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Well! Life surely is amazing and this crazy little
book proves my point. I wrote Too Much Tuscan Sun simply for fun,
then I self -published and self-distributed it locally and after
the incredible unexpected success was contacted by a real publisher
that released it worldwide. To be honest I was not prepared for
the big time and finding myself suddenly under the spotlights, was
a new experience. The Globe Pequot Press edition can be found on
www.amazon.com or if you prefer a personalized autographed home
made version simply send me an email.
Rasna@dada.it
Dario Castagno
Too Much Tuscan Sun
Confessions of a Chianti Tour Guide
Over the past several years, "the American in Tuscany"
has become a literary subgenre. Launched by the phenomenal success
of Frances Mayes īUnder the Tuscan Sunī, bookstores now burgeon
with nimble, witty accounts of this clash in cultures -young Americans
trying to do American things in Italy and bumping against a brick
wall of tradition, or the languors of la īdolce vitaī. In the end,
all succumb, as they must; and vicariously, their readers succumb
as well.
Before this sub-genre exhausts itself (if it ever will), itīs only
fair that we hear the other side of the story: that of a native
Tuscan, and of dozens of Americans who have stormed through his
life and homeland, determined to find in it whatever they are looking
for-whether quaintness or wisdom, submission or direction.
There is no one better to provide this view than Dario Castagno.
A Tuscan guide whose client base is predominately American, Dario
has spent more than a decade taking individuals and small groups
(two to six persons) on customized tours through the Chianti region
of Tuscany. Reared in Britain through early childhood, he speaks
English fluently and is therefore capable of fully engaging his
American clients and getting to know them. Too Much Tuscan Sun (whose
title is a nod to Ms. Mayes) is Darioīs account of some of his more
remarkable customers-from the obsessive and the oblivious to the
downright lunatic.
It is also a primer on Tuscany, its charms, and its culture. Structured
around a typical Tuscan year, Dario takes us through the sights,
smells and sounds of Chianti during each of the twelve months including
the festivities and pageantry that accord with the season (most
notably, the Palio-the bareback horse race which consumes the social
energies of the people of Siena for all of July and August)
Dario also intersperses an account of his own life and times-that
of a transplanted British ˜lording˜ who learns to live the wilds
of Chianti; of his discovery and adoption of abandoned peasant farmhouses;
of his apprenticeship in the wine industry; and of his arduous transformation
from bohemian lay about to thriving Tuscan guide.
But the bulk of this book is devoted to the Americans he has met-the
vain, the silly, the ignorant, the ambitious, the horny, the condescending,
the charming, and the outright pathological. Some of them have made
his life hell and live on in his nightmares; others-including yours
truly-became lifelong friends.
In fact, after Dario has had his say on his American clients, I
myself provide a chapter giving the opposite view: What itīs like
to sit in the passenger seat of this serene, unflappable Italianīs
van and to be escorted into the world he loves so passionately.
Rob Rodi
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