Elena Ferrante - The Neapolitan Novels

i read days of abandonment this spring and it was one of the best things i've ever read. this sounds dumb but it made me feel really strong emotions, just spending a week living every thought shudder and curse of a dejected wife and mother's lonely walks and paranoid screeds. the scene with the dog at the end is a masterpiece of building tension, almost unbearable at times, but i stayed up until like 4 am that night. i remember it as a sweaty, queasy, and unmistakably italian novel. bummed to hear that people aren't feeling this trilogy, but if it is anything like knausgaard then maybe it's nothing like abandonment because that book is the complete opposite of knaus

Think most everybody on this thread enjoys the trilogy, and I'm looking fwd to Days

And everything else by her

sick. you're gonna love days, dow

Even punky, too-smart-for-her-own good Lila actually wants to stay in the neighborhood, to make it safer...but once she and the narrator learn to read and express themselves (to themselves, as well as others) in Italian, not just dialect, look out Code-switch sparks already flying upward in first chapters of The Story of a New Name: even the title might be referring to this in one sense, switching from ref to fateful married-lady name. Lenu tries to say something conciliatory to her boyfriend, but it comes out in that there fancy-ass Italian, more salt in his wounds! While Lila spits the ghetto pepper at just the wrong moment, to just the wrong person----don't want to drop any spoilers--will note that her silence can be a problem too, and Lenu maybe for the first time specifically articulates something at least implied in the first volume: "The photographer had been fortunate. I felt that he had caught the force that Stefano had talked about; it was a force---I seemed to grasp---against which not even Lila could prevail."(Though obv. in some sense she does prevail. since the whole series begins, is provoked by, her 66-year-old punkoid acting out). Also, contemporary politics are just starting to get closer to young adults' POV, via possible or supposedly possible business deals.

Also, the Truth, via dirty dialect, can be too much, too lucid and too lurid to let yourself believe. Ditto even just the plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face truth, in basic Italian or dialect: to the right person at the right moment, "You're just like your father"is an elephant tranquilizer.

I really 'preciate the fact that the author isn't playing any coy shell games re an Unreliable Narrator: right from the beginning of the first book, we know that she is recalling events filtered through decades, generations really, gradually reeling in the years, avoiding tangles with all the mad skills and gifts that she and Lina were born with and to, inextricably---the webs are deep enough, without any tangles. She's also (in case Lila's really finally pushed luck and everything else too far this time) recreating life in words vs. death---incl. "reducing it to words," as she describes Lila's own writing at one point, recreating violent crimes from newspapers, as a way of setting her own, then-currently plausible fears and speculations down in manageable containers. And/or revving herself up for whatever might be required to get Lila out of a jam one more time, or at least wrap her brain around it (figure that's the subject of the final volume, the English title of which will be The Story of The Lost Child, I think).
Also, she drawing on long-ago memorized pages from Lila's own notebooks, plus conversations with their other friends from childhood, whose further entanglements with L. developed while the narrator wasn't present. The differences/attachements between Lila, as the rest of the neighborhood calls her, and Lila, the side of her named that by the narrator alone. get more and more dynamic (aside from the very brought married name). And of course the narrator (who forthrightly acknowledges that her own voice as a writer always has notes of Lila is )named Elena, same as the pen name of the author, who seems to be cultivating, harvesting her own Lila-ness, the truth-bringing outsider, probably far beyond the career of the in-book Elena/Lenu. but we'll see(maybe schoolteaching, b-plus writer Elena Greco gets a creative breakthrough/bust-out best seller from her memoirs and the real Lila shows up again, and the narrator diligently inspects her for "you owe me" vibes)

very *fraught* married name, that is.

Also, speaking of suitable containers, and challenges, can see how wrangling 60s computers, another bit mentioned at the beginning of the series, will prove worthy, at least for a while: looks like Lila's punk spirit will go proto-cyberpunk, even got the grunge city surroundings of 80s per-se cyberpunk (although I can't help remembering "We would say study even when reading a science fiction novel"---zing, ouch! Have mercy, ladies)

The early days of IT consulting bit was amazing and totally unexpected direction for the book to take.

I am just two thirds through 'My Brilliant Friend' and enjoying it. But I'm also finding it ... stark? Moving very slowly, at least, though not unenjoyably so. The dalliances of the courtyard and the adolescent romantic hijinks aren't to me adding to much, and it reminds me often of film more than literature. I've felt (obvious) connections to I Vitelloni, a whole catalog of Spanish bildungsroman, and even, some Bergman and Fassbinder. But I'm also intrigued by the way in which the book is both picaresque and modernist. I'll read the second one, 'though I may need a palate cleanser in between.

i used commas like an amateur

I hate commas! The first book takes them from early childhood to 16, a densely packed passage for anyone anywhere, and maybe especially for a couple of wired, brainy girls pushing through that neighborhood. The second book goes from 16 to 23, and is maybe even slower, but roomier,warmer, and somewhat less (or differently) frenetic. They're growing up absurd, but they're growing up.

