EXERCISES IN STYLE

EXERCISES IN STYLE

May 24, 2025 | BOOKS

I read Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in style in the version edited by Stefano Bartezzaghi, Super ET edition by Giulio Einaudi Editore with French text opposite and preface by Umberto Eco, thanks to my colleague.

The first edition dates back to 1947, Éditions Gallimard.

I quote Eco‘s words: an episode of everyday life of disconcerting banality and ninety-nine variations on the theme in which the story is retold by putting all the rhetorical figures to the test.

You surely are very familiar with figures of speech, whereas I, on the other hand, unfortunately have to admit that I learned them with my son while he was studying them.

We both attended a technical institute, off course the syllabuses have changed, but I believe it is also a matter of luck in having the right teachers.

Anyway, delving into language is something that always fascinated me, I was amused to discover how Queneau managed to narrate the same scene in ninety-nine different ways.

Actually the versions would be more, in the course of revisions Queneau added, but also removed, because for him the number had to remain the same: ninety-nine.

Exercises in style but not only that: Bartezzaghi illustrates the number game because everything is a logical balance:
Raymond = 7 letters
Queneau = 7 letters

the second name is also 7 letters = Alfonse

7×7 + 1 7×7

that one in the middle, the same one that is missing to reach a hundred, what do you think it represents?

Exercises in style, but not only that: the inspiration comes from music and more precisely from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, or thirty variations for harpsichord.

Matatavitatau,  La regina gioiosa:  feel free to add details if you wish.

Exercises in style but not only that: even fantasy, Eco himself defining the Lipogram as the most typical example of “perfectionism” admits the temptation to try to produce twenty-one versions of it, as well as proposing further exercises.

Speaking of lipograms, Luisa is a master, click on the Words and Music and Stories link. 

And you? Are you a perfectionist?

Have I whetted your appetite for style exercises?

Do you remember the nose monologue in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac?

Which subject/object would you choose instead?

 

THE GIRLS’ FACTORY

THE GIRLS’ FACTORY

Apr 26, 2025 | BOOKS

The Girls’ Factory by Ilaria Rossetti published by Bompiani: take note of this title, I recommend it.

I am again grateful to Monica: I read it thanks to her and I enjoyed it very much.

The Girls’ Factory stems from the author’s research into work-related deaths, but it is much more.

It is a historical fact that has literally been erased, it is the description of places that I recognise as familiar, and it also is a proof for the theory of the six degrees of separation.

But above all, it is a very well-written book.

My compliments to Ilaria Rossetti.

The Girls’ Factory was established in Bollate, during the First World War, to meet the need for weapons, bombs and munition to supply the front.

That is why ‘the girls:’ the only remaining workforce, particularly suited for their small hands.

You know I don’t like to reveal too much, but I would like to emphasise the importance of spreading the story of people who were used and then wiped out because the war machine could not stop, then and now.

It even goes so far as to raze it to the ground, leaving only furrows in the earth and in the hearts of those who lived, waiting for the memory to die out along with the lives of those who knew the facts.

That is why it is so important that we keep going on telling this and all equally uncomfortable stories.

The first was a storyteller of excellence: none other than Ernest Hemingway, whom fate brought from America to Castellazzo di Bollate in the wake of the factory explosion, recounted in the famous The first forty-nine stories. 

All that remains on the site, completely overgrown by trees, is an electrical cabin with a very impressive mural. 

La Fabbrica delle Ragazze

Other characters in the book take the reader to Milan, following the route of the Seveso river, painting a journey through nature and time.

Have you ever heard stories of grandparents  your own or ‘acquired’?
Grandparents can become everybody’s grannies after all, am I wrong?

Is there a story to be handed down even in the place where you live?

TATÀ

TATÀ

Apr 12, 2025 | BOOKS

Tatà is the pet name for Tante, which means aunt in French.

There is no two without three, although Three is actually the second of Valérie Perrin‘s books  I have read.

Valérie said she decided to write the story of an aunt after hearing a child shouting ‘Tatà!’

Does it ever happen to you that a single detail strikes you, turning into a kind of key to much bigger emotions or thoughts?

Where do you find your inspiration?

Valérie knows very well how to write a successful book, I imagine her a bit like an expert cook who uses many ingredients with the knowledge that they are right for the end result.

