In the central square of the Renaissance hill town of Cortona, two miles away, acolytes retrace Mrs.
”The metaphor of the house as the self.”Įvery day in the high season, 30 to 40 tourists, Americans, and also devotees from Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries, stop at the iron gates, hungry to savor her lyrical account of replastering walls, beams, clearing ivy, cajoling Italian contractors and finding the perfect olive oil. ”I don’t identify with her particularly, except that I’ve always loved houses,” Mrs. She bristles at analogies to Martha Stewart. She said her role model is the French novelist Colette, and quotes Octavio Paz and Homer in her books. The visitors craned for a better look at Bramasole, the apricot-colored 18th-century villa below an Etruscan wall, the center of the odyssey that turned a middle-aged creative writing teacher at San Francisco State University into a best-selling author and cult figure. Mayes, nonplused, said he had replaced it with a newer model.) (”Ed, do you still have the Alfa?” he asked. Mayes signed their copies of her book outside her gate, Les pursued his vicarious intimacy with Ed. ”We came to Tuscany for one reason,” he said. Les from Syracuse excitedly yelled at his cringing girlfriend to get the camera.
One of the men fell to his knees and performed a mock salaam. With sudden awe, he added, ”Is that Ed?”Įd Mayes, the husband of Frances Mayes, the author of two best-selling memoirs about restoring their villa in Tuscany, politely made his way down a steep path lined with grapevines where the unexpected visitor, Les, a film teacher from Syracuse, and three friends stood waiting. ”Is this the house?” an American tourist hollered up from the iron gate. A loud voice pierced the dreamy stillness of Frances Mayes’s rose-and-lavender-filled Tuscan garden.
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