Word: atman
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...emerged that Dyer is primarily a guide to the psyche. Self-loathing and angst are the destinations he trawls, Venice merely the conveyance that takes his characters to those dark domains. The persuasive immediacy of the prose is such that it becomes all too easy to see Venice through Atman's self-consciously hip sunglasses. Pleasure dissipated from my first vaporetto ride the moment I opened the book. "You came to Venice," muses Atman, "you saw a ton of art, you went to parties, you drank up a storm, you talked bollocks for hours on end and went back...
...Biennale of Atman's visit was marinated in Bellinis, a cocktail of peach juice and sparkling wine invented at Harry's Bar, tel: (39-41) 528 5777. There was none to be seen at this year's parties, but prosecco flowed freely. One of the best selections of Venice's native drink - prosecco grapes are mainly grown in Veneto - minus the art-world pretension or tourist-trap prices, can be found at Timon, tel: (39-41) 524 6066, a decidedly laid-back bar where patrons can dangle their feet over the canal out front...
...from 2003's. The names were the same - British artists Gilbert & George, the American Bruce Nauman - and the discussions almost identical. Ambition, both on the part of the artists and the collectors who hoped to gain prestige from their purchases, dominated every event. "The hunger to succeed ... was ravenous," Atman says. "In different historical circumstances any number of these artists could have seized control of the Reichstag or ruled Cambodia with unprecedented ruthlessness...
...then the Biennale is seldom about substance. Atman measures his worth by the invitations he receives to the best parties, forever suffering from "the fear that there were better parties you'd not been invited to, a higher tier of pleasure that was forbidden to you." I countered my own lack of invites by fleeing to such sanctuaries as Osteria alla Bifora, tel: (39-41) 523 6119, where Franco, the irascible and rotund proprietor, buffs and polishes a gleaming red 70-year-old meat slicer with the care most men would pay a Ferrari. Or there's Osteria...
Dyer's second novella is an equally intimate exploration of the psyche of an unnamed first-person narrator whose willful plunge into worldly renunciation is as terrifying as Atman's embrace of hedonism. But after a week exploring Venice with Jeff, I don't feel ready to visit Varanasi with his alter ego. In fact, I'll definitely pack the Fodor...