Writing, place and Anthony Doerrs Four Seasons in Rome

About a fifth of the way through his travel memoir'Four Seasons in Rome'Anthony Doerr steps back from his rapturous scramble to describe everything around him to muse on Victor Shklovskys idea of habitualisation. The easier an experience, writes Doerr, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomesLeave home, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experiencebuying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hellobecome new all over again.

Its a turning point for Doerr, who is in Rome for a year with his wife and newborn twin sons as part of a literary fellowship. Although his fellowship conditions require that he work on a work-in-progress of historical fiction, he is instead at the mercy of his muse, which sends him reaching for a pen every second moment to document his new life. And he does so with botanical, anthropological fervour: he writes at one point a good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.

Four Seasons in a Rome is indeed a love letter: its less a narrative or a memoir than it is a rhapsody of place. Curiously, Doerrs observations are very much those of an outsider, and theres a sense that he is reticent about attempting to fit into Roman life lest he lose his ability to objectively report on and describe the world around him. Rome is notable not so much for being Rome, but for being alien and new, and as such providing Doerr a lens through which to hone his writerly eye. Its seldom a book about peoplethe locals feature only slightly in itbut more a place about the natural world and the stamp that people have left on it over time.

The book comprises what feel more like vignettes than chapters, and more often than not the author wanders off in the delighted throes of observation, his pen running ahead of him as he stitches simile around metaphor, a sculptor of words. The format doesnt always work: Doerr has a habit of ending each brief section with a sort of descriptive epigram that instead of tying together the vignette feels jarringly appended. Neither do the various sections quite hang together: in particular those about the Popes death and funeral seem out of place, and so too does the apparently frequent cooing of strangers over Doerrs twins, this last feeling like a pat way of adding a sense of the Italian to what can become at times a detailed taxonomy of plants and rocks.

That said, if you look at this less as a book detailing a foreigners year in Rome and more as the literary equivalent of an artists sketchbook, its quite beautiful. Despite its slim size, its a book that you want to savour for both its thoughtful turns of phrase and also its proof that stepping out of the familiar can have a cleansing effect on an authors palate. In a way its a writers manual, and I think that authors and bookish types will enjoy Doerrs thoughts on the influence of place on writing as much as the writing itself. Because Im sure Im not the only one who seeks creative refreshment in the unfamiliar.

I carry a notebook to the roof of the Academy and try only to explain the complexion of stones, the distance blues of the Alban Hills, the lines of landscape, writes Doerr. The gaze widens and drifts; the eye is insatiable. The brain drowns

Rating: (excellent)