LETTER FROM VENICE :
SHOOTING THE WORKS
From the pigeon's-eye view, and the cat's, the stones of Venice
are unchanged. On these levels neither the citizen nor the tourist makes
a great impression. Carpaccio and Bellini, Canaletto and Guardi would
feel at home. Venice is where the dreams cross without wrecking the
place.
Another city, however, exists at man's eye level. On this level,
the tourist will not know where he is by consulting a map. He must
turn to the index of his Buyer's Guide. Is it leather goods, beads,
fine lace and cameras? Or is it sweaters, shoes, Murano glass and
Scotch whiskey? Increasingly the guide is not reliable as to where
one
is.
The same things-the same fashionable things-are everywhere.
It
is safer to ask the polylingual hostess who guides the tour.
'On this level, Venice, as we say, is making great strides. This
morning my wife said, "Guess what? Instant potatoes!" The same store
features a window full of Scotch whiskey. 'Only the best. This is the
year for Scotch. A gasoline-type price war brings it to your door at
about four dollars a bottle. These handsome bottles ornament windows
usually given over to more basic matters. They catch, as nothing else,
the tourist's roving eye. On this level, indeed, the native is a tourist,
he is lured by goodies from strange places, and fashion dictates that he
buy them. As he does. The smart men's shops offer leather ties and
rope-handled shoe horns. The smart ladies' shops offer shopping bags
of gold lame.
In her smock the shopgirl looks quite "European" if one ignores
the pyramid of her hair, but try to pick her out of the crowd as she
does a little shopping of her own. She wears a short skirt and a long
sweather. A corpse-tone lipstick shows the influence of Brigitte Bardot.
She would fit the decor of any American campus with one exception-
