286
PARTISAN REVIEW
are other traces of American penetration beside the Coca-cola signs
that now dot the whole length of the Lido at Venice. An American
might think it a trivial matter that Italian women now walk about
publicly in slacks, but the ordinary Italian is alarmed at this viola–
tion of a tradition, and as suspicious as an American would be at
a man wearing skirts in the streets of New York. Several Italians
told me that there has been an enormous increase in homosexuality
throughout Italy. The Americanization of the globe, it seems, is
proceeding even on this front. Perhaps fastest of all among the
fashionable and chichi circles in Italy, who in fear of the provinciality
of Italian life have always sedulously aped the reigning international
set, which used to be the French and the English, but now, with the
Hollywood movie crowd all over Italy, is definitely the Americans,
and particularly the Americans of a certain sex. It is depressing to
think that a people might be willing to give up one of its most at–
tractive qualities for a fashion that looks more glittering, modern, and
cosmopolitan.
It is ironical too (something to make old Stendhal turn over in
his grave) that the American inverts show a special predilection for
Italy and that their colonies now dot the peninsula from the Riviera
down to Capri, where they have taken over. For me the final and
parting irony was that in Italy, of all places, I should become most
aware of the internationally organized network of the inverts' world.
On my last evening in Venice I had dinner with two young Amer–
icans, one of whom was flying back to America the next day. Before
the evening was out the two of them went into diligent consultation
on the other side of the table from me, digging notebooks out of
their pockets. I could catch only parts of what they said, but it was
clear that the older of the two, a tall blond painter from Boston,
was giving the other, a graduate student at Yale, some addresses in
New York that the latter ought to look up when he got back. The
blond explained that for these addresses it was worth making the
brief trip from New Haven since he himself had found it worthwhile
to come down from Boston for them. The young man from New
Haven copied out a few addresses, turned a few more pages, then
exclaimed: "But all these are positives!
If
you're positive, how is it
you know only positives?" The blond cocked his head and let a
broad grin play over his face: "Ah-ha, that's just it: it's the positives
