In response to a recent comment about Frances Mayes and Under the Tuscan Sun: it turned out that after 100 pages I couldn’t read anymore. The book was layered in an orgy of descriptions, as rich and creamy as her pancetta cream sauce. Too much. I wanted to start throwing tomatoes, as red as the sunset, as plump and round as natural breasts…at her. Oh yeah, sure everyone has time to spend every day of their life buying colorful linens. What the fuck do you do with so much linen? I felt lost to find any emotion. I was drowning in someone else’s self-absorbed day dream. Every chapter was like walking in on her masturbating.

What about dear ole’ Ed, her boyfriend and companion? Did he have no soul? Was he lacking male genitalia? Where-oh-where were the detailed descriptions of Miss. Mayes slowly being bent over by the fig tree? The locals weren’t happy because she dissected them, so slowly and intricately, that you may have missed the condescension. I wanted so badly to like the book. I really did enjoy the first 100 pages. They were delicious. I’m not alone — read the spiteful comments on Amazon.

I made a promise to myself: When I am born to rich southern artistocracy, and when I am renovating a home in Italy and also living in San Francisco, that I will not spend my days doing character studies of all who cross my path as if they were mere insects, beautiful yes, but bugs nonetheless. I want to be nice. I want to be nice and pleasently drunk off the local wine. I want to have crude sex against those cold stone walls of Bramasole. And for godsakes, with all those lush gardens, surely the climate is suitable enough to plant a few marijuana plants, and perhaps a coco plant here and there. That has to be better than buying linens.