Santi:Lives Of Modern Saints - read the reviews

Review by Jen Michalski

It's hard to be a saint in the city, I've heard some guy named Bruce say. Actually, I imagine it's hard to be a saint, period, or at least in the world of Luca Dipierro and N. Frank Daniels, whose anthology Santi: Lives of Modern Saints has you wondering whether to bless the book or burn it. There's that little semantic argument in the introduction by Chris Leo as to whether the word saint is a double negation, and then there's also the seemingly unholy alliance of 26 American and Italian writers. (I guess the Vatican didn't get the message from the rest of the world that the United States is the big satan. Or is Santa really Satan? This is never actually addressed by Dipierro and Daniels, although there is a story in Santi dealing with the big man's "needs.")

But then you actually get around to reading the goddamn thing. If these people are saints, then I'm Mother Theresa. Who isn't a saint, either, doubting Thomas that she turned out to be.

So nobody's perfect. What Dipierro and Daniels do find out, in their quest for the existence of modern sainthood, is a road paved with good intentions. There are characters who think they're saints and people who know damn well they're not even close. There are people who see God, but only in their food. They are the lovably flawed and, many of them, beyond saving. Like Alex, who is about to get hitched unceremoniously in Buenos Aires in David R. Matthews' "Seemed Like the Thing to Do at the Time." Matthews' cynical, unmoored American seems more in need of divine guidance than holy nuptials, particularly after his and his fiancé's luggage is stolen, but even if his designs at revenge on the cabbie who made off with it don't net him sainthood, they at least allow him to score the knockout, with bloody flip-flops, to boot.

There are also tales so wonderful and strange that, although not directly saint-like, are sacred texts. "Skywriting with King Tut Down at Little Egypt" details the last rites of an open-air flea market at the Little Egypt Drive-In parking lot through a child's eyes, where cheap kitsch and quirky vendors create their own kind of holy land. There's Cyril, the son of a miracle worker in Claudio Morandani's "The Cold Fingers" and eventual inheritor of the gift, although he considers himself more stricken than saved: "I didn't ask for this gift. I don't need it. I'm trying to let the giver of this gift know that—no, thank you—I don't want it. I don't want to make anybody's life better—not like this, anyway. I stroll through the sick camps, hands in my pockets, and I let them die, slowly, one after the other."

And we do get glimpses of saints, in the most unlikely of places. In Luca Dipierro's "Ossi," Ossi, a ski instructor, is a beacon of indifference and yet reverence. He is not the main character, but rather a flashback in Tommaso's reflections of skiing lessons, memories that seemed to have spurred a need in him to perform miracles in people's lives. Or at least get his father to acknowledge him. Ossi, who seems to be the saint of mirrored Ray Ban sunglasses, is timeless, a pillar of stoic, albeit indifferent, fairness, Tommaso's actual unattainable father figure. Dipierro's is a haunting, hallucinogenic story, a vision blurred by a metaphorical snowblindness.

Collections with big themes such as these can tend toward the gimmicky, and although there are no total rotten eggs, there are stories that well outshine the others. But the real beauty of the anthology comes from its physical presentation. The soft-bound volume has gatefold covers, a mat finish, and soft, ragged pages accented by designer Rachel Bradley's illustrations for each story. In addition, stories from the Italian writers are presented in both English and Italian, giving the reader the feeling that the works were indeed translated from some otherworldly, mystical land. Finally, five of the stories have musical accompaniment included on a CD at the end of the anthology. It's as if you're not entering just a book, but a world. A world that is not heaven or hell but, to many, feels just right.