What We’re Reading: The Best of Italy
I studied Italian in undergraduate, and was three credits away from having an Italian minor when I graduated. I studied abroad in Perugia, Italy for a semester, and took oodles of classes on both the language itself and it’s history, literature, food culture, and more. Not surprisingly, some of my favorite Italian classes during my undergraduate were the literature courses. While there are many fantastic Italian writers, here are a few that are a must-reads from books I read in class, or discovered on my own:
The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello (originally published in 1904)
Mattia Pascal is an unhappy man who detests his wife, mother-in-law, and job, and has everything important to him taken away: inheritance, the woman he truly loves, his mother, his daughters. When he discovers that his wife has erroneously declared a dead body as himself, he jumps on this chance to escape his small town and dismal life. Moving to Rome, he recreates a new life. However, he continues to face difficulties, and soon feels the weight of his decision to live a lie. He eventually decides to stage his own death (again) and go back home, only to find that life has moved on. If this sounds too much like a downer, fret not. Pirandello is master of humor and satire, and you won’t be disappointed in this book. Pirandello remains one of Italy’s most-loved novelists, short story writers, and playwrights, who won a Nobel Literature Prize for his work in the 1930s.
Mottetti: Poems of Love by Eugenio Montale (Graywolf Press, 1990)
Published by Graywolf Press, this little gem includes an excellent introduction from the translator, Dana Gioia, who explains these poems in the context of Montale’s work and life. The twenty poems were all written between 1934 and 1939, and together, form a cohesive narrative. With Italian on one side of the page and English translation on the other, Gioia leaves these poems largely alone for the reader to indulge in their original context. Montale’s love poems carry the same heaviness as his other poems, but also his intensity. He is the lyric Italian poet that many wish they could be. Montale, like Pirandello, is also one of Italy’s most renowned writers, and he, too, won the Nobel Literature Prize in 1975.
Little Novels of Sicily by Giovanni Verga (originally published in 1883)
This collection of short stories as reprinted by Steerforth Press is translated by D.H. Lawrence, who also writes the introduction. Verga captures the true fabric of daily life in Italy. Inspired by the author’s childhood in Sicily, these little stories capture the imagination of just about anyone with their unflinching realism. The back cover of the edition that I own sums up Verga’s style so beautifully that I have to include it here: “Verga’s style is swift, sure, and implacable; he plunges into his stories almost in mid breath, and tells them with a stark economy of words.”
Another must-read that isn’t on this list: Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, which I reviewed here. Which Italian writers won over your heart? Are there other authors from foreign countries that expertly capture the essence of their home countries in their work?
This week’s What We’re Reading, is really a “What We Will Be Reading” over the long holiday weekend. Hazel and I will be lounging on a dock up at our family’s lake cabin complete with so-tacky-they’re-cute plastic cups with fishing lures on them, a fire pit, and, of course, a pile of books. I couldn’t be more excited. Here’s what I will be reading this Fourth of July weekend. What books will you be slinging along in your beach tote?
My meaty book will be The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang, published by Coffee House Press. Yang tells her family’s immigration journey from a refugee camp in Thailand to St. Paul, MN. This book has been getting great press lately and has been waiting patiently on my bookshelf for a few months now.
For a taste of poetry, I recently found a little volume of poems by Eugenio Montale at Half Price Books called Motetti: Poems of Love. Translated and introduced by Dana Gioia, and published by local Graywolf Press, the book alternates pages of Italian and English, which excites this rusty almost-Italian minor.
For the obligatory beach-side magazine, I’ll be catching up on the June issue of The Believer which I haven’t cracked yet (whoops!). The perfect magazine for a well-rounded literary sort.
And what about that “trashy” summer novel? Mine isn’t trashy, but it’s a light, fun read. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn is playful novel I’ve read countless times over the years about a community on a made-up island who take their letters very seriously. With an overzealous government outlawing the use certain letters, our heroine Ella Minnow Pea leads this alphabet-crazed, tongue-tied adventure.
Enjoy you Fourth of July weekend, and tell me what you’re reading!