The early days of IT consulting bit was amazing and totally unexpected direction for the book to take. Right, and I've recently been reading about what an ironic turnabout the current sexism of Silicon Valley is, since so many of the early programmers were female, and the orginal computers were too: lady calculators, doing their lacy maths, and engineers were the hardy, practical men. (So the original sexism of pre-Silicon Valley, but also a striking transition, in terms of trusting/depending on female smarts in the modern world. The earliest ads for "business machines" I've seen all feature women in elaborate Victorian/Edwardian office attire, smiling like Mona Lisa as they operate very complicated-looking gear;)

People should read Ellen Ullman's novel 'The Bug' for more on that (70s/80s era)

There is the IT element but also the consultancy element but there would be spoilers in talking about this as it doesn't come in till the 3rd volume.

I've felt (obvious) connections to I Vitelloni, a whole catalog of Spanish bildungsroman, and even, some Bergman and Fassbinder.

Which Spanish bildungsroman (one of the finest words in any language huh?) would you be referring to?

I finished watching Fassbinder's adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz recently and I can totally see it (Bergaman too in Cries and Whispers??) The recurring theme of domestic violence, the idea that actually getting away from that particular place (which does not happen in Berlin) is the best thing these people can do.

I don't know who could play Lenu tho'?

So Lenu's memories---used for what seems more and more like autobiographical fiction, novels-within-novels---are filtered through first-person testimony, from her own experience and that of mutual friends, also gossip, and the pages of Lina's notebooks, long-gone but once memorized (all of the above "reduced to words," as she describes the secret side of Cap'n Ahab Lina's lifelong efforts to contain and control chaos), *as well as* the author/narrator's own reading, watching, listening to other voices, other artful and/or entertaining constructions. As anyone's are ("If we write about this," my friends and I agreed when the Big Thing happened in high school, "It'll likely be some more end-of-the-innocence shit." Respect for reflecting and getting past or deep into that, Elena/Lenu).
Of course, she's also got the diet of your basic late-20th Century/early 21rst media chowhound, and that of a media professional, who may sometimes still feel like the scholarship kid from the backstreets, forever catching up.
Would like to see this as a four-season miniseries, though might have to be online, since not sure if will be enough boobs 'n' blood (prob former, suspect not the latter) for HBO/Showtime.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6370/art-of-fiction-no-228-elena-ferrante

she has such a great voice

put a hold on the first of these books at the library then i noticed i was 86 in line wow

just finished days of abandonment and it was quite something. the scene in carrano's apartment is just

have a week in greece in april & I'm saving part 2 of the neapolitans for that.

"the land that feminism forgot" indeed. eek

the relationship with her kids is so well drawn and close to being genuinely disturbing as it increasingly seems like she will abandon them (or worse). thought her final judgement on her husband was especially brutal too

https://nplusonemag.com/issue-22/reviews/those-like-us/

Started as soon as you posted the link and immediate lol:

If Starnone is behind Ferrante’s work, I would like to meet him. No man I know would write so well and not take credit for it.

Re xpost pioneering female IT

Jennifer Ehle retweeted
Andrew Rader ‏@marsrader 7m7 minutes ago

Margaret Hamilton next to Apollo flight computer code she hand typed @MIT to help send humans to the Moon in 1969.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CC0swqEWIAEaYez.jpg

How much of that code she also wrote I dunno, but some killer typing yo

Started Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay a couple days ago, rolling waaay into the first third on the Ferrante Express. Lenu's olfactory sense is working overtime, also she wonders if she gives off the erotic charge she's increasingly getting from so many of her peers in the heat of verbal battle (getting to be more than verbal over on Lina/Lila's turf). Seems really unusual, at least in any contemporary fiction this promoted, to foreground the nuances and trajectory of students and workers, arguing and otherwise struggling toward a common cause, common action, choosing and swept along.
So far more use of small-world coincidence than expected, but it's working.

off to naples in june so saving pt.3 until then. the scene in the factory at the end of pt.2 is just...

Shifting, for now, from the class strife of labor to that of competitive matriarchs with young mothers in play, new feminism (not topically contrived, seems natural), secret vision of the smarter Solare brother ( but with his own matriarch lurking in the shadows, finally glimpsed for a moment), a young husband who's kind of goofy but somewhat sympathetic then again can see how bad he might be up ahead...

