Elena Ferrante - The Neapolitan Novels

Looking forward to part 4, should be out in Danish in spring 2016.

#1 remains my favorite and I'd rank them 1 > 2 > 3 but maybe 4 will wrap everything so nicely as to trump them all...

I've only read 1 and started 2. Feel like I should maybe reread 1 before proceeding further.

^ Yeah, same. I've read a couple chapters of the second. I liked the first, but just priority-wise I'm not sure if I want to keep going.

I mean once you get going on 2 & 3 they're real page turners, the writing is good and the whole milieu is great so def recommend them to anyone

long interview -

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/elena-ferrante-interview-the-story-of-the-lost-child
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/elena-ferrante-interview-the-story-of-the-lost-child-part-two

'the storey of the lost child' is probably the best of the four, searing, i think, its really incredible

have any of you read it? dont want to spoil it but have been dying to examine some of the pieces

Its good to know that you (who didn't like it as much as some of us) found this great.

I have seen this in the shops but haven't got it as I want to finish a couple of things first (funnily enough Mandelstam's Hope Abandoned does examine her friendships with Akhmatova and others too).

Please start talking about it. I just won't look at this for a while.

To wait for the Danish translation or buy the English version... that's a tricky question.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n17/joanna-biggs/i-was-blind-she-a-falcon

LRB almost never publish a review to coincide with publication..

i liked that review a lot although the parts about 'genre fiction' sent it (and me) off the rails. its one of the few that has mentioned what i think is most powerful and disquieting about reading them, their intense physicality, the way ferrante insists on the mind being bound to the body. i have a vague memory of feminist essay i read as a teenager where the author claimed that the astronaut in his spacesuit was the patriarchal ideal. pristine, white, mechanical, armored, divorced from the messy flesh of being. and i think its interesting to contrast the heaviness of ferrante's characters with the weightlessness of knausgård (to cast around for the closest example at hand). i had such trouble with the earlier parts particularly 'the story of the new name' because its wearying. walking up the last flight of tenement stairs after a long day of work. ferrante links the mental - art, friendship, intellect - to occupation of physical space in a way that seems radical, feminist.

idk theres a lot i liked thinking about here particularly the way that art forces coherence on life, that it attempts to coalesce, define boundaries, delineate identities. how false that can feel, how important truth is.

i lost my copy of brilliant friend somewhere :/

I am not sure I am getting where the shorter older stuff is more 'polished'. Both phases of her writing life present bks that are very fast and addictive as a read. To do with the short chapters and I also think she devised a bunch of characters and placed them in a universe that enabled her to write in this feverish mode for hundreds of pages...this comes back to the literary vs. genre opposition which the LRB peddles and I don't really like that.

That aside I liked the review.

Not read the bk or this artcile but love the headline:

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1604540.ece

Just finished (prob re-read some of) The Story of The Lost Child, and I predict another comeback hit for Elena Greco, which I hope she won't come to hate, as she says of her first comeback, A Friendship. Though she as her character/perhaps truest self yet, ends up on the page like she does (won't spoil, but she's somewhat bummed out/dissatisfied, as has often happened of course), hope she regards this as confessional validation, as much as possible, of her own worth, beyond being the well-scrubbed little girl from the ghetto who made good by following the now quaint rules for moderns, in a mediocre, backstabbing world. But of course, the Devil has the best lines.
Some of this Elena-Lenu x Lina-Lila (who seem to be merged in the voice of pre-Neapoliton Novels Ferrante, judging only by excerpts)may come from the back and forth of Anna the publicist, called Anita in the Neapolitan neighborhood recently visited (lost the link), and her novelist husband, or maybe not. But my experience in English makes translator Ann Goldstein seem invaluable, re the rough elegance and sometimes poetic turns of phrase, though the turns of the whole story must come through in the original as well, I assume---anybody read it in Italian??

I think this was at least *mostly* written by a woman, with husband or other editorial pushback/critiques, as every writer needs.

There's also the sense that, as Ferrante's referred to it in interviews, this is not a quartet, but one story (a multi-volume novel, like her childhood 19th Century heroes tended toward). So Elena Greco stops it at a good place, but it doesn't really seem like The End; she may still be writing, whenever there are new developments---but we'll probably (?) be left to speculate, as she does, and leaves spaces for us to do so in these books (so much detail, but she knows when to leave room for our brains, I think---def leaves a lot to be learned about Italy and everywhere else, no matter how much she says).

seems like this is everywhere lately

One of the big questions for up-from-the-bottom literary careerist Elena Greco is and always has been: how do you creatively represent/tap into your origins---semi-familiar to many, in terms of their undeniable churn, their real-life-whatever-that-is melodrama---without breaking faith, without (over-) exploiting the people you still care about? As a product of the 50s-60s-70s (etc.) American Deep South, I def get some of the problems of this Southern Italian, especially when---well, I don't want to be accused of spoilers (not that most of this turned out like I expected).

