We had a fascinating discussion on the third of Tim Parks’ books written about his experiences in Verona. I particularly enjoyed the aesthetic inferences, the religious comparisons and the literary allusions, not to mention the poetry and the opera talk. Here’s the transcript.
2007-07-28 17:28:21.0
Leslie: CHI SIAMO NOI? Who are we? GLIELO DICIAMO? Shall we tell them? BRIGATE! BRIGATE GIALLOBLU! The yellow blue brigade!
JohnFromAus: Come stai, butei?
Leslie: Va bene! Allora!
Leslie: Brigate Gialloblu! Brigate Gialloblu! Brigate Gialloblu! Jolly good book!
JohnFromAus: Yes. It's not so much about football, but I it helps to know football.
softdrink: Evviva! (That's one of the few words I know in Italian.)
Leslie: I have only a peripheral knowledge of football, but I now know more about Tim Parks and I do know a bit about the Italian culture.
JohnFromAus: I looked up the Hellas Verona Website. They have been in Serie B for a few years.
Leslie: Oh my, I didn't know they had dropped down to Serie B. Nice to see you Jill.
JohnFromAus: Chievo Verona has been in Serie A since 2001 but was relegated this year.
Leslie: Bugger!
softdrink: I didn't finish the book, so I don't have much to contribute. But I'm here.
Leslie: OK, ready to start? What do you think of the statement: Part travelogue part psychological study of the culture of fandom in Serie A - I thought that was a perfect description.
softdrink: Yes, Leslie, good description!
Leslie: My goodness he's a good writer. He's very good at what he does. I must like him if I've read the other two three times and this one twice.
JohnFromAus: Yes, but also a study of the media, city rivalry. Where did you get up to Jill?
softdrink: I'm only on pg. 150. But I like reading about a part of Italian culture that you don't normally hear about. Italian Neighbors is still my favorite.
JohnFromAus: I like his comparison of what is happening in the football, the managers, the teams, the corruption to similar events in the non-football world.
softdrink: And this may make me odd, but I like the vulgarity.
Leslie: I found the vulgarity earthy, and realistic. Tim Parks spent the first 100 pages trying to show us a particular aspect of the football culture - to set the scene. It was like an introduction to the world of the Brigate Gialloblu.
JohnFromAus: Well, the cover says "travels around Italy in search of illusion, national character and goals.”
Leslie: OK, John I was fascinated by his bringing in so many cultural aspects - into a football book!
JohnFromAus: I liked the way he brought out the change in persona that happens as you move into fan mode. But they still regarded the English fans as the hooligans.
Leslie: OK, listen... I was talking to an Englishman about football in England last week before I read it. Tim Parks quotes a journalist from Il Gazzetta who describes a Verona home game as, “Very ‘English’; the muddy field, the brutal low-quality football under a ‘London smoke’ of a sky.” And John, that is an Italian journo saying that! The similarities are so strong between the two cultures, in regard to football. The chants, the singing, the solidarity.
JohnFromAus: But is it a Verona journalist or an out of towner?
Leslie: It didn't say, it was a quote from Il Gazzetta.
softdrink: I'm finding the middle a little slow... does it pick back up?
JohnFromAus: Jill, I think it does pick up, but a lot of things become more interlinked. It is a real change when he is in the press gallery rather than in the curva.
Leslie: I found the last half of the book to be the most interesting for me, about the football culture - how it is perceived, how they see themselves. The Napoli chapter is great. I think it then ended on a high.
softdrink: That's the chapter I'm on. I like the road trips best, so far. Looking forward to the part Leslie just described.
Leslie: I had fun looking at the pictures of the curva on the Internet. It was interesting the way the police escorted them on one of the trips.
JohnFromAus: And how the police treat them. Sometimes they are very brutal which makes the Brigate outraged, and at other times they get away with things that they would not in other situations.
Leslie: Exactly John. The way they taunted the other side, and were taunted back. The real hardships they endured just to travel to an away game! We talk on Slow Travel, about where you get fined for having the wrong train ticket. The Brigate didn't even pay for one trip!
softdrink: I'm remembering the part where the man screams at the police in the middle of his very polite phone conversation with his mom.
JohnFromAus: Jill, you will also like the train trip to Napoli. Another example of the Brigate posturing but not being as bad as they try to make themselves out to be.
