Elena Ferrante - The Neapolitan Novels

The covers look aspirationally literary. See my mom's bookshelves. My mom isn't a poor woman with restricted access to education, but she was once.

xp- i love how it's a book about a mother but it's not about being a mother; she finds no comfort in the love of her children. the kids are just background noise in the frantic haze, just another constraint in the balancing act, placed there to add to the chaos.

Is this a literary thing or more young-adult?

― calstars, Saturday, April 2, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well its easy-to-read, but a lot of literature is easy to read.

Not long afterward, the underground war that occasionally erupted into the newspapers and on television - plans for coups, police repression, armed bands, firefights, woundings, killings, bombs and slaughters I was struck again by in the cities large and small.

Eh?

I presume the narrator's referring to the Years of Lead.

I presume she is trying to say "Not long afterward I was struck again by the underground war...", there must be a missing dash after 'slaughters' but even then 'in the cities large and small' is entirely out of place.

ows posted a link of commentary as it relates to Knausgaard, here is the stuff on Ferrante: http://173.254.14.229/2015/06/the-slow-burn-an-introduction/

Just read the first post, which is brilliant, thanks. Right about the resistance to settling on/into one identity, and reminds of EF interviews re finding the freedom of the two main characters (exchanging etc., as the commentator says here)(but also on and off what becomes their own tracks, as they live so long). Judging from excerpts of novels before this quartet, their one or dominant narrative voice was more like Lila/Lina, or maybe even like Lina/Lila and Lenu/Elena G. simultaneously, trapped in the same body---anyway, the two lifelines provide more range, it seems (though I'll have to read those earlier books).

Finished 3, the soap opera is strong with this one. As is the irony, that just as she is on the verge of becoming a feminist crusader, just as she realises what a chauvinist nino is being, just at the exact moment that she goes to give him a piece of her mind... she falls into bed with him. Ferrante sells it though. Certainly rings more true than the end of The Bostonians.

Yeah, for sure, but also, the husband seems like such a foole at first, and he is---but not, as also seems at first, lol Casaubon and he's done, son---no.he actually, maybe starting when he doesn't back down from the student---oops spoiler for others---well he has his own bit of dumb stubborness/luck--->saving grace under pressure=adaptablity---needs a whole lot more of this last, but---well, you'll see in 4. Also: her child-rearing, also her not child-rearing practices...

well this sucks

The allegation about her identity? I agree; it seems like a pointless violation of Ferrante's privacy.

Went through her thrash - very tabloid. NYRB publishing this reflects v badly on them - the excuse this is being published in other newspapers in different languages doesn't scan. Not sure what other line they can take to defend it. The accompanying article on Raja's family I have not read but it begins by stating that "There are no traces of Anita Raja’s personal history in Elena Ferrante’s fiction", which assumes I would be looking for that when reading her books.

EF's been quoted to the effect that she wouldn't stop writing if outed, but she would stop publishing.

YES

i would rather enjoy resenting and blaming whatsisname for the rest of my days until her estate publishes her posthumous books

Reckon she'll burn 'em before dying. Nothing less than what we deserve.

This is kind of awful. I can think of at least one other writer that some of us have read who was unable to write after their cover was blown

And of course in this situation the damage is magnified a hundredfold.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ct5Tte5XgAAIGPl.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tJGk4ofc18

I have seen about a hundred comments and articles deploring this 'outing' in the strongest terms.

I have not seen one comment, anywhere, praising it.

They can't be thinking it was a very good thing to do! Or: who would think this was a good thing to do?

(I have not read EF but do not support the outing)

had to happen sooner or later. if she had sold literary fiction numbers nobody would have cared. but if you sell millions of books and you are a "mystery" people are gonna see that as a challenge. i honestly don't see it making much of a difference. she can still live an anonymous life. nobody is going to recognize her anywhere.

i do love that she lied in interviews about her history!. so sneaky. and fun too.

i also love the east german/christa wolf thing. very interesting. i can't wait to tell my german-speaking translator wife who as part of her college thesis translated multiple stories by east german women writers about this.

I think I'll leave it up to the woman in question whether or not this violation of her privacy will 'make much of a difference'... She chose to be anonymous for a reason, and that reason was shat on by an arrogant asshole for no good reason.

The other thing that really pisses me off, which people talked a bit about after the robbery of Kim Kardashian, was how there's just no way to win for a woman artist. If you choose to be a public figure, well then you've chosen to be a public figure, and you should expect the abuse and harassment that always follows female public figures. If you choose to no be public, then you're a 'mystery', and you should expect people seeing it as a challenge to violate your privacy. There's no winning, the only answer really is to not be a brilliant artist. Leave that to the men, ay?

Fuck that shithead journalist, and all the misogynistic harassment he represents.

"for no good reason."

journalist with a hot story! totally a good reason. if you are a journalist.

it's too tempting for people. why is that so hard to understand?

I just don't think shitting on people is ok because it's 'too tempting'. If I saw that asshole irl I'd be mightily tempted to knock his fucking teeth out, but that wouldn't be an excuse, would it?

Like, men should not be allowed to violate a woman's privacy because it's 'too tempting'. Stop blaming the victim.

