Frank Lentricchia’s “The Italian Actress” – The Neurotic Creative Italian American
Frank Lentricchia’s “The Italian Actress” – The Neurotic Creative Italian American
(April 22, 2014)
The high-brow literary character of “The Italian Actress” would not appeal to the vast majority of southern-Italian Americans who have not studied college (indeed graduate) level literature. The Post-Modern-esque non-linear plot line (i.e. time shifting past to present to past to present etc.), and the neurotic artist protagonist who rejects a life of luxury with a rich beautiful movie star to make a snuff film, would be absolutely meaningless to those unfamiliar with bourgeois art. //// /// The novel to my mind is symbolic of the tragedy of southern-Italian Americana – i.e. the abyss between the vast majority of southern-Italian Americans and their literati. The literati of other ethnic groups (e.g. Black, Hispanic, Jewish, etc.) have far greater penetration into their respective ethnic cultures. Those ethnic cultures have far more coherent historical and cultural ‘esprit’. What is southern-Italian American history other than Little Italy nostalgia; is there a culture beyond food? Nevertheless, “The Italian Actress” is the product of a southern-Italian American mind; therefore a manifestations of the southern-Italian American milieu. /// /// A master, southern-Italian American, Socratic teacher, rising to the challenge, would strive to bring his southern-Italian American students to an understanding of the novels hermeneutically imbedded southern-Italianita. Thereby helping the students understand their history, culture, and themselves. /// /// Art can always be appreciated in two ways: Subjectively as a pure aesthetic experience such as: OMG! how beautiful or terrible; and also Objectively as a manifestation of the social milieu in which it was produced. There are those who will read “The Italian Actress” and ‘like-it’ or ‘leave-it’ based on their subjective aesthetic disposition. And there are those who will study “The Italian Actress” for what it tells about how a southern-Italian mind experiences the broader cultural milieu.
Preface
There are at least three generic ways to consider (think about) a work of art: aesthetic, sociological and psychological.
Aesthetic refers to the personal subjective judgment when experiencing a work: such as OMG! I absolutely love it; or, this is terrible; or, some variation on the theme of these two core reactions. For example, I like Michelangelo’s sculpture of David but I don’t like Donatello’s David.
The emphasis is on subjective. If a person likes/dislikes a work, there is no rational (i.e. logical, factual) basis to say they shouldn’t like/dislike the work. There is of course room for discussions about why one likes or dislikes the work (which, of course, is the substance and essence of graduate humanities seminars).
Sociological considerations of an artwork involve the process of making logical deductions about the culture of the society wherein the work was produced. By definition, a logical deduction is NOT subjective. The conclusion of a deductive argument must stand the tests of 'validity' and 'soundness' based on the 'rules of logic'.
Thus, for example, the subject matter of much Renaissance artwork is religious. Based on that I infer (deduce) that the people of Northern Italy at the time were very religious. This conclusion, about the religious characteristics of the people, is not a subjective judgment, rather a logically deduced conclusion.
Psychological aspects of art deal with (again) logical deductions about the psychology of the artist and the psychological concepts that prevail in the society at large. Psychological considerations are limited to the literary arts. For example, all the material art of ancient Greece (sculpture, mosaics, vase paintings, etc.) cannot communicate to us the psychological concepts of destiny, hubris, and revenge, so clearly present in Greek poetry and drama. From the works of Homer and the tragedians we come to know (logical deductions) the psychological categories that were prevalent in their time.
Accordingly, when presented with a work such as The Italian Actress the critical thinker may chose one or any combination of these three critical categories.
The Italian Actress
Aesthetics
I don’t like the book! First, I am literature challenged. I read little fiction except pop-cop stories by the hundreds and very little fiction that would fall into the category of literature. Further, I am especially Post-Modern challenged. I just don’t understand the stuff. One of the characteristics of post-modern is the non-linear plot. For example, the main plot of Don De Lillo’s “Underworld” runs backward in time – i.e. it starts in 1992 and goes back to 1952. Meanwhile, in an effort to add chaos to confusion, the subplot moves forward in time 1952 to1992. Similarly, The Italian Actress time-shifts back and forth from present to past back to present etc.
In sum, for reasons having to do with plot structure and other literary characteristics, my subjective aesthetic judgment about the book us negative – i.e. I did not enjoy the novel.
