Just Passing Through

Im just passing through, Milton Gendel liked to say whenever anybody asked him what he was doing in Rome. Even after seven decades in the Eternal City, he refused to be pigeonholed. He was always an American - never an expat, never an migr - but he couldnt leave, so deep were his ties, and this dual bond left an indelible imprint on his life and art. Though he was born in New York City, it was Rome that earned Gendels enduring fascination - the city supplied him with endless outlets for his curiosity, a series of dazzling apartments in palazzi, the great loves of his life, and the scores of friendships that made his story inextricably part of the citys own. His diaries and photographs are a casement window thrown open onto a whos who of artists, writers, and socialites sojourning in the city: Mark Rothko, Princess Margaret, Alexander Calder, Anas Nin, Gore Vidal, Martha Gellhorn, Muriel Spark. His longtime home on the Isola Tiberina was the nerve center of the dolce vita generation, whose comings and goings and doings he immortalised in both words and images. Here, for the first time in print, are Gendels diaries, together with his photographs, selected and edited by Cullen Murphy. Just Passing Through brings together the most striking artifacts of one of the past centurys richest and most expansive lives, salted with wit and insight into the figures who defined an era.