Tatà is set in Gueugnon in Burgundy, the author’s place of origin and deep province. 

Gueugnon is famous for its local soccer team  which has reached very high levels. Valérie’s father was a footballer in this team.

The heart of the story is told on the first page: the protagonist discovers that her aunt has re-dead.

Yes: re-dead, a term coined to represent the fact that she is told of the death of her aunt who has actually already been dead for three years.

Understanding how this is possible leads to the discovery of an aunt as immense as she is submerged like an iceberg.

How about you? Do you have an aunt of the heart?

HAPPINESS

HAPPINESS

Mar 29, 2025 | BOOKS

Happiness is the title of the latest reading I owe Monica.

What is happiness for you? 

The answer to this question is always very subjective.

What if happiness was a widespread state of mind that involved everyone?

The author of the book: Will Ferguson outlines his hypothesis of what would happen if everyone was happy in a short time.

How? Through a manual: the happiness manual.

Do you think we would need it?

The protagonist of the book: an editor who receives the manuscript of this manual and immediately trashes it, but then …

Everything is told with an irony that distinguished this entertaining read while maintaining an important underlying reflection.

I would particularly like to point out the publishing house: Accènto. 

Founded by Alessandro Cattelan, this independent publishing house has among its projects, the objective of translating books that are missing from the Italian market, as in this case.

Besides the humour, this book gave me a small discovery, which with my love for words, and for words in different languages, I really appreciated:

May had recently edited a bizarre dictionary of obscure terms for Panderic. The title was The Untranslatables, and it was a playful survey of certain terms absent from the English language. Whole feelings, whole concepts that remained unexpressed for the simple reason that no word had ever been coined to define them. Words like ‘mono-no-awarè,’ ‘the sadness of things,’ a Japanese term that defined the eternal pathos that peeps just below the surface of life. Words like ‘mokita,’ which in the Kiriwina language of New Guinea means ‘the truth that no one talks about.’ It refers to the tacit agreement, between two or more people, to avoid explicit references to a well-known secret…

Do you also know any untranslatables?

ECHOES FROM THE UNKNOWN

ECHOES FROM THE UNKNOWN

Mar 16, 2025 | BOOKS

Echoes from the Unknown is the book I received as part of the Mari’s Manual online book fair.

I would like to thank the author: Cristiano Venturelli for the courtesy.

The anthology Echoes from the Unknown is his third publishing work.

What is the unknown?

Cristiano asks this question, emphasising a quote by H.Philip Lovecraft:
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

How do you deal with courage?

If you were confronted with something that could generally be called a paranormal phenomenon, how would you react?

Would you want to find out what it really was or would you run for your life?

With respect to the concept of the unknown, does your first immediately instinctive reaction lead you to consider something dark and negative?

Do you believe that everything must have a logical explanation?

Or, on the contrary, do you think the line that can lead you to intersect everyday situations with supernatural realms can also be thin?

Each of the protagonists faces the unknown in a different way, but even before that, each represents human weaknesses and fallibility.

Yet very important values emerge from each tale, offering food for thought on aspects that should be echoed.

Reading the author’s notes, the love for his daughter, to whom the book is dedicated, shines through.

As it will soon be 19 March, I take this opportunity to express my gratitude for all loving fathers.

ACCABADORA

ACCABADORA

Feb 22, 2025 | BOOKS

Accabadora is a book that needs no introduction: everyone knows it.

However, I only read it now, thanks to ‘Monica books.’

I open it and find the dedication:
To my mother
Both of them

I immediately send a message to Monica telling her that I did not know Michela Murgia had been adopted.

She replies: ‘Read.’

Now I know what fillus de anima are: children of the soul.

So we find ourselves once again talking about the meaning of motherhood as extensive as the love it encompasses.

Mothers. 

But not only that, as was the case with The Children’s Trains communities are active participants in these dynamics of fostering children from families who are unable to raise them, to families who take them in.

Honestly, I did not even know the meaning of the word Accabadora, which comes from the Spanish acabar = to finish, but in its deepest sense is always linked to the concept of mother, in this case the last.

Did a figure like Sa Accabadora also exist in your region?

I had never heard of anything like that.

But I remember hearing about people who ‘signed’.

The ‘signers’ were considered to be able to heal or in some way protect against evil through their signs.

What popular figures are linked to where you live?

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