Sociology
The book is a first person narrative biography whose opening captures the essence of southern-Italian Americana:
“My name is Jack Del Piero, former avant-garde videographer, long detached—without regret—from my Italian-American origins.”
Indicative of this “long detachment” there is little in the 109 page novel that brings to mind southern-Italianita; with the exception of a few northern Italian pejoratives such as:
“… the ludicrous south … he who speaks only the so-called Italian of the wretched of Sicily—Sicily is the south of the south—Sicilian is an inscrutable language like Chinese—Sicilians are not Italians: they are Africans—and we understand him with gravest of difficulty…
Consistent with the “ludicrous south” comment, the setting of the novel takes place in two quintessential northern sites: Volterra (Tuscany) and Rimini (Emilia-Romagna).
I should think that this novel is high on the reading list of Italian (i.e. North) Studies Programs in American universities. However, it should be seriously considered by southern-Italian Americans for insight into the depths the Terroni-ization process has penetrated southern-Italian American culture. Frank Lentrechhia is a quintessential southern-Italian American – born and raised in Little Italy Utica, NY and grandchild of southern Italian immigrants. Yet, he writes an Italianita novel with virtually no manifestation of southern Italian or southern-Italian Americana.
This is not meant as a criticism of Lentriccha in any way. It is simply an empirical sociological fact. As Pino Aprile describes the “cultural lobotomy” of southern Italy by the North in his book “Terroni”, so too that hegemonic cultural lobodomization has extended to southern-Italian American literati, of which Lentricchia is a paragon. (Similarly, I might add, his good friend and child of Little Italy Bronx, Don DeLillo.)
In a classroom, a teacher might consider teaching the concept of cultural lobotomy by juxtaposing the Aprile book with The Italian Actress, and the curriculum of NYU’s Italian (Northern) Studies Program.
Psychology
The Italian Actress, a first-person narrative of Jack Del Piero; as such it describes and/or implies psychological characteristics of Jack.
The opening scene is of a film festival in Volterra (Tuscany). In the first paragraph of the novel the psychological aspect of the narrator/protagonist is implied by self-denigrating characterizations. He compares himself to “wilted salad” and “garbage.”
“My name is Jack Del Piero, former avant-garde videographer … ‘former avant-garde’ as ‘last week's wilted salad,’ or—should you be of brutal disposition—call me ‘garbage,’ on the menu still and a favorite with those of nostalgic appetite.
Why was he invited? He is “a favorite with those of nostalgic appetite.”
“They invited me to Volterra for the same reason I was invited to all the marginal festivals: as an ironic example for the idealistic young—I mean the attractive, the fresh-faced, the energetic, the goddamn young—a blasted figure of purity and poverty I am, out of the past, salt-and-pepper hair to the shoulders, lean and hard at 48.
The self-denigration continues:
“It was in Volterra at an obscure festival—the only kind that invites me now. In that harsh place, where I won no prize for continuing achievement in video, or any other prize…
Why the self-denigration? His artistic passion is gone. His creative muse has gone silent.
I thought of:
the work I hadn't been doing for so long …
Twenty years ago, my silent videos won special prizes at Taormina and Venice for their “radical experiments in pornography and the beauty of their images.
… and the work I wanted yet to do …
it's not going to happen, because passion is a word in a language I had long since ceased to understand, if ever I did.
Within the first few paragraphs Jack psychological state is presented and the rest of the novel is a psychological drama of his effort to “do the work he hadn’t been doing for so long and wanted to do again.”
If one likes novels about the self-divided artist and the creative process – they will love this one. And, a teacher can get volumes of lecture material guiding the student through the forest of psychological nuances driving the Italian American protagonist, and perhaps by extention the southern-Italian American author.
In sum
“The Italian Actress” is not bed-time or pool-side reading.
This is a book that you read at your most wide-eyed time of day. Just hanging on to the plot’s time line is a challenge.
To my mind the test of literature (what differentiates literature from pop-fiction) is the mental challenge it presents to the reader – as they read. Literary works such as “The Italian Actress” cause you pause and contemplate as you read the narrative. You might even want to take notes as you go. I read it on an iPad that allows four highlighting colors and inserting annotations. I used all the colors voluminously and added dozens of annotated notes.
The complexity of Jack Del Piero’s psychology, the behavior it dictates, and the implications it has for the arts, make “The Italian Actress” both a challenging and very rewarding read.
Frank Lentricchia is not just another scholarly college professor – the boy can write!
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