Bibliography
Jan. 8th, 2012 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyNew year, new numbering system!
History, A Novel - Elsa Morante
This is a rather different book to Pasolini's Ragazzi, although it covers roughly the same time period of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. It is also much easier to read, although the world it records is equally bleak. The novel gives the history of Ida Ramundo and her two sons in the context of the war in Italy. It is in some ways a very parochial story, focussed solely on one family, but in other ways captures the full background of the war and its wider social impact.
The book isn't an easy read, but it is a compelling one, full of very strong characterisation and powerful imagery. The arc of the story is unspeakably tragic, but the small family tragedy in counterpoint with the wider national tragedy is an effective narrative tactic. So is the choice to focus on the war through the eyes of women and children - those who suffer from the war rather than those who heroise. Ida's elder son is old enough to become a soldier and then a partisan, and his infrequent visits back to his family highlight the transient nature of war glory, a bright spot against otherwise dull and difficult life.
It's a surprisingly quick read for such a long book, and I would recommend it over the Pasolini any day. I suspect one of the reasons that its Wikipedia article describes it as 'controversial' is because of the author's choice to focus on the domestic rather than the grand and militarised - but that's one of the things that makes it worth reading. Depicting the atrocity of war on the day-to-day lives of the innocent is a political statement that is bound to upset somebody.
Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead Revisited – Paula Byrne
Well, this was interesting but silly. Byrne has decided to read Waugh's life through the prism of one particular family who provided the model for various parts of his fiction, including the family in Brideshead Revisited. There is some fantastic material in here from letters and archives. There's also some simply dreadful writing (on holiday last week, I amused my companions by reading out some of the more purple passages). It's an interesting take on Waugh's history, especially as I haven't read any of his biography before, but I am honestly not sure what audience this is aimed at - it does that thing of repeating information multiple times just in case you've forgotten it. Now, in some cases that's actually useful, when characters reappear five chapters after you last saw them as Oxford friends for instance, but most of the time it is profoundly tedious.
It does get better as the book moves forward and gets closer to its actual subject matter, Waugh's relationship with the Lygons of Madresfield,rather than rehashing Waugh's upbringing and time at Oxford. Bynre hits her stride and starts to feel a bit less like a primer to social history and more like biography. I honestly don't know how much new material is in here, as I've not looked into Waugh's life before, but as a place to begin and to get a sense of the relationships and the worlds in which he moved as an author, it definitely seemed like a good way to get orientated.
History, A Novel - Elsa Morante
This is a rather different book to Pasolini's Ragazzi, although it covers roughly the same time period of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. It is also much easier to read, although the world it records is equally bleak. The novel gives the history of Ida Ramundo and her two sons in the context of the war in Italy. It is in some ways a very parochial story, focussed solely on one family, but in other ways captures the full background of the war and its wider social impact.
The book isn't an easy read, but it is a compelling one, full of very strong characterisation and powerful imagery. The arc of the story is unspeakably tragic, but the small family tragedy in counterpoint with the wider national tragedy is an effective narrative tactic. So is the choice to focus on the war through the eyes of women and children - those who suffer from the war rather than those who heroise. Ida's elder son is old enough to become a soldier and then a partisan, and his infrequent visits back to his family highlight the transient nature of war glory, a bright spot against otherwise dull and difficult life.
It's a surprisingly quick read for such a long book, and I would recommend it over the Pasolini any day. I suspect one of the reasons that its Wikipedia article describes it as 'controversial' is because of the author's choice to focus on the domestic rather than the grand and militarised - but that's one of the things that makes it worth reading. Depicting the atrocity of war on the day-to-day lives of the innocent is a political statement that is bound to upset somebody.
Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead Revisited – Paula Byrne
Well, this was interesting but silly. Byrne has decided to read Waugh's life through the prism of one particular family who provided the model for various parts of his fiction, including the family in Brideshead Revisited. There is some fantastic material in here from letters and archives. There's also some simply dreadful writing (on holiday last week, I amused my companions by reading out some of the more purple passages). It's an interesting take on Waugh's history, especially as I haven't read any of his biography before, but I am honestly not sure what audience this is aimed at - it does that thing of repeating information multiple times just in case you've forgotten it. Now, in some cases that's actually useful, when characters reappear five chapters after you last saw them as Oxford friends for instance, but most of the time it is profoundly tedious.
It does get better as the book moves forward and gets closer to its actual subject matter, Waugh's relationship with the Lygons of Madresfield,rather than rehashing Waugh's upbringing and time at Oxford. Bynre hits her stride and starts to feel a bit less like a primer to social history and more like biography. I honestly don't know how much new material is in here, as I've not looked into Waugh's life before, but as a place to begin and to get a sense of the relationships and the worlds in which he moved as an author, it definitely seemed like a good way to get orientated.
