The Conformist (Paperback)

by Alberto Moravia (Author), Tami Calliope (Translator) "THROUGHOUT HIS CHILDHOOD, Marcello was as fascinated by objects as a magpie..." (more)
Key Phrases: Dottor Clerici, Signora Quadri, Don Lattanzi (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Moravia is red hot! In the past year, roughly half a dozen of his books have been reprinted by numerous publishers. In addition to being highly acclaimed novels, both these titles were the basis of popular European films.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
Secrecy and silence are second nature to Marcello Clerici, the hero of The Conformist. He's a man with everything under control - a wife who loves him, colleagues who respect him, and the hidden power that comes with his secret work for the Italian political police during the Mussolini years. But his perfect life becomes a nightmare when he's ordered to kill his former professor to demonstrate his loyalty to the Fascist state. When he also falls in love with a strange woman, a chain of events occur whose repercussions none could foresee. First published in 1951, The Conformist equates the rise of Italian Fascism with the psychosexual life of a man for whom conformity becomes an obsession after a traumatic experience in his youth. In 1970, director Bernardo Bertolucci turned Moravia's classic into an acclaimed film starring Jean-Louis Tritignant.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 375 pages
• Publisher: Zoland Books (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883642655
• ISBN-13: 978-1883642655
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #512,353 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of several brilliant novels by Moravia, June 11, 2007

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

The Conformist is a psychologically complex novelistic study of an Italian fascist, although not necessarily a typical fascist, done in an existential style with intense interior monologues and introspection by Alberto Moravia's protagonist, Marcello Clerici.

No doubt Moravia intended Marcello as the conformist, but ironically it is his wife Giulia who nearly always conforms to what is considered normal behavior and who harbors uncritically knee jerk beliefs and opinions formed by church and state. In fact, that is part of the reason he married her. In contrast, Marcello struggles mightily with what he considers his abnormal tendencies. As a child he killed lizards for sport as any boy might, but felt uneasy about the wanton slaughter, and so sought from a friend and his mother some indication that killing lizards was okay. Later he kills a cat, although this is mostly accidental, and as a young teenager shots a homosexual limo driver named Lino. He feels something akin to consternation for these actions, not guilt exactly, but an unease since doing such things is not what he thinks normal people do.

It is his need to be--or at least to appear--"normal" that drives Marcello to conform to society's mores and persuades him to embrace fascism. He only feels really at ease when he sees himself as part of the common herd, on the installment plan, buying ordinary furniture, living in an apartment like a thousand others, having a wife and children, reading the newspapers, going to work, etc. He is not a peasant of course, but an educated functionary in the Italian Secret Service, a man with impeccable manners who seldom says more than is absolutely necessary.

The idea that fascists in general follow the herd and adopt a superficial and uncultured world view is no doubt largely correct, but the essence of fascism is the belief in authoritarian rule, the stratification of society, intolerance of diversity, and a willingness, even an eagerness to use force and violence to obtain such ends. The psychology underlying Moravia's portrait is the idea that Marcello sees in himself the violent and selfish tendencies and so it is only natural that he should adopt a political philosophy that condones and acts out such tendencies.

Moravia treats fascism in the person of Marcello more kindly than I believe he imagined he would when he began the novel, given Moravia's hatred of the fascist movement that seduced much of Europe following the First World War. But this is the necessary consequence of being an objective novelist. In drawing a living, breathing portrait of Marcello, Moravia allows us to see him as a complex person with strengths and weaknesses who deals with the trials of life sometimes in a despicable way, and sometimes, indeed often, in a way that most of us would choose were we in his shoes. Therefore it is impossible not to identify with him to some degree. It is an artifact of Moravia's artistry that we do in fact in the end identify with Marcello and may even realize that in his situation, we too might have embraced fascism or at least tolerated it.

A secondary theme in the novel is that of unrequited love or of desire that is not returned. All of the main characters, Marcello, Lino, Giulia, Quadri and Lina love someone who does not return their love. Marcello briefly falls madly in love with Lina who is a lesbian who despises him. Lina in turn is desperately in love with Giulia who only has eyes for her husband, who does not really love her. The inability of the characters to love the one who loves them is played out partly through a disparity in personality and political belief, and partly through differing sexuality. Lino and his latter-day incarnation in an old British homosexual who drives around Paris picking up indigent young men seldom if ever find their love returned although they might temporarily quench their desire. No one in the novel experiences love both in the giving and the receiving.

Part of Marcello's unease with himself comes from his ambivalent sexuality. He cannot return the intense passion that Giulia feels for him although apparently he does manage to perform his husbandly duties adequately. Perhaps even more to the point, he seems to project a need for the "abnormal" experience. He is twice mistaken for a homosexual, and he falls in love with a homosexual of the opposite sex--thus the "Lino" and the "Lina" of his life. Marcello seems to have a blindness about invert sexuality just as he has a blindness about human morality. He is a man who does not what he thinks is right but what others think is right. He fears his natural impulses. Moravia illustrates this by occasionally having him nearly give into what he feels inside, as in the case of Lina, only to have him realize that to act from his heart is dangerous.

In the final analysis Marcello finds that "the normality that he had sought after with such tenacity for so many years...was now revealed as a purely external thing entirely made up of abnormalities" (quote from near the beginning of Chapter Nineteen).

Moravia (born Alberto Pincherle) is in my opinion one of the great novelists of the 20th century and The Conformist is representative of his best work. Incidentally this was made into a beautiful film by Bernardo Bertolucci while not entirely true to the novel, is nonetheless very much worth seeing.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Moravia's Best, September 23, 1999

By	James Bunnelle - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Conformist (Film Ink) (Paperback)

At long last, Moravia is once again available in translation. Apart from his first work GLI INDIFFERENTI, IL CONFORMISTA is probably the author's most successful novel. Well, the most infamous anyway. The setting is fascist Italy just prior to the Second World War and the plot is loosely based on the assassinations of two of Moravia's cousins who were political activists standing up to Il Duce's regime. Moravia takes these events and constructs a masterpiece of postwar Italian fiction, relentless and loaded with insightful ironies. There are some major differences between the novel and Bertolucci's film, which is wonderful in its own right. So don't let that deter you from reading the book.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars By far one of the most interesting novels ever, January 24, 2000

By	Lance Link "lancelink" (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Conformist (Film Ink) (Paperback)

This is an excellent entry piece into Italian fiction (in translation), especially for those seeking works set during World War II and the rise of fascism in Italy. Ranks with the best of international 20th century literature.