Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

by Jan Morris, Trefan Morys

Release Date: 03 September, 2002

Edition: Paperback

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Sweet melancholy

We can only hope this is not Jan Morris's last book, as she has stated it will be; her intelligence and acumen make it too painful she has finished writing. Her study of Trieste--one of her most treasured--starts perhaps too slowly and cautiously: it gets a bit tedious hearing her repeat how seemingly unremarkable Trieste seems at first glance (it also might sway readers new to Trieste or to Morris's work away from them). but as she continues her evident love and fascination for this city on the Adriatic become more evident, and you begin to see why so many different writers besides Morris, including James Joyce, Italo Svevo, and John Berger, have found Trieste such a remarkable place. Morris recounts much of the city's intriuguing cultural history, and also gives a brief topographical sense of the place. You do miss accompanying photographs--greatly--but that's a small quibble.

S/He's a Real Nowhere Wo/Man

If a certain city is one of your favorite places, it presumably means that you feel something about it that -- if you are a writer -- you wish to convey to others. That passion is missing from this book, which is an oddly muted tribute to a city I've always wished to visit. In addition, Jan Morris claims this will be her last book. Why should a good writer like her want to go out with such a whimper?

TRIESTE AND THE MEANING OF NOWHERE is, to be sure, a competently written work. All the major themes are present, but the guts just aren't there. What about Sir Richard F. Burton squirming through his last years far from the scenes of his triumphs? What about James Joyce creating great literature while trying to earn beer money teaching? Then there is the withering irony of Hungary's leader Admiral Horthy, at a time when his country had had no port for decades, yielding his country to the Nazis out of craven fear. There is material here for a book that yet remains to be written.

Trieste still sits there at the head of the Adriatic waiting for THE book to be written about it. Until such time, this is an adequate book, well written, but even below the author's standard.