Leslie: Louts seem to be louts, but yes, how much is just posturing for the sake of it. BRIGATE! BRIGATE GIALLOBLU! You know, I think they'd all get beaten up over here. I was surprised that they weren't attacked more often. Or even much. People really seemed to have patience with them.
softdrink: It reminds me a lot of the "blue collar" culture here in the US... very crude, but very real at the same time.
JohnFromAus: They were louts. Some were in a bad way with drugs, but the Brigate was also a supportive community.
Leslie: I liked the way Tim Parks showed us the positive side, and the good things, about the individual louts. For example, the one who looked after his nonna instead of going on an away game. The one who worked with disadvantaged children, so couldn't go, as he was taking them on a trip.
JohnFromAus: I was surprised that both Tim Parks’ colleague in Naples and the girl on the train, of whom they made vulgar requests, ended up describing them as rather sweet.
Leslie: I felt for her. But John and Jill, she could have moved away!
JohnFromAus: But she wasn't as affronted as I would have expected. So apparently did not feel the need to move away.
softdrink: Sorry, haven't read that part yet!
JohnFromAus: There is also an interesting part on the train back from their local rivals, Vicenza. What did you think about the comparison with the Marsiglia case? I find it hard to put some of these things in a nutshell.
softdrink: Is that the part where the guy lied about his background to get a teaching job, and the anti-Semitism...
JohnFromAus: Yes. Luis Marsiglia claimed to be have been beaten up by racists. He taught at a posh school.
softdrink: Aha! I remembered something! That's the part that really hooked me.
JohnFromAus: And the reaction/exploitation of his neighbours who were obviously not racists and trying to counter the Veronese image. And the press plays on the Veronese racist image there just as they do on with the Brigate.
softdrink: I'll be in Verona at the end of September... this is an interesting book to read before going there. Not that it makes me not like Verona, I just don't want to be around the stadium if there's a game going on!
Leslie: I haven't been to a game in way over 20 years. I saw Steve Rodgers play live once here in Canberra!
softdrink: I'm going to paint my face yellow and blue!
Leslie: Ok, what did you think about all the cultural aspects. Like the discussion about the comparison of the calcio to the opera. Very high brow.
I liked the way he compared and contrasted the football to other more aesthetic things, like the opera for example on pages 112 and 113 in my edition. Here he states that the game offers aesthetic pleasures, with the interaction between personality and skill. He really went into detail but you would have to know a lot about the opera to understand that part I suppose? Hey - was he basically discussing the showmanship?
softdrink: I think I missed that bit.
JohnFromAus: What about the religion and football thing with the pope attending a match. And the statements the players made. That's what I like about his writing. He is always coming out with surprising comparisons.
Leslie: The antics of the Brigate Gialloblu in the curva?
softdrink: The curva though... not so far off from from the Raiders fans (American football).
Leslie: Oh it was easy to miss Jill, it was a reference to a particular opera he knew well. I think it was a literary device to show contrasts and similarities within cultures.
Leslie: Oh my God the Raiders fans!
softdrink: Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay-deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeers!
Leslie: I was out at Seifort Oval, out in the boonies at Queanbeyan, the locals (our own Brigate Gialloblu) were yelling obscenities and carrying on like pork chops. Exactly like the curva.
softdrink: Carrying on like pork chops?
Leslie: Like twits or idiots.
JohnFromAus: I still haven't digested that Leopardi poem.
Leslie: Can you tell us about that?
softdrink: I remember that, that was way too deep for me.
JohnFromAus: The point is the obscenities are acceptable in some circumstances. Do you remember that part where the boy alternates between swearing at the police and sweetly telling his mother when they would get home so she could put on the pasta. Instant switch in mood.
Leslie: Wasn't it interesting about his father being a clergyman?
JohnFromAus: Yes. We got that in 'Education too.
JohnFromAus: The whole thing about singing was interesting.
Leslie: It’s interesting the way Tim Parks compares the chanting and singing to his church experiences.
JohnFromAus: He grew up as a chorister in an Anglican church. The whole church they moved to in London went Pentecostal and Tim Parks could not face it and could not sing for years after that. It was the singing in the curva that redeemed him
Leslie: “When in adult life I discovered the football chant, the spell of the crowd and the stadium, it was as a pleasant surrogate for an intoxication that had been too mad and too possessive.” He used to be a choir boy in his father’s church. At this early age, he says on page 177, “… I realised that football crowds were ignorant and working class and got drunk and swore, and that we in St Mark’s choir… were infinitely superior.”
