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lorenzoberardi

The Library of Babel

A Spin-off of http://bookwormshead.blogspot.co.uk

Per grazia ricevuta

Per grazia ricevuta - Valeria Parrella Many literary critics say Valeria Parrella is one of the most interesting young novelist we have in Italy.

There is only one thing I'd like to say:
we got what we deserve. And I'm referring to both, critics and Parrella.

I consider what Parrella does in this book simply disgusting. This is not literature. This book is merely a cheap trick for pleasing those who miss a folkloristic touch of "verism" and "realism" in their ivory towers.

I am talking about you. You, literary critics who praise those under 30 novelists who are using dialect rather than dialectic forgetting the Italian grammar on purpose, maybe for hiding the fact that they don't really know it.

Parrella knows the Italian grammar, at least.
And this is actually an aggravation for her work. In "Per Grazia Ricevuta" she pretends to put herself in the shoes of people she doesn't really know: simple and plain youngsters.
Poor and untaught folks who are accidentally living in the same town of the author: Naples.
It's just a pity that Parrella is not Matilde Serao, nor Erri De Luca or, say, Curzio Malaparte.

Parrella pretends to talk and think like her folkloristic characters. But not really knowing the way they talk and think she tries to get by. She clutches at straws. She sounds pretentious and unrealistic.

Her bad faith in this process is so clear that she even decides to distance herself from her unfortunate characters by switching from first to third person every now and then. We can almost picture Parrella raising up her hands and saying:
"This is not me! I've studied diachronic linguistics at the university. I know how to spell the term epistemology. And I even know what epistemology means. Look, I am just a puppeteer".

I am sorry, really sorry for being that sarcastic, but I have to.
This book is the summa of what I hate the most.