Playing Away: Roman Holidays and Other Mediterranean Encounters

by Michael Mewshaw

Book Overview

From Simon & Schuster, Playing Away is Michael Mewshaw's experience on Roman holidays as well as other Mediterranean encounters.

Playing Away includes a wide variety of chapters, including ones on traveling by train, enjoying summertime and alfresco living, the unique aspects of the different Mediterranean cities, and much more about exploring this magic region.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743213076
• ISBN13: 9780743213073
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Interesting nonfiction

Michael Mewshaw's 'Playing Away' is mostly about an American author's living experiences in Rome. It has the 'to the point' nonfiction approach and brings out hilarious effect like only fiction could. Mewshaw travelled a lot. He says, "in some inchoate way, I equated curiosity with creativity, mileage covered with imagination improved". Despite whatever he believes, the mileage does reflect in his writing. Mewshaw has written well on what works in Rome and what doesnt, how effective the rules are. He catches the spirit of the place in the celebration around. When he talks about how much of logic and moral suspension you have to do to live in Rome, it is one place where you can easily make the decision of going there to just visit or stay. In a very effective way he says how 'name dropping' changes to 'difficult-to-visit place' dropping. The essay revealing drastic steps of feeding poisonous substances to pigeons to control their population made me wonder if someday humans would be exterminated too. Expatriates would find a voice for their confusion of 'To stay or not' in his writing. I like the essays on his interaction with Graham Greene and Gore Vidal best, even better than Greene's work.