Customer Reviews

Italian Tales: An Anthology of Contemporary Italian Fiction

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This book was published in 2004 and contained 18 selections by as many authors. The great majority of the pieces were published in the 1980s and 90s. More than half were excerpts from novels. One, by Gianni Celati, was a nonfiction account of a trip along the Po River. The oldest writers were Lalla Romano and Pier Maria Pasinetti. The youngest, Pier Vittorio Tondelli and Paola Capriolo.

As background to the stories, in his introduction the compiler mentioned key factors in contemporary Italian literature such as the impact of global media culture, which both contaminated and energized local idioms while offering technological forms rivaling the novel; the continuing tension between the national language and regional dialects, particularly for writers from the south; the comparatively marginal position in the postcolonial world of the nation's literature in regard to other Western languages such as English, French and Spanish; the continuing interplay between tradition and innovation, leading to a return to traditional narrative styles alongside exploration of new forms and styles; and continuing dramatic social and political change.

Key events in Italian literature over the past 40 years, as described in the introduction, included the revival of the historical novel by writers such as Elsa Morante; the widespread success around 1980, both domestically and abroad, of postmodern novels by Calvino and Eco, which combined storytelling with montages of various popular genres; and the posthumous publication in 1990 of an experimental novel by Pasolini, which was described as an act of resistance against global mass culture in the name of marginal realities. For the 1980s in particular, the compiler mentioned a surge in the amount of published fiction, the emergence of prominent new writers such as Celati, Del Giudice and Tabucchi, profound disillusionment with public life and radical politics, and a retreat into concern with private life.

For this anthology, the compiler sought to include established, enduring writers who'd been active for at least the previous two or three decades and reflected the "multiplicity" and "fragmentation" of contemporary writing.

Unfortunately, here this meant that the great majority of the stories consisted of a narrator musing in stream-of-consciousness fashion about his or her surroundings, buildings, history, a labyrinth, cigarettes, screws, matches and myriad other things. There was almost no interaction between characters, dialogue, or conventional story-telling.

One piece, in the course of which a narrator was invited to a prayer session of Buddhists, repeated a few religious terms and concepts but seemingly had little of interest to communicate about the narrator's experience, other than his lack of understanding. Even the travelogue was a recounting of minor events without context, summary or insight. The only works I was able to enjoy were the one by Del Guidice, which partway through contained a funny dialogue of meaningless verbiage between an air traffic controller and a pilot, showing their mutual incomprehension, and Fabrizia Ramondino's "The Piazza," which was a comparatively straightforward description of a square and its inhabitants during wartime.

In my opinion, the pieces in this anthology suffer greatly in comparison with short stories by earlier, nonexperimental writers such as Verga, Deledda, Buzzati, Pavese, Piovene, Moravia or Sciascia. Or, in the case of the travelogue, with the writer Comisso, who in his own prewar travel writing described well his sense impressions and interaction with the people around him.