Omar Di Monopoli
The law of Fonzi
Isbn editions
298 pages, € 11
ebook: € 6.99
In hot and dusty heat of an August news just whispered rips the torpor that surrounds the people of Monte Alb: Nando Asylum Pentecost said he paid off his account with the law and is returning home. It is not good news for the country, four houses grew in the shadow of industrial plant in Taranto and Brindisi, where once the Sacra Corona Unita reigned undisturbed. Today Monte Alb is based on a delicate balance and ephemeral sull'omertà based on petty corruption and the local underworld. A word is enough to bring down everything. Maybe it was done by five years in prison to cover the murder of an inspector, stuck his nose into the gutter of local affairs, he discovered the extent to which stink. Nando Asylum is returning home to collect what it is: a Monte Alb has no idea of \u200b\u200bhow high the interest payable ...
Among the good intentions for 2011 had trumpeted its intention to devote more space to our own authors: un po’ perché, per un motivo o per l’altro, li ho sempre (colpevolmente?) snobbati, un po’ per pura e semplice curiosità campanilistica. Voglio toccare con mano il loro valore, verificare da me a che punto è la nostra scrittura. Sono stato fortunato: la mia incursione nella “nuova” narrativa italiana non sarebbe potuta iniziare meglio.
Terzo capitolo della trilogia “orecchiette western” (della quale non ho letto i primi 2 capitoli, ma a questo punto non mi resta altro che procurarmeli), La legge di Fonzi è un romanzo che merita di essere letto per svariate ragioni. Su tutte lo splendido lavoro dell’autore sul linguaggio, un curioso mix tra il parlato pugliese e un italiano pazientemente cesellato, fatto di termini e aggettivi ricercati, a tratti desueti: superato un certo straniamento iniziale, il risultato è sorprendente efficace.
E così, se da un lato lu governu maledetto a noialtri povera gente ce lo mette sempre ‘ngulo , dall’altro l’arsura cocente di fine agosto ammantava la distesa di pietra brulla punteggiata dai cespugli di mirt o. C’è chi impone un ordine raggiando un’occhiata grigiocupa e chi pone una domanda labbreggiado coni biancastri di saliva . Ci imbattiamo in un’anziana nerovestita come una malombra e in un uomo lungocrinito . Fissiamo sguardi fessurati e occhi che sono dischi di pietra lesionata . I personaggi zufolano , deambulano , circumnavigano , scapicollano , lumano askance . I listen to gasp of a land parched for months waiting in vain, a drop of rain , admire an arid landscape pressed by the heat wave that distorts the architecture , while around we funeral sways the campaign, yellow stubble, burned black Restuccia .
The lack of punctuation (quotes, dashes) to separate dialogues (Often, as mentioned above, in the Apulian dialect) from the rest contributes to the happy mingling of the linguistic registers. As I said above, if initially the reader will find himself crowded out by some particularly risky combination, this "effettto side" is destined to disappear soon: what remains is just good writing.
Scripture, however, is never complacent, an end in itself, but more often in the service of a bitter social commentary that spares no one: the end of the day (indeed, the medieval joust) the inhabitants of Monte Alb do not come off well, indeed. Among small crooks, thieves from four money, unctuous men of the Church, and a corrupt mayor with his hands dripping with blood, for the author you are spoiled for choice. Scripture that is often sail a melancholy note, born of love for a land so long as it is fascinating, a land that bears upon him the scars of the underworld and of unauthorized savage
few miles down in the east, yet glimpsed the outline of an unguarded bridge, trapped between two blocks sheathed by grass embankments: a huge lizard that had long wrong before collapsing exhausted in the middle of the nothing, that there was growing old unfinished structure for more than thirty years, enduring warning to any promise of past, present and future development of the area.
Often the strongest words are put directly into the mouths of characters, words from which emerges a sense of grim and painful resignation to the status quo now seen as immutable, the real evil that poisons Monte Svevo and, by extension, South of the country, but not only, that in Italy so no one is guilty for ever, this is a country without memory ...
Vagnozzi, called him the woman while filming the way of the gate.
What? He turned again to ask the boy.
No 'makes you' fuck.
By whom?
from this place. Otherwise we do the same end: waiting forever for someone to decide to give us back what is perhaps ourselves first ... we have us arrùbbare
In short, ok, it is written well, ok, there is also a social commentary ... but underneath, there's the story? Yes, the story is there, and è pure una bella storia, vissuta da personaggi dai tratti volutamente esasperati ma non per questo non credibili, anzi… che si sa, di questi tempi il confine tra caricatura e realtà è piuttosto labile.
Si diceva dei personaggi: su tutti Giùanni Pentecoste detto Fonzi, la cui spettrale presenza si aggira per tutto il romanzo, eroe/antieroe che sembra uscito dritto dritto dal selvaggio West. E poi il truffatore Skùppeta, l’obeso commissario di polizia (ispirato, per ammissione dello stesso Di Monopoli, a Wiggum dei Simpson), la vecchia con un guardaroba fatto solo di vesti rigorosamente nere, rigorosamente uguali, Ronn Moss (sì, Beautiful Ridge Forrester's own, and I assure you I will not so easily domenticherete): all damn well chosen, though, to be honest, maybe it is in the characterization and management of certain characters that you can recognize what, in my view, is perhaps the only flaw of the novel: a tendency towards stereotyping of certain situations (I especially the love story between a teenage thief Pisso the beautiful daughter of the mayor and corrupt) that stride, that brings down to read, to have heard.
But it is a venial fault, which can (indeed must) go Above: The Monopoly has the talent to sell and sell very well. Are you a good morning starts in the morning, I have no idea that this year the Italian fiction of the nice surprises in store for me.
The beginning
blood will Judah, and who if he forgets? Still talks about it, mmienz 'to square the elderly. If you go out at night and go to feel that they speak only of what they speak. Lu governu of that and cursed, with the rest of us poor people around him to always put 'Ngulia.