New year, more books to read. I had nearly finished up my list of novels, but I ran across more that I wanted to read, so I’ve added a bunch of novels, and more Italian reading, plus I already had a long list of history and political books to tackle too. I’m setting myself another goodreads goal of 50 books for the year.
Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana- Carlo Emilio Gadda (1957)
This has been one of the most difficult books I have read in Italian. It’s a mix of high Italian vocabulary and various dialects, which made it even slower than usual for me. 300 pages has taken much longer than the usually extended time it takes me to read in Italian. And then there’s the convoluted narrative and plot.
But…..come to find out… that’s kind of the point of the book. The title translates to “That awful mess on via Merulana”, and it refers to a series of two connected crimes- a theft and a subsequent murder, and the ensuing investigation. But things get muddy really quickly. Here is why:
“The seething cauldron of life, the infinite stratification of reality, the inextricable tangle of knowledge are what Gadda wants to depict. When this concept of universal complication, reflected in the slightest object or event, has reached its ultimate paroxysm, it seems as if the novel is destined to remain unfinished, as if it could continue infinitely, creating new vortices within each episode. Gadda’s point is the superabundance, the congestion, of these pages, through which a single complex object – the city of Rome – assumes a variegated form, becomes organism and symbol.”
The author is using tangled language and complicated plots to reveal his view of life. This makes it easier to accept on one level; after all, I’m really glad my grasp of Italian isn’t so poor as it seemed after the first few pages, but none the easier to actually read. Gadda shows an indignation at the harm done by incompetence, expediency, and self-interests, which he portrays through the garbled, conflicting testimonies of those questioned during the investigation.
Oh, and just to top it all off, the mystery is never solved. Feels like it was close, and then then book just ends.
Clarissa- Samuel Richardson (1748)
I believe this was the longest novel in the English language, 1462 pages of small text on larger pages in this version and nearly a million words. But a few people have produced some doozies since then, and it’s not the longest anymore. Still, it’s a whopper and I’ve put it off a few times.
The full title of the novel is: Clarissa. Or the history of a young lady: comprehending the most important concerns of private life. And particularly showing the distresses that may attend the misconduct both of parents and children, in relation to marriage. I guess if you’re going to write nearly a million words for your book, you might as well toss your reader into the deep end with a long title.
The story plot isn’t super involved, and in fact, my initial thought was that this book could have used some serious editing. I’m certain that any modern editor would tell him to chop it down or else no one will read it. But as one famous reviewer wrote: you don’t read Clarissa for the plot, you read it for the sentiment.
The basic plot is that a young man, Robert Lovelace, comes to call on the Harlowe family because he has heard of a pretty daughter. But the older daughter, Arabella, isn’t as pretty as he had heard, whereas the younger, Clarissa, is. The family hears that despite his family and credentials, he is a famous rake, so he is rejected as suitable. Clarissa imagines how it would be nice to reclaim him to virtue by her example, but can’t accept him as is. Their older brother comes home, and knowing and hating Lovelace, throws him out of the house. Lovelace, insulted by such treatment, ends up dueling with, and injuring the brother.
Clarissa’s family, deciding that her interest in Lovelace must be dampened by marrying her off, selects a wealthy, but ugly and boorish man as a husband. Clarissa rejects the man, but her brother, looking with greed to some financial inducements the suitor has proposed, and her sister, jealous because Lovelace wasn’t interested in her, contrive to convince the family that Clarissa, a virtuous girl, submit to the family’s wishes.
Clarissa argues her point in vain, but right before she is to be married off against her will, Lovelace lures her outside the house and abducts her to a safe place. She is happy to be away from the forced marriage, but not to be in Lovelace’s power.
In fact, he rents a portion of a whorehouse in London, and pays the whores there to act as if they are respectable citizens… but keep her inside. He himself stays at the same house, to Clarissa’s horror, applying pressure for her to give herself up to his advances.
She manages to escape, but is tracked down and he surrounds her with his paid servants, who act like they are his noble relatives. She is then taken back to the whorehouse where she is drugged and raped.
He promises to marry her, but she will not have him. Knowing she is now ‘ruined’, she wants only to escape him. But Lovelace is all the more smitten with winning her approval. She again manages to escape while Lovelace is away attending to family matters, but the madam of the house has her arrested and thrown into debtor’s prison.
Lovelace is horrified by the fact that the whores took this liberty while he was away, but while she is there, she is abused and mistreated until she becomes very ill.
She is eventually set free from the debtor’s prison and lives with some nice people who had taken her in, but she knows she is dying and only wishes to maintain her dignity before God. Despite threats by Lovelace to take her away again, and attempts by him to do so, she manages to escape his grasp and ends up dying peacefully. A cousin of Clarissa’s tracks down Lovelace and kills him in a duel.
The entire story is told in a series of (over 500) letters back and forth between the various characters. The novel is built around the revelation of the characters, their motives, their internal consistencies and contradictions, and how they both thrive, cope, or rebel against the restrictions of their time and place.
My initial impression was that it was way too long… but as I went along, I came to see it as a fantastic story about the strength of virtue against any series of tools meant to bring virtue down.
Even the length of the book might be read as an insight into the exhausting measures the world will go through in order to break you down, and just how tiring it can be to fight against it.
Italian Ways- Tim Parks (2013)
Tim Parks is an English writer who has lived in Italy for the last 40 years or so. I really like his insights into Italian life, and you really need someone like him, who is not a native, but has lived in his adopted country for so long, to provide those insights. We natives don’t tend to notice certain things about our own cultures, or if we do, we take them for granted as simply normal. Whereas an outsider with a different perspective will notice the differences. An astute outsider will take those differences and begin to understand what insights they give in to the culture and nature of the adopted country.
Tim Parks uses travel on the Italian railways, in this instance, to explain life in Italy.
Having traveled on Italian trains a few times, I was actually able to confirm his observations because I had similar experiences. It’s a fun book to read for someone from the Anglosphere who is interested in Italy.