Indispensable Immigrants

This book, by Lester K. Little, is clearly a labour of love by a former Director of the American Academy of Rome. Just as clearly, the author’s heart lies not in Rome itself, but in the large swath of northern Italy whose rivers drain the Alps and Apennines into the Adriatic Sea. Ostensibly, it is the story both of the wine porters of this region and of their patron saint, Alberto of Villa d’Ogna. However, it is more accurate to say that it is a book of all the information that Little has acquired that has anything to do, and sometimes very little to do, with either subject. At times delightful, frequently maddening, it is an unconventional and even peculiar book. Take for instance, the opening paragraph: ‘Our story is set in northern Italy within a rectangle of the earth’s surface that would fit comfortably within the bounds of Kansas ... Five million years ago a quarter of it lay under the sea ... Our story though, will deal only with a bit over a 10,000th of that period, or about six centuries, and the action will take place mainly between sea level and elevations up to 1,200m’ (p. 1). For those like me, who enjoy accumulating minute facts about specific places, and especially about the history of wine, this will be an entertaining book. However, this is a book of pastiches, not a sustained and focused historical narrative. To be clear, the ‘action’ (such as it is), derives not from the life of St Alberto or from the history of wine porters, but instead from following the author as he turns over every stone in his attempt to explain how an obscure thirteenth-century Italian peasant could possibly have been made a saint—first unofficially, and then through the official process of canonisation

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