Slacker Hammagrael got Seven
Seasons in Siena by Robert Rodi when she was home last week and said
“read it.” So I did and finished a few days ago, in time to return it
to her and let her sister read it this week before it is due back at the
library. I think she motivated in part by the Track opening too early
in July and there is a nice horse on SSiS. (I only hope she didn’t
connect the title instead with my younger son transferring into the
Saints college … four seasons should do it for him.)
Rodi exposes all of his
personality foibles and weak traits as he longs to become Sienese. At
times, he seems like a Mafia wannabe. The idea of there being
geographic/cultural enclaves still closed to new-comers is not an
uncommon observation. Rodi’s efforts at times seem like Sisyphus:
every year, he’s back in Italy and back at square (not the Piazza) one,
regarded as a recognized tourist. Siena is depicted as perfect, a
sunny Brigadoon, where the teenagers are polite to their elders and
respect traditions, where all the food is scrumptious, the women dressed
in Giorgio Armani. What’s not to like. But Rodi writes that even
those who married into one of the competing neighbors are labeled as an
outsider. You must be a centuries-old born and bred and genetically
pure Worm; if you wear the colors around your neck you are still a
poseur.
So is this a story about a place
or about an outsider? To me, Rodi seems penultimately insecure,
returning to answer the question of “do you remember me?” All the
chores he assumes, all the routines, cannot easily graft to his
alienation. He travels annually without his partner; he exhausts his
meager savings to pay for transatlantic flights. He seems like Gulliver
trying to be a Brobdingnagian.
To me there seems to be two
major personality types: those who are deeply rooted to the land of
their birth, their town, and reluctant or even incapable of living
happily anywhere else (e. g., younger son); and those who are born to be
adventurers, explorers and pioneers, jumping out of their nest and
seeing the world (older son). Rodi introduces me to another hybrid
class: people who want to transform and be successfully grafted into
another world. So I find it disappointing that he doesn’t become a full
émigré or at least an international snow bird. Having tasted Siena,
how can one give up this addiction?
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