L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2022 www.italoamericano.org 30 L'Italo-Americano L a w r e n c e D i S t a s i h a s b e e n w r i t i n g a b o u t Italian American c u l t u r e f o r decades. I reviewed in L'Ita- lo-Americano one of his first books, Mal Occhio: The Underside of Vision, when it a p p e a r e d i n 1 9 8 1 . I t i s a unique contribution to the cultural traditions of our Ital- ian forebears, both in Italy and in the US. Since then, he has done groundbreaking work, especially Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacua- tion and Internment during World War II, which he edit- ed. He also wrote an equally important work, Branded: H o w I t a l i a n I m m i g r a n t s Became "Enemies" During World War II. The impor- tance of these two works in the history of Italian Ameri- can studies cannot be over- stated. Both bring into the historical discourse Italian i m m i g r a n t s ' a n d I t a l i a n Americans' alien status dur- ing the most important event in the twentieth century. DiS- tasi's own essay in La Storia, How World War II Iced Ital- ian American Culture, I con- sider a classic which explains much about the psychology and social status of first- and second-generation Italian Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. Since these groundbreak- ing works, DiStasi has writ- ten four novels, including the one under review. Eat is an e n g a g i n g n a r r a t i v e t h a t begins in a way that, as any good novel should, captures the reader's attention. Italian American Niall DelBianco, a sophomore at a fictitious eastern college, Luthersburg, has decided to stop eating. But DiStasi makes it clear that this is not about the oth- e r w i s e m o r o s e s u b j e c t o f anorexia. What grabs our attention is DiStasi's allusion to Herman Melville's nine- teenth-century short story, Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. Bartleby is a resister. Contrary to all logic, in his resistance to vacate his scrivener's office, he rejects the catchpenny m e n t a l i t y o f t h e n e w l y arrived nineteenth-century business and industrial cli- mate of America. DiStasi's character, appro- p r i a t e l y n a m e d N i a l l , "denyall," is conjoined with a long history of deniers, those who fasted not for physical but for altruistic reasons. Niall is in the long tradition of fasters who also resisted authority and the corrupt val- ues of their social orders: C a t h o l i c s - C a t h e r i n e o f Siena, St. Francis - yogi - Giri Bala - and even contempo- r a r y D i c k G r e g o r y . H e reminds us that Pythagoras had to fast for forty days to enter the Mystery School in Egypt. Here we can take a l e a p , w h i c h i s c e r t a i n l y DiStasi's intention, to the l o n g t r a d i t i o n o f Mediterranean cult figures: t h e l e s s e r - k n o w n B l a c k M a d o n n a o r S t . O n o f r i o . Both are Mediterranean cult figures who denied worldly comforts and lived simple, ascetic lives. St. Onofrio gave up all his worldly possessions and is depicted in statuary and paintings clad only in vines with forest animals as h i s o n l y c o m p a n i o n s . T h r o u g h o u t t h e S o u t h o f Italy, shrines of the Black Madonna place her in moun- tain caves, her solitary, aus- t e r e a b o d e . L e s t m o d e r n Catholics find the abstemious lives of these saints extreme and irrelevant, we need to be reminded that all Catholics once had to fast for twenty- four hours before receiving communion. Wasn't Friday fish day also a day of absti- nence? What do individual Catholics give up for Lent e a c h y e a r ? A b s t i n e n c e i s hard-wired into the Catholic tradition. What is absorbing about Niall's seemingly irrational act is that, by degrees, the reader discovers his fast has broad social implications. When word gets out about it, he triggers a plethora of self- ish responses from his critics. First is the university where President Winsum and staff worry that Niall, known for his previous pranks, is going to cause a media circus and damage the college's good name. They are concerned only for their own selfish, catchpenny values. Then DiStasi introduces Italian American Rick Zito, a middle-aged divorced father o f o n e a n d a p a r t - t i m e English instructor. Initially, he is flummoxed by Niall, his friend and former student. As a professor, Rick believes that what Niall is doing is simply illogical: he cannot s u s t a i n h i s f a s t w i t h o u t dying. He tries to reason with Niall. The professor's