Elena Ferrante - The Neapolitan Novels

"AT ALL" upthread was a bit overstated, yes -- but this^^^is my problem w/lanchester

― mark s, Wednesday, 19 October 2016 09:20 (nine hours ago) Permalink

so your friend who is a banker confirms your suspicion that he is not good because he explains things you already know..? (lol). also, who is his father? someone important in finance? can't find anything googling

someone on the thread i linked to said they skimmed an interview with JL in which he said his dad was a banker -- that's all the lead i have, it may be nonsense, he may be self-taught

no my friend confirmed that he over-explains the easy stuff and skips past the tricky stuff

basically if someone is not bothering to explore or explain the bits i think need explaining then i stop reading them -- i agree this is not the same as "knowing nothing" but for my purposes it is the same as "not knowing enough", since the bits i need to learn about are the bits not yet being explained properly

i could go back and reread whoops! and report to you exactly what those are but it seems a bit pointless, as you're happy with what you're getting (and seem to be making heavy enough weather of my post)

All good, mate. just thought maybe there was some good dirt on Lanch i didn't know about, and was curious is all. ftr I like him because he is a good elucidator of the simple yet tricky to the uninitiated basics of finance (even though I studied this stuff & should be among the initiated)

All good, mate
Are we talking about Cortázar on this thread too?

re: Lanchester. I probably need Economics explained that way. The problem with the pieces is that it still feels abstract, the need for education in this stuff has never felt greater and Lanchester never feels like its bridging the gap.

I quite like to take economics classes. I know certain branches of Momentum were doing some. Delivery of an understanding of how this stuff works (or when it doesn't and why) sounds like a good battleground. Lanchester is just not in that conversation.

yeah sorry flopson, i was in a foul temper on wed eve and that was leaking out sideways a bit

FYI Ha-Joon Chang's 'Economics - A User's Guide' is a much better primer in that vein than anything by Lanchester.

no my friend confirmed that he over-explains the easy stuff and skips past the tricky stuff

This is OTM.

What would you consider some of the tricky stuff he evades? Most recent Lanch I read was the Bitcoin one and it was great

i have NO idea what you guys are talking about on here now. though you did inadvertently make me go listen to miami bass on youtube the other day:

"I started Whoops! but (again)*..."

Finished. No more will I see the figures I have come to know walking along the stradone and think to myself: "what the hell is a stradone anyway?"

i too am finished and now i'm at a loss. anyone got any good articles about the novels to recommend?

I like Dayna Tortorici's overview of Ferrante's fiction; there's also Ferrante's Paris Review interview.

The second half of the final book feels as long as the rest of them put together. I'm still enjoying it, I've just slowed waaay down after flying through everything else.

How words build up in these incredible inedible edifices, then collapse, and some people start over, some just endure, maybe stash some of the pieces. Also the shuddering implosions and aftershocks of Mid-20th Century, and later, especially in Italy, if only because that's where the characters are born and bred, but also it makes a great example. The narrator Elena/Lenu is maybe afraid of falling into the void within her edifice, her facade, so she's always drawn to, and afraid of Lina/Lila, the magnetic control freak who sees the void in all things, sometimes cynically, sometimes freaking right the fuck out---so much uncertainty---though no doubt the narrator sets herself up for the punchline.

Not saying either of them is right or wrong to feel the way they do (although the narrator also invites our sympathy, and her great frenemy is a badass babe even as a crone). It makes sense, when you know where they're coming from.

Then again, for example, do we have to have an actual literal earthquake in there, even at that point? I mean of course it has consequences and shit, but oh well getting apoilery I guess but who among you are really surprised it's in there, even if you haven't gotten that far. I'll shut up now though.

But Lina/Lila really does try, in her way, to be free, and live life, and deals the only way she can see---kinda cracking my heart some more, thinking about it again without wanting to---damn, girl!

