L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2019 www.italoamericano.org 16 L'Italo-Americano LIFE PEOPLE MOVIES MUSIC BOOKS KENNETH SCAMBRAY L awrence DiStasi has been making signifi- cant contributions to the Italian American narrative for decades. Among his early works is Mal O c c h i o : T h e U n d e r s i d e o f Vision, a creative and fascinat- ing study of the tradition of malocchio. DiStasi edited a col- lection of essays, Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War II, an important and reveal- ing account of the nearly forgot- ten treatment of Italian immi- grants during World War II. His own essay in the collection, How World War II Iced Italian American Culture, is an insight- ful study of how Mussolini cre- ated fear and guilt among Italian Americans in the aftermath of the war. It would take the next generation for Italian American culture to emerge from its deep freeze. He followed la storia with a comprehensive look at the war years, but from another angle in Branded: how Italian Immigrants became 'Enemies' during World War II. His cre- ativity as a writer took a turn w h e n h e w r o t e E s t y : A Novel/Memoir, a semi-autobio- g r a p h i c a l a c c o u n t o f h i s mother's life. In Family Matter, he has returned again to his fam- ily. Family Matter is a an innova- tive and creative look at his Ital- ian-Jewish heritage. While Esty focused on his mother, the Jew- ish side of his family, in Family Matter he pays tribute to his father, a working-class Italian immigrant from a small town near Naples. The novel's form is inventive and challenging. Its narration is told from multiple points of view: from third person to, at times, sections that border on stream-of-consciousness. The reader must be patient, only dis- covering by degrees where a section is going and when cru- cial questions about the partially fictionalized DiStasi family's history will be answered. While the novel is autobiographical, DiStasi admits to taking liberties w i t h s o m e c h a r a c t e r s a n d events. There are many facets to DiStasi's complex portrayal of his family. His father is of Italian descent and all the char- acters that surround his family are mostly Italian. As a result, the dialogue is laced with all those familiar Italian expres- s i o n s : m a n n a g g i a , p e r l a Madonna, figliu mi, and some- times a Jewish word, meshugge. H i s i m m i g r a n t a n d I t a l i a n American characters also voice many of those other expressions we should not publish in a fami- ly newspaper. They are not gra- tuitous utterances by his charac- ters, though, rather they have a place in the family discourse. More important, these expres- sions keep the focus of the nar- ration on the Italian American e x p e r i e n c e , a d d i n g c u l t u r a l depth to the events that chal- lenge his too often conflicted family. The novel begins at the end: in the hospital room where his likable father is dying. It will e n d w i t h h i s p a s s i n g . I n b e t w e e n , A r t u r o , o n e o f t h e sons, is also lo scrittore, the novel's narrator. That is, the novel, like so many other wor- thy Italian American novels, is Arturo's quest to understand his family and know his father, a quest for his complex roots, Jewish and Italian. After Arturo's father immi- grated to America, he did not go m u c h b e y o n d e l e m e n t a r y school, quitting at the age of twelve. For his life's work, he became a hairdresser in New York. When we catch up with h i m e a r l y i n t h e n o v e l , i n a flashback of his life after the opening scene of the father's rapidly failing health, he is try- ing to find a formula to make a permanent curl for women's hair. He is a quixotic character who, though the family lived a comfortable life, never really achieved the American dream he pursued in the States. His quest for that evasive formula is a sign of his quest to succeed. To that end, he works frantically in his home lab with a friend, when one day he appears to find the right formula for the perma- nent curl. But when they try to repeat the process, he and his friend cannot find the piece of paper amid the chaos in their lab. T h e r e a r e m a n y n a r r a t i v e threads in the novel that carry narration forward, departing and t h e r e f o c u s i n g o n i t s m a i n events. Ultimately, the focus is on Arturo's quest for his roots, and the significance of his Ital- ian heritage. Arturo goes to col- lege and becomes an art profes- s o r , b u t t h e c o r e a n d m o s t i m p o r t a n t p a r t o f t h e n o v e l becomes Arturo's travel to Italy in search of his origins, a trip where he is able to confront his own Italian past. One year he earns a sabbatical and departs for Naples without his family. While there, he travels to his father's village and begins his search for his old family house. The experience he has is typi- cal of so many Italian Amer- icans, who go to Italy s e a r c h i n g f o r t h e i r roots. F i r s t , h e d o u b t s himself: he is not sure why h e h a s undertaken t h i s q u e s t o r w h a t h e e x p e c t s t o f i n d . W h y , after all, is he there? He real- izes that he is separate from the very culture he always felt he was born into. His images of Italy, gleaned from his Italian American family, are not sufficient to explain the Italian culture before him. Those exple- tives and occasional sentences often spoken in dialect that he learned at home are not enough to bring him any closer to the modern Italian culture he experi- e n c e s i n I t a l y . H e d o e s n o t speak Italian, and he struggles to find his way. At one point he meets an Ital- ian man, Luigi, and it is in their d i s c u s s i o n t h a t o n e o f t h e n o v e l ' s m o s t i n t e r e s t i n g moments develops. Luigi feels that Italians are their own worst e n e m i e s . T h e y , t o o , h a r b o r romanticized notions of them- selves and their culture. He tells Arturo about a local museum that contains artifacts from, of course, Italy's Roman past. Even to Italians, the museum repre- sents an idealized view of Italian culture, the glory of old Rome, and for Italians, such a notion is very dangerous. This nostalgic view of Italy's once glorious past is what propelled Mussolini to the apex of power, and all but destroyed Italy. For both Italians and, of course, tourists the muse- um creates an unrealistic view of Italy, regardless of all the pro- blems of modern Italy, its econo- my, unemployment, and bureau- cracy. Arturo shares the same ideal- ized and unrealistic view of his heritage. When he tells Luigi that the surrounding town is beautiful, Luigi agrees, "Perhaps too beau- tiful." Italy is a seductress that holds both Italians and Italian Americans like Arturo in its spell. This becomes the underlying theme of his final escape in his father's village. He discovers his father's house, but there is a mys- terious woman, Maddalena, and her beautiful young daughter, Lucia, who live in it. Arturo falls in love with mysterious Lucia. As in so many of Henry James' novels, an incomprehensible evil lurks on the flip side of that idea- lized view of Italy, especially for an unsuspecting, naïve American like Arturo. He cannot under- stand fully the complexity of European life and values. Mad- dalena is a conniving woman, a strega, I would say, who facili- tates in strange ways her daugh- ter's affair with Arturo. After many twists and turns in the narration, includ- ing the arrival of Arturo's wife in Italy, without revealing the end, suffice it to say Arturo does not achieve his dream. Both the idealized Lucia and an equally idealized version of Italy escape his grasp. Chastened by his experiences, he returns to reality and goes home to America with wife and fami- ly. His father as well pass- es. L i k e Italy's rich and complex histo- ry, DiStasi never really answers all the questions about his own Italian past: who were the mysterious Maddalena and her beautiful daughter? What did he learn by exploring his roots, in his father's village? How to rec- oncile his idealized notions of Italy with his personal encounter with Italian culture and with the reality of his life in America? These are interesting ques- tions DiStasi raises as many other Italian American novelists do: indeed, these very questions are at the center of most Italian American fiction written over the last century. While there is no convincing answer to any of them, but DiStasi's novel remains a creative and interesting interrogation about the matters at the heart of the Italian American experience in the twenty-first century. Family Matter by Lawrence DiStasi

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