Greco's doubts about her own degree of artistic achievement, incl. integrity---oh yeah, and basic (?) talent, esp. compared the self-semi-tutored genius and/or charisma of you know who---are presented as plausible and entertaining.

seems like this is everywhere lately

― hot doug stamper (||||||||), Tuesday, September 22, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Good.

Reading book two - immediate punch in the face, every paragraph feels like it's one word away from exploding violently. The first one set this up so beautifully and here it's just one KO after the other.

On my paperback cover a quote by a critic reads "Imagine if Jane Austen got angry and you'll have some idea ..." - I don't get it.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/03/this-best-selling-author-is-still-anonymous.html

Reading this at the mo - for literary tourism its pretty good.

Made me laugh:

(Why is Shakira always on the radio in Southern Italy?)

Nice this quotes Shirley Hazzard - whom I am reading (though its not been a great week for reading anything) - Bay of Noon is another Naples book.

On Austen http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/16/sense-and-sensibility-jane-austen-elena-ferrante-anonymity

Great link, thanks. Pasted yr post on What Are You Reading?

my brilliant friend still has that hope springing from the upward trajectory of young life: lenu's academic progress, the cerullo shoe factory. also there's a beautiful, complex friendship at the centre of it. whereas days of abandonment is just 'husband left me and dog is shitting blood while i've locked myself out of the house' and the only glimmer of hope or friendliness is a sad, flaccid neighbour.

― flopson, Tuesday, 9 June 2015 16:42 (5 months ago) Permalink

can't wait!

― goole, Tuesday, 9 June 2015 17:02 (5 months ago) Permalink

yah p much

Finished book 4 saturday, it's been a great ride, kind of feel - and this sounds maybe a bit over the top but I think it could be true - like a slightly better person now

two thirds of the way through part one, will probably get the next three tomorrow

i don't know how much i can say other than pointing at bits and saying, huh, this is great, huh

it's also very--i mean, for a highbrow lit hit it's also kind of soap-opera functional in a way i can see my mother enjoying (in fact i am probably going to get my mother a copy of the first one, we'll see how that goes)

I think a lot can be said abt these books apart from the writing being outstanding

It's interesting to me that a novel with a relatively conservative form can seem so contemporary and alive - in part because the writing's fresh, in part because the themes it deal with resonate with current ideas on privilege, democracy, sexual roles, the body

great post upthread about the heaviness of bodies in ferrante (juxtaposed knausgaard)

for a highbrow lit hit it's also kind of soap-opera functional in a way i can see my mother enjoying

The covers were criticised as basically being low-brow but they actually say something about this quality of the books.

Reckon my mother would at least like bits of it - but idk perhaps she'd struggle with the setting. Hmm..

I'd be happy if this series apart from being fantastic fiction would also help blurr some dated genre distinctions...

must admit I was surprised by the cover of my American ed of vol. 4, like the Danish covers more:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AHSC_QGQxxw/Vcr1RERK9oI/AAAAAAAADX0/n1TJDbeI-XI/s1600/PicMonkey%2BCollage.jpg

'fantastic fiction' -- lol, there are parts that make me think of sci fi -- but that's another thing

i liked the cover a lot more once i started reading--they started to feel like seeing idk kodachrome images in mad men. idk if ever kodachrome was a thing in mad men. mb the one on the slides.

the xpost twitter account recently dropped the posts and started looping images, incl. quite a variety of covers. Check it out, if you don't mind getting stuck inside a mobile.
The soap opera devices might relate to the 19th Century literary inspirations she's mentioned in all the interviews I've seen, which may have helped upstart female authors get past initially unfavorable and frequently ludicrous reviews, infiltrating the new mass audience, to some extent. George Eliot wasn't above killing off a major character at just the right/most convenient moment, and satisfyingly so, because we can expect good stuff coming. Same with Ferrante; we just barely have time to say, "Hey, wait a minute," and ba-boom, another onslaught of development. And of course, dealing with the daily onslaught, with sensory overload at times, is one of the main themes of this saga, maybe *the* theme, when you come right down to it. Which doesn't seem very 19th Century overall, but prob some early examples?

xp lol didn't mean "fantastic" fiction just meant it's great

i know! but i wanted to remind myself to develop that comparison when i had time

i just finished the first volume and aw man, seriously, that's where this ends? hell of a fucking cliffhanger

is it? i haven't cracked the second one yet but i'm p sure they stay together

cliffhanger is the wrong word but so is revelation: i guess one can work through all the intermediary steps by which the shoe made its way to the foot. i guess what i mean is basically "oh shit moment"

indeed (speaking of Mad Men)

Ending to second may seem a little too soap opera, ending to third volume is "Damn, girl!" (not "You go, girl," at least not from me), ending to four is perfect punchline for the whole story (multi-volume novel, another 19th Cent thing).

man I don't even know if I liked these or not

Finished the third book last night. Now to wait a year to read the last of these. Roll on Nov '15.