(On AMC by the end of the decade, I bet, and that may be the best way to experience it.)

btw just found a series of podcasts: Radio Ferrante

Might check one or two.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/29/elena-ferrante-writing-again-publisher-says-neopolitan-series-novel

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/18/elena-ferrante-to-become-guardian-weekends-new-columnist

Not sure this is a good idea - Ferrante is someone that (as she says) needs privacy and space ("remove oneself from all forms of social pressure or obligation"). Not sure how turning out pieces on deadline fits into that. Hope I'm wrong.

bought my mom Days of Abandonment for xmas and she loved it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntoN-sDFvZc

I've just started listening to MBF on Audible. Too early to really tell whether it's my thing or not.

I did smile at the scene with the dolls. Give it a go once its out on DVD

Weird! I just started the second book.

Every so often I half bake a theory about how Lena and Lenu are actually the same person, the narrator vocalising different halves of their personality, or Lena writing Lenu as the life she would like to have had, but I don't want to read the books again or go too far down that rabbit hole for fear of ruining these amazing characters for myself.

For real though the second half of the fourth book feels super rushed and would have worked better as a fifth novel in its entirety.

Wondering if the audiobook narrator puts on a comedy italian accent for every mention of the stradone.

why film this

They're popular books, that's why

I've gone back and forth on it, personally, but do I often get 'prestige TV' producers putting big money and talent behind a story about two poor smart girls in Naples growing up dealing with their intellects? No, so I'll take the change of pace even as it'll obviously not represent the book experience

Why not film? Not only is it popular but you can film it. One of her earlier books has already been made into an Italian film.

finished vol 1, sure everyone's already gone over the various ways it's great but she really does such an incredible job of conveying the social logic that underpins the community

xp. def seems like something that could be a prestige cable show

Mildly annoying how the suthor seeks to 'connect' to Ferrante in the interview - that aside its pretty good.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/magazine/elena-ferrante-hbo-my-brilliant-friend.html

Having not read the novels (yet): this series is, at times, absolutely mesmerizing en wholly captivating. The four actresses playing both the kids Lena/Lila and teenagers Lena/Lila are so natural and display just the right amount of mystery/ambiguity. They're directed masterfully. Been quite a while since I saw such an engrossing show. Can't wait to dig in the novels.

Her Guardian columns, now being collected in book form, are surprisingly feeble.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god - new Ferrante novel will be published in Italian on 7 November. I am going to faint. https://t.co/TZvMLiI6Qi

— Barbara H. (@behalla63) September 9, 2019

Publisher tweeted the beginning:

It begins like this. #ElenaFerrante #NewNovel Translated by Ann Goldstein. pic.twitter.com/wHoNW5yBB2

— Europa Editions (@EuropaEditions) September 9, 2019

Europa Editions
@EuropaEditions
·
6h
We don't yet have a title or English publication date.

We now have all of that and more (news):
https://www.elle.com/culture/books/a29609124/elena-ferrante-the-lying-life-of-adults-announcement/

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/03/elena-ferrantes-form-and-unform/

right on: It’s an intriguing thought experiment to consider the difference between this long work, L’amica geniale, and the short novel that Lenù produces at the end of volume 4, simply titled Un’amicizia (“A Friendship”). That book, whose publication revives Lenù’s literary celebrity, proves the end of Lila and Lenù’s relationship. Lenù speculates about what makes Lila turn away from her when it comes out, but none of her guesses seem to strike at the implicit truth, visible to Ferrante’s readers if not her narrator. It is perhaps the novella’s static precision and taut shapeliness, so unlike L’amica geniale’s long, ungainly battle between form and unform—between, in Lila’s paraphrased words, “telling things just as they happened, in teeming chaos” and “work[ing] from imagination, inventing a thread”—that makes it such a dishonest and inauthentic betrayal of the truth of their lives, both together and apart.

Then again, we can only guess, as Lenu does, because Ferrante doesn't include the text of the short novel, just a few of the narrator's brief summaries, flashlight passes. But yes, this is the great tension to be sought, as precision, however (necessarily?) static to some degree, and omg taut shapeliness gimme more, 'til time for more unform.

“work[ing] from imagination, inventing a thread” which of course is part of what Ferrante does, ditto both friends, in their own ways.