JohnFromAus: But that is interesting for me. One of the churches I went to as a boy went Pentecostal and I had to get out.
Leslie: And, he says that this was where his thoughts or prejudices about football crowds were formed. His father, a clergyman, always checked the score on Saturday night to check what humour his congregation would be in the next morning.
softdrink: I thought I had read somewhere he got involved in following Hellas because his son was so into it... but his son isn't in the first part of the book too much.
JohnFromAus: Michele doesn't get to the away games much.
Leslie: He was griping about that because he had school on Saturdays.
softdrink: Probably a good thing!
Leslie: Also, it was costing a lot in plane fares, and there was the uncouth aspect that he was too young to be subjected to.
JohnFromAus: And the mentions of his wife in that this book justifies to her his following the team to away games for the season.
JohnFromAus: Michele already has colourful language.
softdrink: His daughter did too, in her brief appearance.
Leslie: Michele surprised me with what he came out with in the last book - the terrone aspect.
JohnFromAus: I’ve seen it in the Brisbane library as a book in the Sport section. I think that is wrong. It should be in the Countries, Italy section.
Leslie: I see the book as an insight into the everyday lives of some parts of the Italian culture.
softdrink: John, I had to order it online...I think it says something about how soccer isn't popular here that none of our libraries or local bookstores had it.
Leslie: Ok, there’s another literary reference. Apart from the discussions of opera and choral singing, I also enjoyed the literary references in the book, especially those pertaining to Dante. Is it just a coincidence, Parks asks, that there are 34 cantos in Dante’s Inferno, and also 34 games in Italy’s Serie A?
JohnFromAus: The numerical connection is a good segue. He takes advantage of the coincidence.
Leslie: Yes, I thought that was clever.
JohnFromAus: Tim Parks also refers to it in Neighbours, about the noise outside when they are trying to sleep early on.
Leslie: Ok, I think the Tim Parks is using soccer as a device. He really looks at the regional and cultural divisions that exist in Italy, and that show themselves through soccer.
softdrink: I think it's good to read books about Italy that aren't about restoring houses in Tuscany!
Leslie: Exactly Jill. It's got great themes, and is an excellent way of examining an aspect of the Italian culture that many people really aren't aware of.
JohnFromAus: And currently cultural. He talks about Berlusconi and his domination of the media.
Leslie: Ok, another religious reference... In A Season With Verona, Tim Park helps us to understand that people act and behave at the soccer, in ways they would never do in everyday ordinary situations. But as he says, soccer is not just an ordinary sport to Italians. It’s taken very seriously. In fact, he compares the soccer fanaticism to religion – or religious fervor. In fact, I read somewhere that “Stadiums become temples, and players saints.”
JohnFromAus: Jill, I agree with you. As Tim Parks says in Neighbours. You have to accept the whole package. Good food and bureaucratic slowness.
Leslie: I really appreciated the religious references, the discussion of opera, the literary references.
softdrink: Good point. And it shows a side of Italy that visitors wouldn't see.
Leslie: The deep cultural discussions were in juxtaposition to the attitudes and the social mores of the Gialloblu supporters - while they were in the mode of being part of the curva.
JohnFromAus: I have never looked at the Wall. I expect my Italian would not be up to it.
Leslie: Here’s the website:
http://www.chievoverona.it/societa/storia2.aspx It was interesting the way they sang the words of the chants to Clementine.... and the French National anthem.
JohnFromAus: Football crowds take over the tunes of other songs, just like the church takes over the tunes of other music. I am trying a Tim Parks comparison here. Well, I am off to an apiarist society meeting. Thanks very much for the discussion.
Leslie: Today’s talk was gutsy!
softdrink: Me too, although I'm sorry I didn't finish the book before the chat.
Leslie: No worries, it’s the good company that counts.
JohnFromAus: I still need to give it another read.
softdrink: I really appreciate the chance to talk about books like this!
Slow Travel Talk 
However I am taking it with me to Tennessee and will carry on. I keep thinking it's going to grab me any second....
