Amore: An American Father's Roman Holiday

by Roger Friedland

Overview

Part memoir, part cultural exploration, Amore follows an American father as he and his teenage daughters journey into the heart of Rome, into the way Romans love and what they have to teach about its erosion in America.

As his twin daughters approached adolescence, sociologist Roger Friedland was worried. The thing that most bothered him was not the erotic heat of its youth culture, but the lovelessness of its sex.

Offered the chance to live and teach in Rome, Roger and his wife, Debra, seized the opportunity to take their family to live in a city where love is alive, family bonds hold, divorce and rape are rare, and “ciao, bella” is a constant refrain.

In Amore, Friedland shares the stories of his family’s enchanted and unnerving passage into the heart of Rome and considers its lessons for America where love is at risk.

Amore is a love story, a family’s voyage between two states of feeling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062325587
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/04/2014
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Roger Friedland is a cultural sociologist who studies love, sex, and God. Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and New York University, he is also the coauthor of The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship (with Harold Zellman). He lives with his wife in Santa Barbara, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Moulin Rouge and Me xi

Walking Rome

1 Ciao Bella 3

2 Imperfect Beauty 16

3 A Walk in the Park 32

Family Rome

4 Swan's Way 55

5 Angels in Rome 73

6 Mamma Mia 90

7 The Lips of Elvis 105

8 Who Stole Michelangelo's Penis? 116

Loving Rome

9 Reading Holden Caulfield in Rome 135

10 I Want to Hold Your Hand 150

11 Just Pleasure 164

12 Roma(Nce) 179

13 Love's Bodies 191

14 Flirting Through Life 216

15 High Fidelity 237

Divine Rome

16 Altar Ed States 267

17 Sex, Love, and God 281

18 Hey God, is that You in My Underpants? 295

Leaving Rome

19 Arrivederci, Roma 315

20 Birds of Paradise 333

21 Roman Love Lessons 356

Notes 376

Acknowledgments 401

About the Author 402

Editorial Reviews

10/06/2014
Friedland, a professor of cultural sociology and religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara, covers a lot of ground, literally and figuratively, in this memoir about raising twin daughters in Rome, the city founded by the mythical twin boys Romulus and Remus. Rather than allow his middle-school aged girls (born in California in 1992 after nine years of infertility) to grow up in a "Westcoast world of blowjobs and Botox," he accepts a two-year assignment at the University of Rome. In this introspective travelogue on the vagaries of love Italian style, Friedland weaves statistics about Italian sexual activity compared to American, with personal observations to create a sort of guide for modern parents. Sorted into five sections that capture Rome in different moods, Friedland opens with an homage to the 1953 William Wyler classic Roman Holiday, the film starring Audrey Hepburn, in which the actress names Rome as her favorite European city. Infidelity and the legacy of Casanova, co-exists with the Holy See in a magical part of the world where Michelangelo "sculpted and painted nudes in great profusion." The central difference between Romans and Californians appears to lie in their attitudes to love and adultery. Perhaps predictably, one daughter has happy memories of the Roman sojourn, while the other experienced a traumatic incident that tainted her experience of Rome. While all this information is thought-provoking, what stands out is the attraction of living in a glamorous city where it's possible to share dinner with director Lina Wertmuller. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

This is a fascinating contrasting of the quality of life in the U.S. and that in Rome and what the difference may mean for the future of family life and national destiny.

Booklist

This is a fascinating contrasting of the quality of life in the U.S. and that in Rome and what the difference may mean for the future of family life and national destiny.” %COMM_CONTRIB%Booklist

This is a fascinating contrasting of the quality of life in the U.S. and that in Rome and what the difference may mean for the future of family life and national destiny.

Booklist

2014-09-10
Cultural sociologist Friedland (Religious Studies and Sociology/Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship, 2006, etc.) examines the life-changing "love lessons" he learned from the city of Rome.For the author, the Italian city became a personal touchstone for love and romance after he and his wife honeymooned there as a young couple. He would return to the city several times afterward, growing more fascinated each time with the way Romans combined sex and love without guilt, shame or fear. In the early 2000s, just as his two girls were entering adolescence, he was offered a chance to teach students at the University of Rome, students who had very different ideas about sex and love than their American counterparts. As Friedland watched his daughters begin to negotiate puberty away from the "West Coast world of blowjobs and Botox," he came to know students for whom affection and loyalty were crucial parts of the erotic—and eventually, marriage—equation. The author suggests that this attitude stems from the way male and female bodies are openly celebrated and enjoyed in Italian culture and from the fact that in Italy, personal and familial connections serve as a bulwark against unreliable institutions. In the U.S., where an element of shame has always traditionally surrounded sexuality, it is more difficult for young people to reconcile romance with the erotic. The sexual revolution, which was supposed to liberate people from inhibition, actually had the unintended consequence of separating emotion from sex and exalting "pleasure at the expense of tenderness." The result has been the creation of a loveless society, where, notes the author sagely, "marriage is imagined as a contract for self-realization and sex a consumption good." Intelligent, thoughtful and well-researched, Friedland's book is not only a love letter to Rome, but also to his daughters and the members of their generation, for whose personal happiness he fears.

Kirkus Reviews