Finished Troubling Love (1995) (her first book) and happy to report that the style, themes, rhythms were all there from the beginning.

I do think Ferrante's pre-quartet novels are a species of writing in itself that that deserve a mapping out. Short, intense, sharply unreliable ways to talk about trauma and abuse in families that take it away from the documentary. Thinking of Marie Darrieussecq's My Phatom Husband (1998) and The Helios Disaster (2015) by Linda Knausgard. Previous generations were perhaps using half-blank historical events to bake these themes in: Cassandra by Christa Wolf (1983) and Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian (1951). Maybeee...if anyone knows more like it then please recommend.

This June 9, Ferrante’s international publishers will gather to discuss the art of translation, Ferrante’s work, the worldwide success of her Neapolitan quartet, and the author’s new novel, The Lying Life of Adults, coming September 1, 2020. The conversation will include a multilingual, transnational reading from the new book, and a panel conversation with celebrity Ferrante fans. It will conclude with an audience Q&A.

Elena Ferrante’s “star translator” Ann Goldstein will be joined by novelist, biographer, and short-story writer Roxana Robinson (Sparta, Cost), author and academic Merve Emre (The Ferrante Letters), comparative literature professor and Ferrante scholar Tiziana de Rogatis (Elena Ferrante’s Key Words), author and Guardian columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett (The Tyranny of Lost Things), and others.

Preorder The Lying Life of Adults at Bookshop.org.

You are invited to join thousands of fellow readers from around the world at this unique celebration. It is happening online, on a laptop computer or smart phone near you, in our virtual #PiazzaFerrante.
Register above.

If you enjoyed Europa’s #OurBrilliantFriends After Dinner Book Club and Watch Party series, you will love this international celebration of translation and reading.

Registration for this event is free, but please consider making a minimum donation of $5 when you register.

All proceeds will benefit the PEN America Writers’ Emergency Fund, a long-standing and recently expanded fund intended to assist fiction and non-fiction authors, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, translators, and journalists who are unable to meet an acute financial need—especially one resulting from the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.
More info:
https://us3.campaign-archive.com/?u=24b74ea1f8a82219b78215f23&id=a11255d396&e=14ba70a7b5

Update today:

Dear Friends,

A private funeral service for George Floyd, who was killed by police in Minneapolis on May 25th, has been scheduled for June 9th in Houston.

Given the circumstances of Floyd’s death and the subsequent widespread reactions, June 9th will undoubtedly be a day more suited to reflection than to celebration.

For these reasons, we have made the decision to reschedule the #OurBrilliantFriends event. The event will now be held on Tuesday, June 23rd, at the same time.

You will not need to register again. You will receive a reminder email about this event closer to June 23rd, and an email with details on how to join shortly before the event starts.

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your support.

Best wishes,
Europa Editions

reminder, for Tues.

https://img.evbuc.com/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.evbuc.com%2Fimages%2F103421898%2F277252655646%2F1%2Foriginal.20200612-152347?w=800&auto=format%2Ccompress&q=75&sharp=10&rect=0%2C0%2C2160%2C1080&s=8816b22454618ad653d2bff332355214
if can't see that, basic info:
Date And Time
Tue, June 23, 2020

3:00 PM – 4:30 PM CDT
Same participants as above, maybe more? Free etickets etc:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/our-brilliant-friendsafter-lunch-book-club-tickets-104692616434?aff=ebdssbeac

New novel is nearly here:

"Ferrante’s fiction reminds us that sometimes you need someone else to help gather the scattered fragments of your existence. A writer is a friend who can [give] you the beginning and end you need—if not in life, then in fiction." @TheAtlantichttps://t.co/xOFaDts1kL

— Europa Editions (@EuropaEditions) August 10, 2020

The few of these I've read are def worth picking: A Manual For Cleaning Women, The Year of Magical Thinking, The Lover, some of the stories in Dear Life, and Gilead, which I'm reading now. I hope to get to the others (although I keep being put off by Zadie Smith's nonfiction, which can start well and go sideways).

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/21/elena-ferrante-names-her-40-favourite-books-by-female-authors