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Rating: We are dealing with one of the most important books of 20th-century Italian literature written by a great writer (by vocation) who became an engineer (out of necessity).
Set in Rome, in 1927, during Fascism, "Quer pasticciaccio brutto de Via Merulana" tells of a murder that took place in the palace of gold, so called because of several quite wealthy tenants, at number 219 Via Merulana. If you pass by there, there's even a commemorative plaque at 219.
The investigation of the case, truly very tangled (otherwise, what kind of 'pasticciaccio' would it be?), is entrusted to Inspector Ciccio Ingravallo, a Molisano from the countryside, an incredibly intelligent, savvy man, a deep connoisseur of the human soul, straightforward, resolute, and tinged with a patina of spleen. Ingravallo might be the magnifying glass of the writer, a Gadda, undoubtedly in a state of grace.
However, Ingravallo is not the protagonist. He leads the investigations, and excuse me if that's not enough, but in this book, perhaps there is no real protagonist or an absolute protagonist.
Of course, it's a mystery, yes, but not only that, indeed. The murder, while representing the book's core, is not everything.
Human beings, people and their relationships, their (human) weaknesses, the quirks, the manias, their dependence on and adoration of the god of money which, like a gigantic and unstoppable tide, sweeps everything and on which everything floats or sinks depending on the specific weight.
Therefore, the true protagonist is perhaps represented by humanity, which flounders and stirs in this sovereign tide, from Italy of yesteryear, so different from today yet so familiar. After all, the characters in the book are our grandparents, great-grandparents, in short, our ancestors, right? From Fascism, which, at several turns, Gadda doesn't fail to thrash, in his own way, with sharp irony and without any discounts.
"Quer pasticciaccio brutto de Via Merulana" is not easy to read, not at all. It smoothly transitions from Italian to Romanesque to Molisano with great expertise, it's impressive how Gadda masters Romanesque (and dialects in general, maybe he was helped, I don't know, and if that's the case, he was supported very well). It should be noted that he stayed in Rome only after the novel was written, which first came out in installments in 1946 while he was in Florence. Then it was published as a novel 10 years later when he had been in Rome for some years, but in short, Gadda wasn't a true Roman of Rome, but crikey, at times it seems like reading a new graduate Rugantino, yet he's a Milanese.
And what words Gadda comes up with! Words that, for me, who is not really a literate but not a total ignoramus either, are entirely new, or maybe, I wouldn't want to be wrong, he actually coined some neologisms on his own.
Extraordinary the description and characterization of the many characters who barely peek or who have more significant roles. Two strokes are enough for him to showcase any character of note or secondary, whether it's Ingravallo, Mrs. Liliana or simply the concierge or the errand boy.
The dialogues? Magnificent, superb. The same goes for the description of the scenery of a sly Rome, deadly beautiful, but also cynical, fatalistic, swank, rich and poor.
I close by quoting a passage that particularly struck me: one of the tenants is robbed. Inspector Ingravallo, after scrutinizing her, makes his considerations.
"...La Menegazzi, like all women alone at home, spent her hours in a state of anguish or at least of dubious and tormented expectation. For some time, her perennial peacock in response to the bell's jingle had intellectualized into a complex of obsessive images and figurations: masked men, in the foreground, with felt soles on their feet; sudden yet silent raids in the antechamber; hammer blows on the head or strangulation by hand, or by suitable cord, possibly preceded by 'torments'—an idea or word that filled her with unspeakable orgasm. Mixed anguish and fantasies: with the comment, perhaps, of a sudden heartbeat, for a sudden crack, in the dark, of some wardrobe more seasoned than the others: anyway, eagerly anticipated to the event. Which, give and give, couldn't help but eventually come really too. The long wait for the home aggression, thought Ingravallo, had become compulsion: not so much to her and her acts and thoughts, of a victim already mortgaged, but compulsion to destiny, to the 'field of forces' of destiny. The prefiguration of 'o fattacce must have evolved into historical predisposition: it had acted: not only on the psyche of the looted-yoked-tormented, but also on the ambient 'field,' on the field of external psychic tensions. Because Ingravallo, similarly to certain of our philosophers, attributed a soul, indeed a filthy soul, to that system of forces and probabilities that surrounds every human creature, and which is usually called destiny. In plain words, the great fear had brought bad luck to Menegazzi. The dominant thought, at every jingle, used to coagulate in that 'who is it?' bleated or usual bray of every recluse that the humble household spirits aren't enough to protect. In her, it was a moaning antiphony to the jingle, to the more domestic calls of the bell..."
Well, in short, I highly recommend it, this is a book not to be missed, to be read with full attention, so I would say no metro, bus, etc., for that there's FALETTI or 50 shades of crap! :)
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