logic is yet just another conventional tactic to change Niall's mind. Niall tells Rick that eating is death, that we kill living t h i n g s w h e n w e e a t . R i c k tries to reason again with Niall. Why not be a vegan? But Niall tells Rick that he really doesn't get it: eating is still death. Moreover, fasting is problematic in an Italian family, where food is culture, the very soul of Italian identi- t y . A t o n e p o i n t t h e D e l B i a n c o f a m i l y , R i c k included, is treated to stuffed calamari and pasta, a tradi- tional dish, especially around Christmas. When Niall refus- es to eat, Salvatore, his work- ing-class plumber father, calls him "pazzo." Why would anyone, especially an Italian boy, not want to eat? At their wit's end, the family calls in Father Vitale to ask him if, in fact, Niall is a saint, in that long tradition of Christian resisters. Vitale is adamant he isn't. But DiStasi makes it clear: Vitale would not know a saint if he stumbled over him. After all, Fr. Vitale is the official representative of the M o t h e r C h u r c h , t h e v e r y institution that nearly all saints, such as St. Francis, rebelled against in their holy, ascetic lives. Frustrated, Sal even goes to the extreme of conspiring with Howard Winsum, the president of Luthersburg, to capture Niall and take him to a hospital where he can be force-fed (The name of the college is as well an allusion t o o n e o f h i s t o r y ' s m a j o r resisters, Martin Luther). It is here that DiStasi ingeniously deepens the social implica- tions of Niall's fast. To escape h i s f a t h e r a n d W i n s u m ' s efforts to kidnap him, Niall with Rick takes refuge in the h o m e o f a l o c a l w o m a n , Lavinia. She is the secular image of the religious saint. Unmarried, she lives alone in a modest cottage without modern conveniences such as electricity, plumbing, or a phone. She is equally com- mitted to a celibate life, as Rick discovers. She tells Rick and Niall that she eats a spar- tan diet, largely from her gar- d e n , a n d e a t s n o m e a t . H a v i n g g r o w n u p o n h e r father's swine farm, she expe- rienced firsthand the annual, cruel slaughter of the family's pigs. She agrees with Niall: eating meat is death. Rick is impressed with her life. She is not so much the image of a saint but that more familiar image to Catholics of a nun, a S i s t e r o f C h a r i t y , o r a Carmelite nun. She is content with her vows of near silence and abstinence. T h e m o r e R i c k p r o b e s Niall's psyche the more the seeming irrationality of his fast becomes rational. Niall's fast is an act of resistance to modern society's gluttonous consumption: from the wan- ton slaughter of animals, where it takes nearly three times the amount of feed or grain to make one pound of animal protein, to the deple- t i o n o f a l l o u r n a t u r a l r e s o u r c e s , i n c l u d i n g t h e water needed to grow grain and other products for cattle. As Niall explains, quite ratio- nally and correctly, modern society's gluttony leads to s h o r t a g e s , c r e a t i n g a g a p between the haves and have- nots, which leads to war and even holocausts. We are back to Niall's contention: "Eating is death." Rick finally understands Niall's position and begins his own fast, not in sympathy with Niall but, in fact, as a convert to Niall's reasoning. It begins to make sense to R i c k . H e r e D i S t a s i ' s p l o t thickens and draws the read- er even more deeply into the action. How can Niall ever be saved if the only person he can talk to is on his side? Will there in fact be a morbid end- ing to all this? But I don't want to place a spoiler in my review. DiStasi again skillful- ly resolves the tension he builds at the end of the nar- rative. This is a story that begins on a deeply personal theme but by its conclusion has a wide social, historical, and cultural significance for a self-indulgent society whose citizens think only in the short term about their selfish needs, all of which is leading our planet to destruction. To his credit as a novelist, out of the simple metaphor, Eat, DiStasi tells a tale of great relevance to society at large. Kenneth Scambray's most r e c e n t w o r k i s I t a l i a n I m m i g r a t i o n i n t h e American West: 1870-1940. U n i v . o f N e v a d a P r e s s , 2021. Eat: A Novel. Santini Publications. Bolinas, CA. 2021. By Lawrence W. DiStasi KENNETH SCAMBRAY Author Lawrence W. DiStasi LIFE PEOPLE MOVIES MUSIC BOOKS

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