TRE UOMINI

The title of the most important book in my life is nothing if not straightforward: Three Men In A Boat. The words, both taken together or rendered divided are clear, the meaning is nothing short of unmistakable.
And yet, either through confusion, an improper quotient of attention to detail, or as a result of out and out perversity, it would appear as though Italian publishers of this book, now exactly 120 years old and in print since the day it was first published, simply do not understand the utterly simple premise of the book. Three Men. In A Boat. How hard can it be?
But here we have Tre uomini in barca, an Oscar Mondadori edition, with a cover featuring a couple of people setting a fishing net from the stern of a stubby row boat. Neither is the boat remotely anything like a Thames River Skiff, nor are the people three men, and they are setting a net, something that does not take place anywhere between the two covers of the book, unless the translation is significantly changed from that of the original English text.

Perhaps, I thought, this confusion is limited to just this one Italian publisher. And so I sought out, in the quiet and narrow backwaters of Florence, another book seller, and once found, in English with abundant gestures, made clear my wishes: a copy of Three Men In A Boat. Ah yes, the fellow at the desk said, I have exactly what you want (though he said it in Italian I understood him perfectly). He went over and pulled from the shelf a copy of Tre uomini in barca (per tracer del cane), clearly a copy of Three Men In A Boat (to say nothing of the dog)– the book’s actual full title. But immediately underneath it said as well, “Una Gita Tragicomica”– a tragicomic journey. Tragicomic? If ever there was bound a book without the slightest bit of the tragic, it would have to be Three Men In A Boat. Had the publishers, Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli actually read the pages of the book? Certainly this additional and heretofore unencountered descriptive subhead suggested that they had not. And as if to confirm this, the illustration on the cover of the book, by Auguste Renoir, features two, not three, men and a boat, but the boat so nicely rendered is of a scull that would seat but one person, or two with a coxwain, but never three, and which would do for a bit of exercise, but featured nothing in common with the skiff Jerome described, having no room for the third man, nor the dog, nor their provisions nor room to sleep.
As if to confirm the Italy-wide custom of not following the plot of the story, a third edition, procured from a very vociferous if entirely unintelligible book seller of advanced age and smelling of wine and book mold, who clearly loved his small book shop located in a virtually untraveled alley of Florence, had on its cover, surprisingly, an illustration taken from one of the earliest (English) editions of the book. But this illustration, which within the book accompanies a small and wholly irrelevant side tangent to the main story– the hazards of having young lovers tow a boat with a line– would be guaranteed to mislead any would-be reader unfamiliar with the actual story. La Biblioteca Ideale Tascabile thus managed to continue the Italian tradition of obfuscation of the story that we have seen in every other edition published in this country so removed in time, distance and perspective from the place of the book’s origin.
Why the Italians so perversely affix obfuscating or misleading drawings on the cover of this classic book, I do not pretend to understand. Other publishers in other countries do not suffer from this compulsion. The Chinese, the Bulgarians, the French and the Russians are not afflicted with this ailment. Nor are the Americans, English, Canadian or Australian publishers of the book. German and Swedish editions have cover illustrations that tie directly to the main theme. Why not the Italians, what is it about them that they either do not comprehend, or, comprehending steadfastly and perversely refuse to choose an illustration for the cover of the book that makes sense? I confess that while I observe this custom that I do not understand it. Further investigation in the years to come may reveal the answer to this riddle of the Italian publishing brotherhood, but for the moment, we shall have to be content merely to recognize its existence and to recognize that the world today is still a mysterious and incompletely understood marvel of creation.