A collection of nine classic macabre tales, exquisitely translated from the Italian by Venuti.
Originally published in English in 1992, these reissued translations will introduce Tarchetti's short, fantastic works to a new generation of U.S. readers.
Tarchetti (1839-1869) was a novelist, journalist, and poet aligned with a scrappy Milanese collective of artist-agitators known as the Scapigliatura (from scapigliato, "disheveled"). As is evident in this collection, Tarchetti, who also worked as a translator, was heavily influenced by gothic literature from abroad, favoring the morbid, the metaphysical, the socially and sexually outré. However, despite frequent use of Italian settings in earlier works by gothic authors from other countries, by Tarchetti's time, gothic literature had not taken hold in Italy, and until Venuti discovered otherwise while translating these stories, Tarchetti was credited with writing the first gothic tale in Italian in 1865. This story, about a young man who drinks a potion to relieve himself of love for his disloyal sweetheart, which appears in this collection as "The Elixir of Immortality (In Imitation of the English)," was actually an unattributed translation (with a few notable tweaks) of Mary Shelley's "The Mortal Immortal." Whether viewed as a pure act of literary subterfuge or, as Venuti does, also a sly statement on the anti-bourgeois ethos of the Scapigliatura, comparing Venuti's retranslation into English with Shelley's original is in itself a brief and illuminating education in the art and artifice of literary translation. While certain stories, like "The Letter U (A Madman's Manuscript)" and "Captain Gubart's Fortune," will likely seem less fresh to modern readers than they would have to 19th-century Italian audiences, others still feel remarkably vivid and innovative. In "A Spirit in a Raspberry," when the myopic and supercilious Baron B. eats the fruit of a mysterious raspberry bush that has sprouted following a maid's disappearance, the most interesting aspect isn't what happens next but the way it unfolds in an almost psychedelic portrayal of the resultant war for dominance of personality and gender expression within the baron's body. In "Bouvard," it isn't the perverse but ultimately predictable ending but the young Bouvard's unassailable belief in his future success despite the disadvantages of his birth, the sensitivity he displays toward nature and the inspiration he draws from it for his art, and ultimately the disillusionment he feels with society when his talent and fame as a violinist fail to produce the acceptance and affection he most desires. The collection overall is well worth the read for these and other inventive tales.
A collection of nine classic macabre tales, exquisitely translated from the Italian by Venuti.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-939810-62-5
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
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