Books

“Visually stunning and intellectually engaging, Daniel Rothbart’s Seeing Naples summons readers on a special, quixotic journey. An unusual hybrid of autobiography, history, and cultural anthropology, often infused with large doses of humor, Seeing Naples constitutes a unique portrait of this fabled place.”

“Each chapter of Seeing Naples is self-enclosed and yet the clarity of Rothbart’s voice and the acuteness of his observations weaves his disparate topics into a whole that is not so much seamless as intricately balanced, each part an implied response to another part – or to several others.”

“Seeing Naples is an enchanting and category-defying book. Poetry.”

“Rothbart is a perfect commentator on Naples because he is unflappable, because his account is accurate, and because he is entirely sympathetic but not uncritical. A gifted observer, he honestly observes the city’s history and social conflicts without moralizing. He is very good at describing what is hardest to put in words, the highly distinctive quality of everyday life in this city. Read his marvelous text and look at his photos and you too will want to go there or, if you have been, have good memories of that trip. If you can afford the flight, go to Naples tomorrow — but if you cannot, get this book today.”

“Daniel Rothbart is a master of serene, coruscating surfaces, and of the depths they hide; artificier, flâneur, ruminator, wanderer, scholar, he seems not to inhabit contemporary time, but to dwell in several temporalities simultaneously, like Spinoza astrally projecting himself into the lithe body of a Situationist, then backtracking to star in Ben-Hur, and plummeting even farther netherward to glide on the never-drowning Raft of the Medusa.”

“I have never really wanted to visit Naples before, until reading Daniel Rothbart’s terse melding of a sculptor’s memoir with political and cultural history. The clarity of his writing is at the service of evocative storytelling.”

“Daniel Rothbart’s working sojourn in Naples has produced this delightful, effortlessly informative book. We meet Raimondo di Sangro, an eighteenth-century alchemist prince and get a sense of a heady mix of art, science and magic. Marinetti jostles with Mussolini. We end with a trip to Caserta ‘The Neapolitan Versailles,’ which Rothbart notes, was used in Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon. He is alone on a bus, apart from three guards talking soccer. You close feeling you’ve spent time in Naples. A nice time.”

“Seeing Naples is an unusually thoughtful book about a city that knits dailiness and history together”

“The book (its Italian title is “Vedere Napoli: reportage dall’ombra del Vesuvio”) incarnates this idea due to being part memoir, and part travelogue along the lines of a “Grand Tour” experience, while simultaneously revealing itself sympathetic to other types of enthrallments (including its focus on film, clearly expressed in discussions of the cult classic The Gold of Naples). This work is also a source of seminal ideas that seem to transcend chronological time, luring readers into the kaleidoscopic tableau of glittering and contradictory Naples. The Parthenopean capital (along with the island of Capri, Royal Palace of Caserta, and Matera, to which the author devotes no less captivating passages) has changed much compared to its recollective counterpart, evoked by the never sugar-coated memories of the author.”

“Reports from the Shadow of Vesuvius indeed. It’s an artistic travelogue, work of scholarship, and love letter all in one.”

“Daniel Rothbart’s book on Naples is a kind of miracle. Who would have thought that such a brilliant, diverse, and intimate account of this truly majestic city could have found an audience amid the conformist agenda of today’s feverish bottom line concerns? But it has, and the book exists.

“Naples is a Baroque city not only for its lavish architectural and artistic heritage, but also in and of itself. During the last few years, it has resumed its traditional mantle as a popular tourist destination. This “rebirth” is also the result of a renewed “global” image. When Daniel Rothbart landed in Naples, however, in 1990, the former capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had hit the bottom of a seemingly irreversible crisis that had lasted more than a century. Without delving into the distant past, it will suffice to remember the cholera epidemic followed by the devastating earthquake of November 1980, the aggression of the New Organized Camorra (hundreds of murders a year), wild de-industrialization, rampant unemployment, chaos, filth, and corruption. It could almost be surmised that a malevolent god had decided to heap an endless succession of Egyptian plagues upon the people of Naples.”

“Seeing Naples does not respect – or rather, is not interested in – disciplinary boundaries. The narrative moves seamlessly from the technical points of welding to sculpture to history to the human response to being in a crowd, but it is never a professional tractate. Rothbart teaches us to see by letting us in on his experience.”

“Seeing Naples is a groundbreaking and delightful mix of image, research, travelogue and diary.”

“Like the De Sica film, The Gold of Naples, that frames one of these striking essays, Daniel Rothbart’s Seeing Naples is a book of charmed encounters. Foundrymen, fishmongers, communists, avant-gardists, elderly Jews and a range of citizens living by their wits: Rothbart has a nose for such characters and a knack for placing them in the broad realms of culture and heritage. I don’t think it’s possible to read this original, evocative collection without yearning to visit southern Italy – and yet sensing that somehow you’re already there.”