― xyzzzz__, Monday, 15 December 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

4th vol ordered from the library last night, so I'll get it just in time for xmas.

In volume four Lina more than once provokes Elena with her claim that Elena's work is neither one thing nor the other: that it neither fairly represents the jankiness of life nor pulls any kind of satisfying novelistic clarity of through-line out of it. This claim is foregrounded and repeated enough that it seems a fair extrapolation that we're meant to look at the novel we're reading in these terms, which is unfortunate, because I found it deeply frustrating. By halfway through the last book I was pretty certain none of the threads we'd been reading about were going to be resolved, ever, which I was right, with the exception of the story of the dolls, which I'd given up going 'but wait, what did happen to the dolls' a thousand pages ago. (I think, too, a little too on-the-nose for Elena to remind us more than once that Tina was the name of her doll, to draw the line for us between the two disappearances, to remind us that she set up Alfonso's queerness so many pages ago, too ... )

I don't know where I'm going with that complaint. Or rather I guess I think it's kind of ... I don't think whatever point is being made about art and life is so necessary as to make it worth denying the reader the consolations of narrative neatness which are so much in play for the first 600 pages or so; I think it's cheating too to have this freight at the same time as letting the book be driven so much by convenient it's-a-small-world-after-all re-appearances. One thing I do think is kind of a major narrative failing is that Lila's success with computers is so half-assed, that Elena just tells us 'I don't really understand how that happened': why is the thing that eventually affords her some kind of escape given so much less space than 'The Blue Fairy', than the Cerullo shoe factory, than the Solara store? but then maybe no one else wanted to read about the transition from punch-cards to BASIC in European industrial and home computing.

It was definitely a page turner for me because it had great narrative drive, but otoh I don't think the novel was "about" the narrative, at least I didn't really care that much abt loose ends or probability but more abt the characters, the milieus etc. Like, I think the way it depicts friendship, class, Italy and bodies makes it a great work - so if it's soapy in places and maybe a bit unresolved, oh well.

One thing I do think is kind of a major narrative failing is that Lila's success with computers is so half-assed, that Elena just tells us 'I don't really understand how that happened': why is the thing that eventually affords her some kind of escape given so much less space than 'The Blue Fairy', than the Cerullo shoe factory, than the Solara store?

iirc the shoe factory and shop are tied together to a number of relationships and specific places. Also yes "some kind of escape", its never complete.

When she takes up computing she sorta falls into it with the one person she escapes that place with. All felt 'new': the displacement from the town (where she would've never left in a prev generation) to a place and industry she could get into w/out a specific degree (unlike the narrator who uses education to escape; Ferrante shows other get-out routes opening up) and prosper, but I suppose the lack of that kind of BASIC detail does tie in with other, rough-ish aspects of this series.

Its just whether you look at this as merely rough or a flaw that can't be waived.

just setting myself up to disagree with the above in a couple of weeks.

i notice that i'm doing a kind of ferrante-ish sentence structure in the bit you quote, so obviously she's still inside of my head somewhat

i should also note that i've been on a bit of a downer the past couple weeks, so maybe that's influencing my feelings about the book -- that i was starting to query whether the book being a chore was getting in the way of my ability to focus on it (or anything else), or whether my inability to focus on it (or anything else) was rendering it a chore

really don't think complaints about denying us/taking away the pleasures of narrative neatness go with complaints about on-the-nose and it's a small world after all. As for the latter, she's been up front in interviews about 19th Century literary inspirations from early on (note that the little girls' big intellectual etc encounter is w Little Woman, and it's a long time before we get to mentions of any modern authors). Popular books that later became part of the canon were not above devices also used in schlock stage works of the time, or what we associate with soap operas, chick/dick lit etc (so Eliot kills off Casaubon at just the right moment; sucks for him, yay for us). Ditto Shakespeare etc--doesn't always work, but think EF redeems the use (no wrong notes, depending on what's played next)
Don't really want injections of The History of BASIC etc., which would seem like boilerplate, though could say lack shows limitations of first-person narrative, but the point of the latter is we don't really know whether Lina/Lila is " really"all that cracked genius or not (I've had the experience, a couple times, of finally meeting somebody my friends say is awesome, and thinking, "Whut?"). Point is the effect she has on others. Also she's a canary in the coalmine/extreme case re "dissolving boundaries," information overload, social implosions/explosions etc.

really don't think complaints about denying us/taking away the pleasures of narrative neatness go with complaints about on-the-nose and it's a small world after all

bro did you even read my post

In volume four Lina more than once provokes Elena with her claim that Elena's work is neither one thing nor the other: that it neither fairly represents the jankiness of life nor pulls any kind of satisfying novelistic clarity of through-line out of it. This claim is foregrounded and repeated enough that it seems a fair extrapolation that we're meant to look at the novel we're reading in these terms -- like ferrante is definitely rubbing the readers nose in the way she's both doing a bunch of unlikely narrative reconnections while also refusing certain others