Elena Ferrante - The Neapolitan Novels

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

Only two duds of the nine I've read - Normal People and A Little Life. But they're event books, if you care about that kind of thing. Love Gilead, would also stan for Outline and Memoirs of Hadrian.

Surprised Ferrante engaged in that kind of thing.

Available March 15, 2022
$20・176 pgs・9781609457372
Europa Editions is excited to announce a new collection of essays by Elena Ferrante on the “adventure of writing”—her own and others’. From the author of My Brilliant Friend, the New York Times best-seller The Lying Life of Adults, and The Lost Daughter, come four revelatory essays offering rare insight into the author’s formation as a writer and life as a reader. Ferrante warns us of the perils of “bad language”—historically alien to the truth of women—and advocates for a collective fusion of female talent as she brilliantly discourses on the work of her most beloved authors.

Three of the essays in this collection are lectures that will be delivered publicly by actress Manuela Mandracchia in Bologna on November 17-19 as part of the “Umberto Eco Lectures” series.

La scrittura smarginata
The Umberto Eco Lectures by Elena Ferrante
Performed by Manuela Mandracchia

November 17, 18, & 19
8:30 pm CEST・2:30 pm ET

World premiere

Live-steaming available on the Facebook pages of
ERT, Teatro Arena del Sole; Unibo; & Edizioni E/O.
YouTube livestream via ERT & Unibo

The event will be in Italian with English subtitles.

Wednesday, November 17, 8:30pm CEST (2:30pm ET)
Pain and Pen

Thursday, November 18, 8:30pm CEST (2:30pm ET)
Aquamarine

Friday, November 19, 8:30pm CEST (2:30pm ET)
Histories, I

Unibo:
FB https://www.facebook.com/unibo.it
YT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emiliaromag

ERT / Teatro Fondazione:
FB https://www.facebook.com/ErtFondazione
YT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emiliaromag

Teatro Arena del Sole:
FB https://www.facebook.com/arenadelsole.it

Edizioni E/O:
FB https://www.facebook.com/edizionieo

Event produced by: Centro Internazionale di Studi Umanistici “Umberto Eco”, University of Bologna & ERT / Teatro Nazionale. In partnership with: Edizioni E/O.
Be there or be quadrato.

The Lost Daughter

R, 122 minutes

Coming to Netflix Friday, Dec. 31

An appealing take ( also, had wondering where the hell Ed Harris was)
https://www.nashvillescene.com/arts_culture/film_tv/maggie-gyllenhaal-s-i-the-lost-daughter-i-aims-at-a-cherished-institution/article_cd936764-5d0f-11ec-8990-7701b03a82ef.html

i watched this on netflix last night and it's honestly not very good -- my unkind capsule twitter review was "like THE DURRELLS except everyone is horrible"

i haven't read the novel but my sister has and she was also disappointed -- chatting to her abt it just now as she drove me back home to london we agreed that the central performance is interesting and watchable in itself but maybe somewhat adrift from the book's key character (if this matters), that the flashbacks are probably the best and most convincing streches of the film, that key character then and key character now don't really jigsaw into one another in any readable way, and that the village (and most of the rest of the dramatis personae) is way too full of NPCs

ed harris is fine but he doesn't have much to do

ha I had the opposite response: the flashbacks bored me whereas the present-day material felt lived-in and odd (kudos to the editing).

The book is my favorite Ferrante, a condensation of the Neapolitan novels if you don't want to read them.