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Rating: 
Summary: Best book on Rome & Hadrian's Villa in English
Review: "You walk close to your dreams"--that's the first sentence of Eleanor Clark's chapter on the fountains of Rome. Her book is lyrical but informative, and for some readers, perhaps too heavy with information, but I have found it indispensible both while in Rome and later back in the US thinking about where I had been. Orignally published as separate articles in The New Yorker magazine, each chapter focuses on a particular subject. One of my favorites is the section on Protestant Cemetery (actually the cemetery of the non-Catholics), where Keats, Shelley, Gramsci and many other non-Catholic writers, politicians, diplomats, and artists are buried. This is not a typical guidebook, however, and anyone who buys it in order to get maps, pictures, and restaurant tips will be disappointed. Nevertheless, it is an excellent guide to the city--it is thoughtful, it is full of strong opinions, and it is sometimes very funny, too. Eleanor Clark was married to the writer Robert Penn Warren, whose career overshadowed hers. Those who know his work but do not know the work of Clark may be surprised to find out just how good she is.
Rating:
Summary: Best book on Rome & Hadrian's Villa in English
Review: "You walk close to your dreams"--that's the first sentence of Eleanor Clark's chapter on the fountains of Rome. Her book is lyrical but informative, and for some readers, perhaps too heavy with information, but I have found it indispensible both while in Rome and later back in the US thinking about where I had been. Orignally published as separate articles in The New Yorker magazine, each chapter focuses on a particular subject. One of my favorites is the section on Protestant Cemetery (actually the cemetery of the non-Catholics), where Keats, Shelley, Gramsci and many other non-Catholic writers, politicians, diplomats, and artists are buried. This is not a typical guidebook, however, and anyone who buys it in order to get maps, pictures, and restaurant tips will be disappointed. Nevertheless, it is an excellent guide to the city--it is thoughtful, it is full of strong opinions, and it is sometimes very funny, too. Eleanor Clark was married to the writer Robert Penn Warren, whose career overshadowed hers. Those who know his work but do not know the work of Clark may be surprised to find out just how good she is.
Rating:
Summary: As good as a vacation...
Review: If you need to escape from the drudgery of your everyday life for awhile than this is the book for you. Clark's masterpiece is as good as a month in the country. And not just any country either. All of Italy is opened to you by the mind and imagination of Eleanor Clark. She covers the territory from the haunted villa of Hadrian to the dangerous hills of Sicily and the cool depths of Saint Peter's Cathedral. You will meet with the ghost of the Emperor himself, a modern gangster cum matinee idol and the pilgrims of a Papal Jubilee. Clark's prose is a whirlwind that leaves you breathless. She throws off sparks in all directions like a Catherine's Wheel. You won't "get" all of this book on the first go round but it is well worth a second and a third reading.
Rating: 
Summary: not a novel
Review: this book is deceiving...i admit, some will find it interesting, but clark jumps around with no transitions. it is more of a journal, or a collection of essays. she does describe in detail a number of things in rome, yet if you are looking for a novel or a piece of literature which is cohesive this is not the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Best book on Rome & Hadrian's Villa in English
Review: This book is famous, has been in print for decades, and is often cited as a masterpiece of travel writing. But for me it was turgid and cryptic. As an example, here is what Clark has to say about Quattro Fontane, a set of four Baroque fountains set into the corners of four buildings at the S. Carlino crossroads on the Quirinal Hill: "These are not very handsome either, with their jaded allegories, only they have a particular quaintness of unreason; you are back to the generic fountain feeling; some vast subconscious is at work, and you are a moving figure in it." Vast subconscious? Generic fountain feeling? Unreason? Quaintness of unreason? Particular quaintness of unreason? I defy anyone to make sense of these pronouncements (and knowing what the fountains look like does not help). Unhappily, the book is full of this kind of language. Of Hadrian's Villa (a ruin just outside of Rome), Clark says: "It is like music, so much that you seem sometimes to be hearing the buildings more than seeing them, as though at some level of the brain the eyes and ears functioned interchangeably." Here is my favorite: "A dead cat never has the look of finality that a dead dog does; neither does a dead Roman, which is why you never see many people bothering to follow funerals there." Really? Somehow I doubt it. Buyer beware.
Rating:
Summary: Buyer Beware
Review: This book is famous, has been in print for decades, and is often cited as a masterpiece of travel writing. But for me it was turgid and cryptic. As an example, here is what Clark has to say about Quattro Fontane, a set of four Baroque fountains set into the corners of four buildings at the S. Carlino crossroads on the Quirinal Hill: "These are not very handsome either, with their jaded allegories, only they have a particular quaintness of unreason; you are back to the generic fountain feeling; some vast subconscious is at work, and you are a moving figure in it." Vast subconscious? Generic fountain feeling? Unreason? Quaintness of unreason? Particular quaintness of unreason? I defy anyone to make sense of these pronouncements (and knowing what the fountains look like does not help). Unhappily, the book is full of this kind of language. Of Hadrian's Villa (a ruin just outside of Rome), Clark says: "It is like music, so much that you seem sometimes to be hearing the buildings more than seeing them, as though at some level of the brain the eyes and ears functioned interchangeably." Here is my favorite: "A dead cat never has the look of finality that a dead dog does; neither does a dead Roman, which is why you never see many people bothering to follow funerals there." Really? Somehow I doubt it. Buyer beware.
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