He wrote that book for the Italian market, where it was called Un Italiano in America and became a huge bestseller. He issued it in English for the international market. After all, we enjoy laughing at ourselves and are as baffled as outsiders by our giant mattress sales and the plethora of breakfast cereals at the supermarket. And we enjoy the occasional bits of good news, such as Severgnini's take on the bureaucracy involved in getting a Social Security card or telephone service: "Having trained on the Italian version [of bureaucracy], we feel like a matador faced with a milk cow. It's a pushover."

In half-a-dozen lighthearted books, Severgnini has also lampooned the English (Inglesi), the English language (L'Inglese) and Italian tourists (Italiani con Valigia) -- as well as himself -- so it seems a natural progression for him to attempt a luscious disquisition on the Italian national character some 40 years after Luigi Barzini's classic, The Italians.

Despite Barzini's attempts to disrupt all the clichés about Italians' charm, we Americans have clung to our notions about his countrymen, sometimes infantilizing them, seeing them as simpler than ourselves (when we're not seeing them as impossibly cunning), less plagued by modernity (despite the little cellulari that were pasted to their ears in the street long before it was the fashion here). But Severgnini seems determined to restore and psychologically update those charms and eccentricities, making them appeal to a generation of American travelers who feel they "know" their Italian hosts.

Presenting a "field guide" to the mind, Italian or other, does not give the author a lot of room to move around in, so he offers a construct: Thirty places in 10 days. Sounds straightforward, but it's not. Severgnini's places are rather high-concept, including Malpensa (Milan's international airport); highways, restaurants, churches, the beach and television. We bounce from Milan to Tuscany to Rome to Naples to Sardinia (plus an odd dip into Bahia, in Brazil), or at least that's what we're told -- there's very little evidence of regional differences here.

Before we launch ourselves, the author announces that "Italy is far from hellish. It's got too much style. Neither is it heaven, of course, because it's too unruly. Let's just say that Italy is an offbeat purgatory, full of proud, tormented souls each of whom is convinced he or she has a hotline to the boss." While you're still trying to figure out which country on the planet isn't filled with such souls, Severgnini takes it a step further: "Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis," referring, in case you skipped those art history classes, to the Renaissance painter and, in case you've been avoiding the news, to the recently defeated prime minister. Hmm, what about China -- Qing dynasty porcelains and Tiananmen Square? The United States -- the Bill of Rights and fried Twinkies?

And so it goes, with the author so busy being droll that we sometimes lose his point entirely, struggling so hard to tread water amid his many metaphors that, well, I won't succumb to metaphor extension here -- it's just exhausting after a while. (Just remember that, economically, Italy is like "a Ferrari on the starting grid, its engine throbbing. But it's been there for a while now, and the race is already on the third lap.")

Severgnini is at his best when he's delivering Italy in real context (you know, reporting) -- about the role of Vespas in the post-war nation, about its contretemps with the European Union. But his neatly packaged aperçus keep coming at us:

"In other words, if you want to understand Italy, forget the guidebooks. Study theology."

"You've been to Italy when you know the result of the Juventus game, not before."

"You'll have to understand the piazza if you want to find out what goes on inside an Italian's head."

"The Italian mind is an exotic location that deserves a guided tour."

Every stop on our 10-day tour gets this kind of pronouncement:

The airport: "Malpensa encapsulates the nation." Okay, whatever.

The coffee bar: "Like an English club, an Italian bar is a place of long lingerings, yet it's also a place for swift passings-through, like a market in China." Huh? "It's a place where you can clinch a deal, sort out an evening, start a new working relationship, or end an affair over an espresso. Standing at the bar, usually. Vertical emotions hold no fears for Italians." Double huh?

The now-frenetic Italian weekend: "A Po Valley skier rents a chalet in Switzerland and then commutes. Once, her ancestors made a similar trip, but they didn't have a ski rack on the roof of the car." The latter sentence may be a reference to Italian laborers who had to sign on as guest workers in Switzerland for lack of work at home, but that's just a guess (and the use of the word "ancestors" suggests Otzi, the Stone Age ice man found in the Italian Alps, not the Po Valley skier's Uncle Giuseppe).

Am I silly to attempt such scrutiny of something that is obviously harmless entertainment? Perhaps. But it's annoying to try to read while alarm bells -- Something's wrong! Something's wrong! -- keep going off in your brain. And with La Bella Figura, it gets very noisy in there indeed.

Oh yes, the bella figura: For those who don't know, it means cutting a good figure. But we're assured that such an expression is uniquely Italian, that it's quite different from the plain old "making a good impression."

If there's an overall criticism to be made of a book that does in fact have its entertaining moments, it's that the Italian mind we get trapped inside of for too long is the clever but not totally reliable one belonging to Beppe Severgnini.

Reviewed by Nancy McKeon
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Praise for Beppe Severgnini
 
La Bella Figura
 
“Don’t read this book—unless you have the courage to let Dottore Severgnini carve up your well-worn stereotypes about Italy. La Bella Figura proves that twenty-first-century Italians are more complicated than we thought. Sort of like Europeans. And Beppe loves them all.” —Howard Tomb, author of Wicked Italian
 
“The book on perplexing Italians . . . Severgnini’s most systematic probe of the Italian psyche yet . . . A keen observer of human nature, [he watches] his compatriots with amused insight . . . Laugh-out-loud funny.” —International Herald Tribune
 
Ciao, America!
 
“A Bella Laugh . . . This wonderfully funny and perceptive book . . . now finds its way to the country that inspired it. What a pity it took so long to get here, but what a joy that it is here at last. Ciao, America! is fun from first page to last, pure and simple.” —The Washington Post
 
“It’s not easy to walk the thin line between Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need, but this memoir manages to do so admirably.” —Booklist
 
“Severgnini is a master . . . Ciao, America! is a sardonic tale of cultural bewilderment, an incisive peek into the mundane obsession of our American existence that makes the commonplace seem not only insane but extremely funny.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“A delightful read, full of wonderful anecdotes that capture the eye-opening absurdity of life in these United States.” —Chicago Tribune
 
“It would be difficult not to like this delightful book.” —Library Journal