This is papparazzi behavior--it's not like there was some angle, like "Did someone from the Clinton campaign write Primary Colors?" or "Is this JT Leroy thing for real?" This is just: "Hey, check it out! Elsa Ferrante is actually this woman you've never heard of."

Don't really see how this is any different from journalists (or fans!) pursuing Salinger or Pynchon - every mystery creates a detective.

Well, that's assholish too. The obvious difference is that neither Salinger nor Pynchon were writing under pseudonyms.

This is pretty good: https://newrepublic.com/article/137400/sexist-big-reveal?utm_content=buffere5fe5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The obvious difference is that neither Salinger nor Pynchon were writing under pseudonyms.

The main parallels I keep thinking of are musicians like Burial (who I believe outed himself when tabloids were trying to do it for him). Or Banksy.

this isn't *praise*, but it's not condemnation: http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/10/elena-ferrantes-unmasking-wasnt-the-end-of-the-world.html

idk, i guess i'm mainly surprised that nyrb was a party to it rather than, say, . . . gawker

from that npr thing from last year:

"One published theory claims Ferrante is really Anita Raja, Anita being the diminutive of Anna. Raja is a consultant for Ferrante's Italian publisher. She is also the wife of the Neapolitan writer Domenico Starnone, who himself has been "accused" of being Elena Ferrante."

"And besides, Vicinanza says, it doesn't really matter who Ferrante is anyway."

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/01/436289199/in-new-neapolitan-novel-fans-seek-clues-about-mysterious-authors-past

i think it matters - to the reader - as much as you want it to matter. though there is certainly plenty of grist for the academic mill no matter how you slice it. a woman who wanted to not be present/known/get accolades for herself writing about women who...well, you get the idea.

i'd have to imagine her life was already pretty complicated. doesn't that kind of evasion always create complications? hiding/having secrets takes a lot of energy.

right on time: http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-identity-of-a-famous-person-is-news-1787392847

agree with that piece that nobody has any right to privacy

going to go out on a limb and say that being anonymous is much easier than being internationally famous

doesn't that kind of evasion always create complications? hiding/having secrets takes a lot of energy.

especially now that there aren't any phone booths to change clothes in

I'm completely uninterested in this outing - other than being generally against it - excepting the fact that the author of the neapolitan novels not being working class and from naples will definitely change the way some readers view the books, which I've often seen alluded to/assumed as being autobiographical.

especially if i think like - imagine if there were a critically acclaimed series of books written about working class glasgow in the mid-19th century where the characters are luridly brutal and the pseudonymous author turned out to be a rich person from edinburgh i would probably not be too stoked

20th century blah

I think making up stories that didn't actually happen to you is a pretty cruel thing to do to people who read novels

It's like when that Shakespeare guy pretended that HE was the one that wrote about the nobles and such.

where did the whole "mystery" thing originate anyway? italian newspapers? with her publisher? i would never have known it was even an issue if i hadn't read about it a ton. i mean i just would have read the books and probably never would have questioned her identity. the whole thing of doing computer analysis to figure out who she was - that started in italy, right? they do mention in one of those articles that in italy writers are everywhere and they are on t.v. all the time and that's not really true here. so there must be more pressure there to have some sort of public role.

well, with Eco now gone there aren't too many Italian novelists well known outside of Italy. It must be like having your star soccer player wear a mask all the time.

so many writers have written books with pseudonyms. and don't have their picture taken. and nobody cares. but her popularity and the romantic idea that these books were somehow a re-telling of someone's actual past helped create this thing. which is why you get such strong reactions, i think.

this is all just reminding me that i still have to read 3 & 4.

"It must be like having your star soccer player wear a mask all the time."

yeah, this is true too. italy wants to pat her on the back and she doesn't want to be patted on the back. how dare she? this whole thing is very human and right out of a novel written by a human.

If that deadspin article wasn't talking about ruining peoples lives just for the hell of it, it would be laughable. It can only discuss this in the terms of 'journalistic policy' and what people think in 'the field of journalism'. The self-obsession amongst these dipshits is so immense that it can't for one minute enter their minds, that this might actually have been a question about art and literature, and should be up to fans, critics and academics to figure out. No, this is a journalistic question, so here's how the most important people in the world, the journalists, should think about it. I honestly hope some stupid billionaire sues this piece of shit publication into oblivion as well, the world would be so much better without these assholes running around.

"literary scholars have tried to track her down by analyzing the text and the biographies of various possible Ferrantes. The problem here seems to be that Gatti actually got it RIGHT. Part of the Ferrante phenomenon — a sensation that I don’t think it’s crass to call massively profitable — was driven by the mystery of who the author was. People are naturally curious about the people who make the culture they consume, especially when it’s culture that they feel as strongly about as they do about Ferrante. And especially when the books themselves seem to invite a conflation between narrator and author. Despite her anonymity, Ferrante has given plenty of interviews, especially recently. If the pseudonym allowed us to encounter her work in a specific way initially, the status of the work has changed in the last several years: Enormous success comes with burdens as well as benefits, but it certainly makes her identity more newsworthy than it was when she first started writing under a pseudonym."

NYMag thing says it a lot better than i do...