Wednesday, February 11, 2015

I hardly ever look at this blog anymore, and it was so important to me when I was living in Naples. It was a lifeline, really. I don't want to let it go, and I am touched when I see a comment here and there from people who have enjoyed the blog and want to hear more. I would love to write about my trip to Naples last summer. It was a great trip, but not without complex feelings. The problem is, I am STILL writing my dissertation, plus teaching and organizing symposia and child-rearing and job-searching, so the blog will have to wait.

I do want to say here that I began reading Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan trilogy (now there's a fourth I need to get my hands on) while in Naples in July and it absolutely crushed me. I read the books in Italian, reveling in the multisensory way she captured Napoli. I read in a fever, actually having to put the books down for a couple of days because they were causing me such emotional upheaval. I recommend them highly. My friends who have read them in English say they are wonderful, so kudos to the translator.

I still have my heart set on a project--journal article at least--about Massimo Troisi and Neapolitan gesture as a form of resistance. Let me finish the dissertation and then we'll see.

Thanks for continuing to read. A presto!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Rompipalle

I have just Stumbled on your lovely blog. I have been interested in Naples for a long time and managed to visit Italy last year starting in Florence and ending in Rome via Naples and Napoli was our favourite city. We stayed with a Neapolitan native and his artist wife in the Chiaia district. they live in a huge apartment in a seventeenth century building on Via Giovanni Paladino. The first thing our host Roberto said 'you must take the good with the bad'...trouble is we found no bad :)I so want to go back now as we miss them and Naples very much. He recently translated it into Neapolitan Italian for me. Although you may appreciate it I do not speak Italian - "Quann se vene a Napul s'adda pigliĆ  o' bbuon e o' mmalament" I believe this may be two ways of saying the same thing but unsure. In any case I have been reading with interest your heartfelt and often moving thoughts about your city.

To a Neapolitan, it may well be somewhat presumptuous of an Australian, but I have started writing a series of stories set in the city. I began writing them well before I had even heard of Elena Ferrante's wonderful books. Not that my stories are anything like hers or concern themselves with the same themes. Ferrante, whoever she mysteriously is, is a master of storytelling and her books are impossible to put down, once started.

The character of Racine popped into my head one day several years ago and I started off including him in a sort of meta-fictional satire I was writing at the time but he overwhelmed me and I began creating an entire universe for him and other characters he comes in contact with in his home town of Portici and the city of Naples. If you have time I would be interested in your comments. Here is the link http://www.lunchwithworthies.com/?page_id=336 Have I captured any of the essence of Naples or do I need to return to the drawing board. Please keep up your blog. I have enjoyed what you have written. With regards Chris

rompipalle said...

Dear Chris,
It is always a pleasure and a shock to receive comments on my this poor, godforsaken blog. I look forward to reading your Napoli series.
Al prossimo incontro virtuale,
Sima

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