Experiencing Anthony Doerr's "Four Seasons in Rome"

     I have really enjoyed the opportunity to read Anthony Doerr's Four Seasons in Rome this term.  If Robert Hughes' book on Rome is seen as something of an objective analysis of Roman history and culture, Doerr's book is a much more subjective reading experience.  It's instantly engaging and welcoming to the reader, creating a rich sense of place with a narrative that feels often like poetry.  There is no sense of anything other than an honest account of the Doerr's family experiences in Rome: no underlying cynicism or inflated sense of ego to get between the reader and the text.  The author's gentle attitude is often expressing a profound sense of wonder not only of Rome itself, but, I would argue, his lovely family seen through the lens of Rome and the Roman people.  

     One of my favorite passages is the following excerpt concerning his son; it really captures the purity of personal experience and thought conveyed within these pages.

Swaddled in his Moses basket, wires trailing out the bottom, his monitor flashing green, green, green, his entire four-pound body motionless except his eyelids, it seemed he understood everything I was working so hard to understand: his mother's love, his brother's ceaseless crying; he was already forgiving me for my shortcomings as a father; he was the distillation of a dozen generations, my grandpa's grandpa's grandpa, all stripped into a single flame and stowed still-burning into the thin slip of his ribs.  I'd hold him at the window and he'd stare out into the night, blue tributaries of veins pulsing in his neck, his big eyelids slipping down now and then, and it would feel as if tethers were falling away, and the two of us were gently rising, through the glass, through the trees, through interweaving layers of atmosphere, into whatever was beyond the sky.

     One aspect of the book that I particularly appreciate is the author's emphasis of understanding a place through the eyes of its people.  He's not a simple tourist or traveller, he's experiencing Rome through the act of truly living there: mingling in the markets, strolling the ancient streets, speaking--or attempting to speak--with its residents, and, in short, truly living in the place.  I know my upcoming visit will be but a fraction of the length of his, but I hope I may leave Rome with a much greater sense of what this city is all about when my time comes to head home.  Like Doerr, I don't see most of this knowledge coming from being a tourist per se, but as something along the lines of a (very) short-term resident.