Slamming into the finish today, unexpectedly. Guess I'll keep my mouth shut about the details, but amazing how some other characters feel the need to rise toward the absolute self-assertion that Lila exemplifies, in their minds--while she herself seems to want to keep a lid on things, becoming another hard-boiled matriarch of the old neighborhood (or so it seems). Maybe she'll even be the next Signora Solara, in terms of loansharking, anyway (the computer could come in even handier).
But it's also a matter of non-Lila/Lina pressures, even or especially on and in the self-obsessed, in the particular churn of 70s Italy.

Been a couple of weeks since I saw Lessing's Each His Own Wilderness, v in line with Angry Young Men in '59 type stuff (from my v thin knowledge of it) but also much broader range, given her political commitments and her views of relationships between men and women in those pressure cooker circles (if not in general). Nothing too new if you've read The Golden Notebook.

Put it here for the utterly warped and toxic mother-son relationship. Saw it as proto-Ferrante in the way it dealt w/resentment of motherhood, detailing how women sacrifice their intellect and other passions, slowly dying inside if they only focus on bringing up children..

i'm halfway thru #1 and i just wanna ask: are all three about lila and lenu?

y

Also, the forthcoming Vol. 4, most likely. But their worldviews expand and contract in various ways: for instance, in being and having children and parents, and in the way they influence (incl. manipulate) each other, and others, within and beyond the neighborhood.

Paris Review interview now online (and she's started following me on twitter---uh-oh):
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6370/art-of-fiction-no-228-elena-ferrante

Maybe she confused you with tattoo artist?

who?

who's the tattoo artist, I mean

I dunno I looked at your twitter and you had a namesake with that profession.

Your name plus a one ("1") at the end

*starts following Elena Ferrante*

Afraid I don't tweet or twitter. Any updates?

Her account seems to be a lot of re-tweets from other people's praise. Her own tweets are in Italian.

That interview was great, lots to say but I already said it. On twitter :-)

finished my brilliant friend the other day. completely adored it and can't wait to read the next. only caveat would be to suggest to ferrante-virgins: read days of abandonment first. they're both probably equally amazing but days just jumps out at you in a way the trilogy doesn't. it's like a fever dream, while the trilogy so far is actually pretty happy

jesus really? i'm nearing the end of MBF right now and the whole thing seems suffused with dread

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.

can't wait!

https://twitter.com/reynoldsmichael/status/601028422865915905

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1609452860/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1609452860&linkCode=as2&tag=conversatio07-20&linkId=5XDCXBIYPMGBKW5Q

the final part - its nearly here.

Saw that the other night

Automatic thread bump. This book is dropping next week.

— System

I guess for me, there is a big leap from "X is similar to Y" to "X contributes to Y" or "X is Y".

There are so many ways a couple can influence each other's writing: sentence style, editing style, sense of humour, history, likes, kinks, pecadilloes, etc. This is normal. The Ferrante issue seems wedded to rather old-fashioned sexist assumptions about female authorship (also a problem for female musicians, sports people, scientists...) and the equally questionable idea that appropriating stories from other people's lives somehow lessens you as an author.

There's no gender/authorship issue in Homer AFAIK

Funnily enough there is.

https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/authoress-odyssey-1897

"and the equally questionable idea that appropriating stories from other people's lives somehow lessens you as an author."

iirc I don't think -- in that lithub piece, anyway -- there was an attempt to lessen Ferrante. You could argue this kind of thing could enrich.

"to train a machine-learning algorithm to profile authors"

the desire to know more abt an author isn't silly but the idea that this kind of phrenology-by-robots is any use *is* p silly: it's crappier and more speculative than most forensic and profiling cop science, and we now know that most forensic and profiling cop science is also garbage (up to and including fingerprints)

plus it's done by robots! famously not good at reading novels well imo

Funnily enough there is.

https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/authoress-odyssey-1897

ha! that is great

xposts

Re: appropriating, I guess it's the assumption that an author has to have lived through something (e.g. been raised in, as opposed to just being born in, Naples) to write about it. And therefore anyone who *has* been raised in Napes (conveniently a dude) must QED have written the book or part of it

plus it's done by robots! famously not good at reading novels well imo

― mark s, Friday, 18 March 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Don't think the robot is reading a novel. The lithub piece describes a study where they look at phrases from Ferrante against author a, b, c etc. This analysis took out everyone except Starnone.

There was then a horrible tabloidy investigation years later that pointed to Raja, who is married to Starnone. So in this case it looks like the robot did its job.

I could see how some readers would find it galling, as xp Thurman says, if Ferrante turned out to be a male author with no female input, although of course Raja could be giving him all manner of feedback, guidance, notes, without having the final say, putting down phrases in analyzable way----but I'm always more interested in what's on the page or other medium (controversies in music and visual arts too)

Very excited for this translation of Starnone.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/06/02/boy-remembers-his-fierce-father-rich-family-novel/