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James Joyce called it home for years and taught English there while working on ULYSSES. That is the only thing I knew about Trieste, the strange little city that belongs to Slovenia more than the Italian peninsula on which it rests. Jan Morris, the travel writer/historian whose sex change once threatened to override her journalism career, thinks it a fascinating and complicated place in which she finds her adult self (when she was a he, she was a soldier in World War II, stationed in Trieste). Coming back again after so long, Morris looks not only at Trieste's history but also at its meaning in her life --- the way it represents her aging is a perfect foil for her railings about patriotism and sex, some of her favorite topics.
"The legacies of this society are still inescapable in Trieste. The families may be extinct, but many of their names are still part of the civic vocabulary, and sometimes their memories live. 'Who's that?' I asked the man behind the counter at the Cosulich Travel Agency on the Via Rossini, pointing to a photograph of a prosperous-looking gentleman on the wall behind his back. 'That's one of the bosses,' he said --- and he was referring to the Cosulich brothers, ship owners who died generations before he was born." How perfect a place for a treatise on death, among other things, to be situated! Although its history is tied up in the tangled nightmares of fascism as much as the steadfast prosperity of the Hapsburg regime or the difficulties of the Cold War, Trieste is ultimately an Italian territory, in thought, deed, and legacy. To consider the dead your boss you have to understand and have taken to heart the Italian idea that your "elders" include those who have passed as well as those who are present. Morris then turns this into a metaphor for the aging she herself is doing, how she has created a personal history that will live beyond her, how what she feels seems to come to her from a place beyond herself --- she is part of a long line of muses that perhaps date back to a long-ago Trieste.
With the world being commercialized for homogenous travel these days, it is wonderful to encounter a strange little bit of the old world, as represented by Trieste, and enjoy the witticisms and noble perception of such a time-tested and trusted guide as Morris. Her command of the language is supreme, her ability to express her deepest feelings is considerable, her love of her subject matter permeates every syllable. Perhaps TRIESTE AND THE MEANING OF NOWHERE could be a swan song of sorts after a lengthy career that has produced over 30 books. But, somehow, the heart of this book beats as strongly as Morris's own heart, and it is clear that she is still ready to go at a moment's notice. May her next stop be as charmingly full of interest as this one.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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