No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice

by Judith Martin

Book Overview

Love of Venice can strike anyone, not just romantic wusses. Among the toughies with serious cases were Lord Byron, Richard Wagner, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway. Symptoms include: Wishing that the movie stars in films set in Venice would move aside so that you can get a better view of the scenery. Wondering why people ask if you had good weather when you were thereas if rain could dampen your love. Thinking that people who go to Tuscany or Provence...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393059324
• ISBN13: 9780393059328
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Ahhhh Venezia

Really loved this one. It made me so envious of the author's experiences in Venice. I want to go for an extended stay in a palazzo, study the art in every church, learn the history of every building as she enjoys doing.

No Vulgar Hotel

LOVED this book! I want to give it to friends who visit Venice, love it, and can't wait to go back....

A mockery of the soul - by a confessed lagoonatic

I confess. I have a poster-sized repro of the 1500 deBarbari map on the wall of my study and I fly the standard of San Marco at my house. If Venice is in the marrow of your bones as it is in mine, you will probably laugh and cry your way through the meandering narration of this book as I have. However, I would not recommend this book to the novice. There is a bit too much of the esoteric and self-indulgent to be really useful as a tourist guide. You decide.

an epidemic

Judith Martin ought to be placed in quarantine as the most threatening carrier of a communicable disease since Typhoid Mary. Her 'No Vulgar Hotel' not only threatens to spread Venetophilia (her coinage, it seems) among the uninefected at epidemic strength; it may well render milder fevers than hers terminally virulent. Beware, after reading this delightful book, of the usual symptoms of this incurable contagion -- the urge to buy and repair decaying, waterlogged and insanely overpriced palazzi, the wearing of scary masks other than on Hallowe'en, a fascination with saints and saint's relics, the adoption of Venetian ancestors (whether they're actually ancestral or not), the collection of gimcracks and gismos whose only value is a tenuous connection with Venice, and not least the impulse to go to bad or mediocre movies merely because they have pictorial connections with Venice; and finally, at the risk of drowning, to go into training as amateur gondoliers." -- Edwin M. Yoder Jr., author of "Lions at Lamb House" and other books.

Wit + Scholarship = The Tones of Venice

We have been waiting since Mary McCarthy to read such eloquent writing about Venice as we now find in "No Vulgar Hotel." Judith Martin's consummate wit along with Eric Denker's cornucopia of Venetian cultural and historical lore, makes this book essential reading for all visitors to Venice. The book's amusing style and profound observations lay before us multiple interesting facts, both traditional and current, about Venice's idiosyncracies and charm. Ms. Martin and her companions take us through this intriguing city and share with us their passion. They renew our love of Venice on every page.