READERS GUIDE

1. On page 1 Mainardi writes, “I blame Tito’s cerebral palsy on Pietro Lombardo.” Who else does he blame? Who does he not blame? Why do you think this is?

2. Why does Mainardi look to art to recount his relationship with Tito? How does Mainardi’s relationship with art change as he raises Tito, and why does this change occur? Where does he place Tito in relation to art?

3. How does Mainardi’s use of repetition and emphasis work to form a narrative and build meaning or significance? (See p 47: “Biological enemies.Biologische Feinde. Only ‘racial hygiene’ could eliminate the ‘biological enemies’ contaminating the Third Reich. Racial hygiene. Rassenhygiene.)

4. Mainardi refers again and again to John Ruskin (see pp 7–9, 56, 118). Is Mainardi writing back to or responding to Ruskin? Mainardi tells us that John Ruskin “handed [him] all the necessary clues for interpreting the architecture of Pietro Lombardo” (p 7), and that Ruskin praised Pietro Lombardo for his ability to acquire knowledge “without stooping, … without pains” (p 57). Is the knowledge in The Fall “reach[ed] without pains”? What does this say about the ways in which we acquire knowledge and about the power of acquired knowledge?

5. Describe the relationship between John Ruskin’s The Fall and this memoir.

6. Compare Jacopo Tintoretto (pp 20–21) to Rembrandt (p 117). How do each relate to the “Pride of Art” (p 22)?

7. Who are the historical figures Mainardi praises as heroes and who are the ones he disparages?

8. Describe the ways in which Tito’s cerebral palsy works as a kind of theory through which Mainardi interprets the world in The Fall.

9. Mainardi makes a number of surprising comparisons (“In the case we brought against Venice Hospital, we had—just like those Third Reich economists—to add up all the money spent on Tito’s cerebral palsy” p 137; “Jesus Christ, like Josef Mengele” p 154). Why does he do this? What effect do these comparisons have?

10. Mainardi describes how Shakespeare and Joyce use disability in their works as a metaphor for social ills. How is disability treated in The Fall?