects. Living abroad in a strange city, slowly acquiring partial facility in a strange language and sorting out such mundane things as when stores will be open is a challenge enough, but, for the Doerr’s it is complicated by their brave decision to attempt this with two infants.
Four Seasons in Rome is a great read for the armchair traveler and for anyone contemplating a lengthy stay in Rome. Doerr is an amusing and perceptive writer who possesses the rare ability to constantly entertain with words.
Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, 2007
Alan McNairn - I am an inveterate traveler with a family. Thus I have to divide my time as a tourist between pursuing what I studied as a career in art ...
