"A haunting, yet comic procession of Italians ...pursued in every direction, ... [but] never found. "Enrico De Vivo, Italian literary critic, L'Indice dei LIbri
Marc Zimmerman's Jewish American Quixote ... chases beauty, ... with his lance aimed at mirages. ... [and still] left with "Jewish ... and Other Questions"- [wondering whether] he cares more about Italian culture than his own, and if he's been writing fiction or memoir." Fred Gardaphe, Distinguished Professor of English and Italian American Studies at Queens College/CUNY and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.
The Italian Daze portrays a Jewish American's Italian connectionsduring his wandering life. The book proper opens with a catalog of Italian foods, celebrities, heroes and villains, culminating with a litany of Italian and Jewish American parallels. Next come first loves, travels with an Italian American wife, and subsequent encounters. Depicting key Italian locales and issues, the book includes a metacommentary exploring Jewish and Italian questions-the Holocaust, Fascism, the mafia, possible afro-phobia, and recent turns in Italian politics. A final coda portrays a series of public demonstrations, and our hero's final dream of being lost and dazed in the maze that is Rome and Italy.
"This book follows Italian American and Italian strands of my shifting days, my overall daze-the hazy, but sometimes dazzling (at times amazing) maze of my wayward ways." Marc Zimmerman.
"Mel is a tireless traveler who separates himself from his U.S. East coast Jewish roots, only to find an Italy that ... extends from the U.S. to various points in Italy and beyond. But Mel never really finds Italy; his enterprise is doomed from the start. [Because] Italy remains an elusive space-the shadow of a fleeting dream, a pilgrimage peninsula itself wandering the world, reaching out toward an indefinable mystery." Alessandro Carrera, John & Rebecca Moores Professor & Director, Italian Studies, Modern and Classical Languages, U. of Houston.
Marc Zimmerman, named "a friend and knight of Italy in 2008," holds a Creative Writing M. A. from San Francisco State U. and a Comparative Literature Ph.D. from the U. of California at San Diego. He has taught world, European, and Latin American Studies in several universities; and he has written and edited over forty books, including several "memoir fictions, "and featuring No Light from Heaven, a novel about his marriage with an Italian American woman-with two excerpts in this volume.
