Ciao, America! : An Italian Discovers the U.S.

by Beppe Severgnini

Release Date: 13 May, 2003

Edition: Paperback

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Just as funny in English as the original.

Beppe may be the most important Italian explorer of America since Veranzano, well at least the most amusing. As a visitor to the US for a year, he leads us through the wilds of American cultural peculiarities and excesses, from "servers" in restaurants who want to be your best friend to mattress super-stores, where the salesmen encourage you to jump on the beds to try them out. Always good-spirited about his observations, he allows us to see many things in America we think are quite normal from a very different perspective, one that makes for a very funny book. I read the original book "Un Italiano in America" several years ago and wasn't sure if the English version would translate well. I am happy to report that Beppe is as funny in English as he is in Italian.

My only criticism is that the book is based on experiences from more than 7 years ago, and so while we have been enthusiastically exporting the many objects of his humorous observations to the rest of the world, we have been busy creating material for another book. Come 'on back Beppe, you need to check out vanity license plates, rap music, cappuccino with your Big Mac, and, of course, Dr. Phil.

America from the outside

Ciao, America! is fun, but that's not why Americans should read it. For us, the real fascination of Severgnini's book is the perspective it provides, one English-speaking travel readers seldom get. Instead of finding out what another country looks like to an American, Brit, or Australian, we get to find out what America looks like to an Italian. It's a surprising experience, and I, at least, found myself filled with both sympathy and envy for the Europeans who have been reading outsider perspectives for decades.

Which isn't to say this book is always easy to get. Lots of passages leave Americans saying "As opposed to what?" Will everyone who reads this book understand why Severgnini lists the cost of things like hooking up his telephone and getting a social security card? And I admit to being totally mystified about the reasons Severgnini's mattress-buying experience was so traumatic. He went to a mattress store, inspected his options, picked one (without thinking to measure it first, unfortunately), and bought it. This seems natural to me. How do they buy mattresses in Italy? This book should have a second writer for the American edition - someone who can explain what other options there are.

The Italian edition should have a second writer, too - one to explain where Severgnini went wrong. Every American reader of the book will cringe extravagantly when the author pays sticker price for an automobile - there should be a footnote in the book explaining why you don't do that. The Italian edition also needs to explain why you never rent a house when the ad says "grace and charm." All Americans know that "grace," in real estate terms, means "tiny, inconvenient rooms where no furniture will ever fit" and that "charm" means "kitchen and bathroom built in an unfortunate era for appliances and d�cor - say, 1954 or 1976 - and never remodeled since." Apparently foreigners don't know this. Someone should tell them. Before they get here, or at any rate before they sign the lease.

Severgnini also misses a few points. He notes the widespread existence of tributes to Spam - t-shirts, hats, holiday notecards - but takes it at face value. He doesn't realize we don't actually like the stuff, or eat it; we buy the t-shirts because they're campy and funny, not because to express undying devotion. He claims that people in America drive 55, and I'm willing to entertain the notion that in Washington maybe they do, but to me that sounds like a tourist opportunity right there: go to Washington and see rustic natives drive 55!

But even when it's wrong, Ciao is fascinating, sometimes just for the way it's wrong. Americans rarely get an external review of our country, and when we do, it's hopelessly biased. Severgnini's approach to American culture is just like any ex-pat's, anywhere in the world - he has that same mixture of appreciation, frustration, and confusion that makes living-abroad memoirs so appealing. And for those Americans who are a bit sensitive to criticism, don't worry. Severgnini may not understand us, or like everything about us, but he certainly appreciates us.

Read this book. Savor it. It's fun, funny, and surprisingly interesting. And every American should, at least once, have the experience of hearing Washington, D.C. described as friendly.