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Loading... That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana (New York Review Books Classics) (original 1957; edition 2007)by Carlo Emilio Gadda (Author), William Weaver (Translator), Italo Calvino (Introduction)
Work InformationThat Awful Mess on Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda (1957)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. L'ottovolante linguistico costruito da Gadda spinge a forza il lettore, fra accelerazioni, rallentamenti e cambi di altitudine, da un registro all'altro, ondeggiando fra un romanesco reso all'impronta e un italiano barocco e pieno di neologismi. A tratti il disorientamento si fa forte, ma a tenere attenti e coinvolti c'è la brillante idea di un giallo da molti definito "assoluto", che intriga con la sua resa dell'irrazionale, labirintico procedere a vuoto delle indagini. Fra le pieghe del racconto emergono una caratterizzazione dei personaggi eccezionale e ironica, oltre a una critica di una società decisamente lontana nei suoi tratti più legati al quotidiano (la storia è ambientata nel 1927 e Gadda la scrive nel '57) ma culturalmente ancora piuttosto calzante sull'ethos italico. Libro - e autore - apparentemente soggetto a un progressivo oblio, senza dubbio da recuperare per chiunque tenda a capire l'evoluzione della letteratura italiana. Well, since I don't remember this one at all - even when I look thru it now - I'll cheat & use the translation of the 1st paragraph of Italo Calvino's Introduction: "In 1946, when he started That Awful Mess on Via Merulana, Carlo Emilio Gadda intended to write not only a murder novel, but a philosophical novel as well. The murder story was inspired by a crime that had recently been committed in Rome. The philosophical inquiry was based on a concept announced at the novel's very outset: nothing can ever be explained if we confine outselves to seeking one cause for every effect. Every effect is determined by multiple causes, each of which has still other, numerous causes behind it. Every event, a crime for example, is like a vortex where various streams converge, each moved by heterogeneous impulses, none of which can be overlooked in the search for the truth." no reviews | add a review
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In a large apartment house in central Rome, two crimes are committed within a matter of days: a burglary, in which a good deal of money and precious jewels are taken, and a murder, as a young woman whose husband is out of town is found with her throat cut. Called in to investigate, melancholy Detective Ciccio, a secret admirer of the murdered woman and a friend of her husband’s, discovers that almost everyone in the apartment building is somehow involved in the case, and with each new development the mystery only deepens and broadens. Gadda’s sublimely different detective story presents a scathing picture of fascist Italy while tracking the elusiveness of the truth, the impossibility of proof, and the infinite complexity of the workings of fate, showing how they come into conflict with the demands of justice and love. Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Alberto Moravia all considered That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana to be the great modern Italian novel. Unquestionably, it is a work of universal significance and protean genius: a rich social novel, a comic opera, an act of political resistance, a blazing feat of baroque wordplay, and a haunting story of life and death. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)853.912Literature Italian and related languages Italian fiction 1900- 20th Century 1900-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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The book club discussion was lively and mostly enthusiastic. One member even produced a fantastic glossary of the book's elaborate vocabulary.
William Weaver's translation was masterful in dealing with Gadda's imaginative vocabulary, made-up words, puns and double-meanings. ( )