SEASON WITH VERONA PA

by PARKS,TIM

• ISBN13: 9781611457339
• ISBN10: 1611457335
• Edition: 00
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2012-11-17
• Publisher: FRWHEEL

Summary

Is Italy a united country, or a loose affiliation of warring states? Is Italian football (which we Americans know as soccer) a sport, or an ill-disguised protraction of ancient enmities? After twenty years in the bel paese, Tim Parks goes on the road to follow the fortunes of his hometown soccer club, Hellas Verona, to pay a different kind of visit to some of the world's most beautiful cities, and to get a fresh take on the conundrum that is national character. From Udine to Catania, from the San Siro to the Olimpico, traveling with the raucous and unruly Verona fans-whose conduct is a cross between that of asylum inmates and the Keystone Kops-Tim Parks offers his highly personal account of one man's relationship with a country, its people, and its national sport. The clubs are struggling, as always, to keep their heads above water in Series A. The fans, as always, are accused of vulgarity, racism, and violence. It's an election year and politics encroaches. The police are ambiguous, the journeys exhausting, the referees unforgivable, the anecdotes hilarious. And behind it all is the growing intuition that in a world stripped of idealism and bereft of religion, soccer offers a new and fiercely ironic way of forming community and engaging with the sacred.

Author Biography

Tim Parks is the author of more than twenty novels and works of nonfiction, including Italian Neighbors, An Italian Education, Adultery, Hell and Back, and Teach Us to Sit Still. He is also a contributor to the New York Review of Books and The New Yorker, and translator of the works of Alberto Moravia, Roberto Calasso, Italo Calvino, and Antonio Tabucchi, among others. He lives in Italy.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
A Note about 'Football'	p. xiii
Facci Sognare	p. 1
Giove Pluvio	p. 55
Rigore	p. 72
La Partita delle Fede	p. 87
Aborti	p. 101
I Magnagati	p. 116
Al Vincitore	p. 129
Numbers	p. 144
II Verdetto del Campo	p. 161
Incanto	p. 173
Calendario	p. 186
Lecce	p. 202
La Befana	p. 224
Scaramanzia	p. 234
Magic	p. 248
Insulti	p. 260
I Più-mati	p. 270
Puliero	p. 278
Moo-too Moo-too	p. 288
Paranoia	p. 298
Latin Lover	p. 306
Protests	p. 317
San Siro	p. 327
Qwerty	p. 335
CD Rom	p. 344
Caporetto	p. 353
Credere, Obbedire, Combattere	p. 366
Elections	p. 376
Napoli	p. 384
'Abandon all hope . . .'	p. 397
Commedia dell'Arte	p. 405
II Giorno del Giudizio	p. 415
Complications	p. 424
Reggio	p. 431
Postscipt	p. 447
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