Word: venetia
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...much more than a uniformed bureaucrat. He was literally and psychologically a survivor. He had come to power upon his uncle's abdication during the Revolution of 1848, and he proceeded to put down and punish the rebels ruthlessly. He stubbornly refused to sell the region of Venetia for nearly $1 billion and then lost it-and many thousands of lives-as a result of a disastrous war with Prussia. The survivor's instinct could only have deepened as he saw his family cut down by firing squad and assassin: his younger brother Maximilian as Napoleon...
...first love, youthful rambunctiousness and the generation gap (a favorite theme with Shakespeare, as witness Lear, Cymbeline, Othello, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest among others) are universal, and Kahn's choice is perfectly defensible. Shakespeare specified a Verona summer. In 1866, Verona, the episcopal see of the Venetia region abutting Austria, was a hotbed of turmoil, a pawn in the seven-week Austro-Prussian War, during which it was finally ceded by Austria to Italy...
Kouyoumdjian believed in his characters with the ardor of an outsider yearning to be let in. He married a Greek countess, Atalanta Mercati, and called his son Michael Arlen, the nom de plume he had permanently adopted for himself. His daughter he called Venetia-after the heroine of one of his novels. As Michael Arlen, he became a celebrity from Mayfair to Detroit in the days before the word and the condition were tired and devalued. Now his son, a TV critic and essayist, has written a wry and moving but far from fond memoir of his parents. He avoids...
...Alleycats bristle with awe. Nobody is cozier with words: for him, Winchell rhymes with provincial, suburban with Deanna Durbin, Nina with schizophrenia. Jehovah with Casanova, Lassie with democrassy, to the bottom I with hippopotami, a fine finnan haddie with my heart belongs to daddy, and Venetia who loved to chat so is still drinkin' in her stinkin' pink palazzo. There are images and characters in Porter that stick in the mind because of their authentic, ginny bitterness: the lovers whose cars are seen in front of too many bars, the males whom men forget and only tailors remember...
Prewar dweller on the Riviera, he hoped to return "in about a year," meantime dwelt in Manhattan with handsome, Greek-born Wife Atalanta (the former Countess Atalanta Mercati), Son Michael John, Daughter Venetia. Now 50 and quite grey (but with wavy and slickly groomed hair), Glitterateur Arlen was trying to grow a stomach to earn the children's respect. Said he: "In my house everyone goes around nude ... so everyone peers at me, looking for the corporation. But it's not there...