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Product Description
Product Description
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.
About the Author
Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893–1973) was born in Milan, where he spent a "tormented childhood and even more miserable adolescence." He earned a degree in engineering, volunteered to fight in World War I, and was taken prisoner by the Germans. After the war, he began to write while working as an engineer in countries as far afield as Argentina. Acquainted with Grief, Gadda's first novel, set in an imaginary South American country, appeared in 1938. His masterpiece, That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana, was serialized after the war, but only published as a book in 1957. Both novels, like much else that Gadda wrote, were left incomplete. Among Gadda's other notable works are essays, film and radio scripts, a travel book, and his journals from World War I.
Italo Calvino (1923–1985) was an Italian writer and novelist. His works include The Road to San Giovanni, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Invisible Cities, Marcovaldo, and Mr. Palomar.
Italo Calvino (1923–1985) was an Italian writer and novelist. His works include The Road to San Giovanni, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Invisible Cities, Marcovaldo, and Mr. Palomar.
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First Sentence
EVERYBODY called him Don Ciccio by now. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
EVERYBODY called him Don Ciccio by now. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a 20th century italian masterpiece,
By
This review is from: That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
gadda is one of italys greatest writers of the 20th century; and is virtually unknown in this country. he lived in rome during mussolinis "reign" and was a contemptuous opponent of the duce. his great novel (quer pasticciaccio nella via merulana, in italian) is a detective thriller about a robbery and murder in the via merulana. the hero is no hercule poirot, sherlock holmes or even philip marlowe; he is a jowly, frizzyhaired italian from the deep south (perhaps he has something of the appearance of our own antonio carluccio). he is unimpressed by "Authority" and is cleverer than the rest. does he get his man? read the book.
the book is a brilliant, joycean, evocation of the life of romans in the twenties; especially of humble romans. sometimes his descriptions remind one of dickens, sometimes of dostoevsky. he conveys this in the original by an effortless switch between demotic roman dialect and formal, educated italian; weavers translation wisely doesnt attempt to mimic this, so the reader loses out who cannot read the original. but the power of his writing is still apparent even to us anglophone readers.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The sesquipedalian arrivederci,
By Sporus (Yorkshire, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
Not too many unfinished detective novels (Edwin Drood, maybe?) are celebrated for their literary prowess. Gadda wrote this Rome-set tale (about a woman who endures first a jewel theft and then a murder) during and after WW2 and - since he lived to 1973 - could presumably have finished it had he so chosen. But the conventional resolution of the crimes is not the point here; Gadda, like his curly-haired detective, doesn't believe that 'catastrophes' are caused by 'a single motive' but by a multitude of converging causes. They are "a cyclonic point of depression in the consciousness of the world". For example, the re-discovery of the jewels in 'That Awful Mess...' is as much instigated as foretokened by a dream which is recalled by a carabinieri as he rides a moped (in pre-war Italy the police even catch buses to attend a crime scene!) on the way to interview a suspect. This dream sequence is one of several bravura passages that pepper the book - packed with arcane words, neologisms and references to common and obscure (typically Roman) myths. Conscientious readers are likely to interrupt every other page of 'That Awful Mess...' by poring through dictionaries and concluding more-often-than-not that the word under investigation is another of Gadda's inventions. William Fever (who also translated Umberto Eco's 'The Name of the Rose') is to be congratulated on wrestling 'That Awful Mess...' into any kind of English. In only one instance does Fever give up the struggle and point out that an extended descriptive passage featuring 'light' and 'toes' is based on an obdurate Italian pun (respectively, 'la luce' and 'l'alluce'); otherwise he battles heroically to re-accommodate the mixed Italian dialects, slang and coprolalia that Gadda splashes around. The upshot is like putting an octopus in pyjamas: an accomplishment that intrigues more than it convinces. There are passages of baroque intensity here that outshine writers like Alejo Carpentier but there's also a lot of 'clunk'. Gadda had a polymath's sense of superiority. Where Hemingway might have written "After the noise of the train had gone...", Gadda writes: "The brief caravan of the tympanic importuning, railroadward, having past..." and we are expected to be impressed. It's possible to enjoy this condescending hauteur when Gadda turns his corruscating lexicon on Mussolini (at least it is the first 15 times that he does it), but many will be dubious about the way he minutely explores the musculature involved as an old woman lets slip a jet of ordure at the sight of a policeman. Gadda has the misogynistic, mucopurulent obsessions you often find in distinguished literary males: Joyce, say, or Tavernier; but he's not as bright as the former, nor as scrupulous as the latter. He claims that the Romanists decided women had a soul by only one vote at the Council of Mainz in 589. Surely, Carlo, the first Council of Mainz wasn't until the 8th Century. The Synod of Macon - which is rumoured to have had a debate about women's souls - was in 585.
Not that I'm trying to show off or anything...
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just get lost in the language,
By
This review is from: That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
This book is quite amazing. I think if you read it as a murder mystery then it might irritate, because they depend so much on the plot moving forward in a clear way, but just lose yourself in the language and it is really quite special. I can't remember when I last had to make notes to look up references to events and people of which I was unaware, let alone the meaning of words I had never before met, but it was all worth while.
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