ATDTDA (9): Nemesis, 243-248

[Paul Nightingale]

As an industrial process, glassmaking will give off
odours; and the chapter does begin with the airship
"swooping in over Murano, above wide-topped red-clay
chimneys the size of smokestacks, known as fumaioli
..." (243). That these are industrial chimneys can, I
think, be inferred from what follows: Miles' "nostrils
taking in the ambiguous smell of molten glass ... "
etc (244).

Why "ambiguous"? I'm still working on that. Also
"vomitoria": as well as places for throwing up in/a
kind of entrance/entry-way, this is also a bush found
in Venice Florida.

Incidentally, in Mary McCarthy's Venice Observed
(Reynal, 1957), the city is described as "a picture
postcard of itself" (16).

Also of interest:

Venice, the Tourist Maze: A Cultural Critique of the
World's Most Touristed City (Robert C. Davis & Garry
R. Marvin; University of California Press, 2004)