IT CAN be hard to find a newspaper in Italy. Yes, there are newsstands everywhere. Or there are things that look like newsstands: being roughly the same shape and occupying similar positions on footpaths as the ones in other European countries, writes Frank McNally
The only things missing, apparently, are newspapers.
In Rome recently, after scanning a succession of such stands from outside and seeing only crossword magazines, videos, and trinkets on display, I decided the papers must be hidden in the wings.
So I stepped inside a kiosk and, peering left and right, discovered that - no - the wings are where they keep the pornography. That left only the area under the counter for newspapers. Presumably you had to ask for one by name, whereupon the retailer would spare your embarrassment by putting it in a brown paper bag.
But when I enquired awkwardly about the International Herald Tribune, the man just shook his head. It didn't occur to him to enlighten me about what, if anything, in the journalism line he stocked. So I tried again, asking for the Wall Street Journal, and blushing because it sounded so hardcore. When he didn't have that either, I gave up.
I didn't need to be told that Italy is a visual rather than a literary country. Everywhere you go, you are confronted with physical beauty: in art, architecture, clothes, Silvio Berlusconi's new cabinet, and so on. But consumption of newspapers and books is low by European standards, especially by Irish ones.
Part of the reason, it is said, are the vast amounts of red tape and legalese that Italians have to negotiate daily - which more than satisfy the average person's need for reading material. Beyond that, there is the fact that a picture still trades at around a thousand words on the local stock exchanges. And Italy has more high-quality pictures than anywhere else. Many of them are walking around on legs. That much-travelled photograph of Berlusconi's women ministers may have reinforced the image - partly justified - of a land that feminism forgot. But you only have to look at Italian men (or queue for the bathroom if you're sharing a house with one) to know that the country's obsession with appearances crosses genders.
In his very entertaining 2003 book The Dark Heart of Italy, British ex-pat Tobias Jones explained that the need to be beautiful and to recognise the beauty of others extends even to the locker-room. Playing for his local football team in Parma, Jones was regularly met with kisses and greetings of "Ciao bello" or "Ciao carissimo". And as delivered by men with flowing hair and dusky complexions, who looked like they'd fallen out of a Michelangelo painting, there was never anything self-consciously ironic about this.
So when one of his teammates departed for a trial with a club in England, Jones was understandably nervous for his young friend, issuing urgent advice: "Just don't call the English players 'beautiful' or 'dearest' and don't kiss them, OK?"
The influx of continental players in England has had some influence, but males in Northern Europe are still not as relaxed about their own physical beauty, such as it may be. Irish and English footballers will, in moments of great emotion, throw their shirts to fans. Only Italian players mark special occasions by stripping down to their designer underpants and flinging their sweaty shorts to the crowd. Neither party to such an exchange will consider it in any way inappropriate.
Next to soccer, flirting is the national sport of Italy, being both more extensive and more blatant than in most other countries. Even when not flirting, locals will study each other's clothes openly. This may be another reason for low newspaper sales. Where Dubliners or Londoners consider reading material essential for the daily commute, Italians on public transport are too busy checking each other out to read anything else.
As Jones writes, dress codes are about the only laws that are completely respected in Italy - except, of course, by visitors. Northern Europeans in particular are considered recidivist criminals in this regard.
He quotes Italo Calvino describing "goofy and anti-aesthetical groups of Germans, English, Swiss, Dutch, and Belgians. . .men and women with variegated ugliness, with certain trousers at the knees, with socks in sandals or with bare feet in shoes, some clothes printed with flowers, underwear which sticks out, some white and red meat, deaf to good taste and harmony. . ." It was rather uncomfortable to read this passage while sitting outside a Venetian piazza café last week. Doing a quick stock-take, I was relieved to find that my trousers reached all the way down to my ankles and that I had no socks under my sandals. On the other hand, the shirt design I had never thought about until now was something close to florid and my overall ensemble, suddenly, did not inspire confidence.
There was no newspaper to hand, for the reasons stated. I was grateful, in the circumstances, that I could at least bury my head in a book.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie