Tuscan Echoes: A Season in Italy by Mark Gordon Smith. Almar Books, 2004. $14 — 172 pp.

Ours is a confessional age, the age of Oprah, a time in the world when to withhold information is to seem as uptight as a sociology professor at a meeting of the National Rifle Association. We wear our hearts on our sleeves (and everywhere else), and despite our insistent claim to the right of privacy, heaven help the poor doofus who makes any attempt to stake out that claim. To his friends and family members, the person claiming the right to clam up is immediately suspect, quirky at best, up to no good at worst.

Our insatiable lust for rumor, innuendo, gossip, and slander, fed daily by certain television shows and media outlets, has led to a dreary corruption of our perception of the arts. We would rather read about Hemingway’s habits of drinking and rutting than from his literary work, and more people, I would wager, remember that Van Gogh once cut off his ear — actually, a piece of his ear — as a mad gesture to a prostitute than could name a single one of his paintings. History teachers seeking to please their scandal-besotted students often resort to extremes, lecturing on the sexual pecadilloes of the Victorians or on the vicious antics of Caligula to the neglect of the Reform Bill of 1832 and the political machinations of the wealthy and powerful of first-century Rome.

To those of us who sometimes find in modern memoirs and biographies something akin to raw sewage, coming across a memoir like Mark Gordon Smith’s Tuscan Echoes: A Season in Italy provides a breath of fresh air. In this account of Smith’s love for Italy, the personal is decidedly checked at the door. Smith gives us more of Italy than of himself, more of the Italian sunshine and landscape and people than of his own personal battles and philosophies. He paints with words rather than oils, and the result is a quiet tribute to a country the author clearly regards as his spiritual home.

Several qualities make Smith’s homage to Italy special. There is first of all the careful way he writes, clearly taking pains with his choice of words and syntax in order to create of each chapter a sort of painting. Here, for example, is a description of an incident at the Piazza San Marco in Venice:

The couple stands, walks hand in hand to the open space of the square and, to the notes that come from a group of musicians on the stage at the Cafe, begins to waltz. Those of us still in the Piazza gaze in wonder at the simple beauty of their dance. Their feet hardly touch the pavement. A few late night visitors gather around them to watch in splendid disbelief. Here, on pavement that has seen countless millions pass by, two lovers hold each other and move as one, smiling as they look into each other’s eyes ....

In addition to visiting the common tourist spots, Smith takes us to those places in different Italian cities that tourists often miss, shops and homes, museums and churches, that are tucked away in the dustier corners of Rome, Florence, and Venice. Whether he is describing Cellini’s magnificent Perseus or the cornucopia of Luisa Fabiani’s vegetable stand, Smith makes us see an Italy that we will not find on the six o’clock news or from the back of a tourist bus. He displays more than a passing acquaintanceship with Italy, its people and its cities; he is a lover wishing to share the object of his love with the rest of us.

Finally, Tuscan Echoes reminds us of the value of silence in our noise-battered world. In an interview referring to Italy, Smith stated that his visits always gave him “the ability to escape the phone, computer, email, fax, travel, cell phone routine” His love for peace and quiet comes across in his marvelous descriptions of visits to churches, gardens, and trattorias, and his constant affection for the deep silences of such places give to the book a sense of spiritual quest.

Smith’s book won’t fit the desires of every reader. His low-key style, his interest in the small details of the world, and his refusal to push himself forward as a subject fit for investigation run counter to modern trends. Readers who pick up this book should look for a calm widening of the spirit; there are no car chases, no wild sex, no dives into the depths of human depravity. Tuscan Echoes is an examination of the ordinary in the world, an examination which, paradoxically, leads us to the discovery of the extraordinary.

Mark Gordon Smith will give a reading from his work at Osondu Booksellers on April 7. For more information call Osondu Booksellers at 828.456.8062.

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Writer Gary Carden’s play, “The Prince of Dark Corners,” starring Milton Higgins, will be performed at the Back Street Bookstore in Sylva on Friday, April 8. The play depicts the life of Lewis Redmond, a post-Civil War bootlegger who became a hero to many of the small farmers in Western North Carolina. For more details, contact the Back Street Bookstore at backstreetbooks@yahoo.com.

(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)