vellutogrigio

Thanks to Bertle, Fiquata, and Blechtrommel for stopping by and leaving their comments. Recommended book for your summer: even better if read by the sea, where its reading definitely enhances the atmosphere (more than the city where the review was conceived, but that’s how it is).

@Polkatulk88: it would have been interesting, and, in keeping with the group, "futurible" at least because the live is from '75 and the album you mentioned is from '76 ;)

I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence that this book and Moby Dick have appeared simultaneously: in both, I seem to perceive, beyond the genre practiced by the writer (here action-thriller, there a more ambitious novel), the biblical matrix of the struggle between man and Leviathan, between the individual and an invisible evil (the fish, because it surprises us from the depths, from the unknown dark), greater than us. Beautiful. I am struck by the cover, because as a child I had the t-shirt taken from the movie poster, which is the same as the edition of the novel depicted here!

I fondly recall Lansdale's "The Bottoms," mentioned by someone above. It's yet another coming-of-age novel that, with all the necessary precautions, stands somewhere between Mark Twain and Stephen King. It seems that Quentin Tarantino crafted the character of Bill (in Kill Bill) based on Lansdale, due to his madness, passion for martial arts, etc. A reputation that doesn't encourage one to get to know him.

@Brusko: in my opinion, insisting on Hitler as the embodiment of the devil is ironic, suggestive, but reduces Nazism to a supernatural evil… which it wasn’t. Let me explain: Nazism does not spring from Hitler; it cannot be summarized in Hitler just as Fascism can be summarized in Mussolini (as that ideology coincides with the thought, and above all the action, of Mussolini and his capacity to appeal to the masses), being instead an ideology deeply rooted in certain philosophical-romantic suggestions (I think of Volkgeist by Wolf, if I’m not mistaken; certain passages from Fichte himself; the cult of authority-state that can be found in certain reflections of Hegel, as well as, from the latter, a sort of reduction of the individual to a nothingness ground down by History and Spirit (ironically, I find Nietzsche less influential than the aforementioned); and keep in mind that certain Italian idealist philosophy justified retrospectively Fascism, while it did not lay the premises, but rather a misinterpretation of the German one served as a foundation for Nazi suggestions, and above all spread them in cultural circles as well). The same Nazi anti-Semitism – here various studies by Arendt contribute – has its roots in the Middle Ages and the following centuries. Hitler was an extremist and certainly a person afflicted with delusions of grandeur; but he would have remained a house painter or a Bavarian tavern agitator if he hadn’t encountered, along his path, figures who were relatively overshadowed by the light of history all concentrated on Hitler himself: an information manipulator like Goebbels; a mass murderer like Himmler (perhaps the true dark soul of Nazism); an organizer and executor like Bormann (but also Eichmann); a corrupter of youth like Von Schirach and a seducer of crowds, capable of harmonizing the ideal of the Third Reich with the myth of the First World War and its related defeat, like Goering; great military figures who pretended not to know like Donitz, intellectuals in the service of the Reich like Speer (let’s not open controversies about Mann, or about Heidegger himself). All figures who, in one way or another, used Hitler for personal desires, sex, women, and revenge delusions for Goebbels with his goat-like foot; religious obsessions and inferiority complexes for a Himmler who sublimated everything into neo-pagan cults and the creation of a perfect race; various assorted vices, as well as a thirst for power and, lastly, money for representatives of a decadent or fallen bourgeoisie, or a petty bourgeoisie eager for revenge, like Bormann, Von Schirach. Lastly, the desires for revenge from military figures fallen into disgrace due to war injuries like the morphine addict Goering or ambitious figures like Donitz. Or ambitious intellectuals like Speer. Moreover, an entire population that, in one way or another, was complicit for having submitted, as were the Italians, good people.

The biggest limitation of Judas was always the drummer: I liked Les Binks. I never liked Dave Holland. And just look at what happened to him! francesfarmersrevenge.com

And Marcella Bella, Tiziana Rivale, Ricchi & Poveri, Loi and Altomare, Alessandro Canino (the one from "Brutta"), Paolo Vallesi, Miki Mix, Lena Biolcati... And "Zucchero, miele peperoncino," "Liquirizia," "Giallo Napoletano," "Puro cachemire," "Caramelle da uno sconosciuto," "Ferragosto Ok," "La signora della notte," "Sono fotogenico," "La patata bollente," "Sogni mostruosamente proibiti," "Ecco noi per esempio" ?!?!?!?!? You got us by closing at the peak, like the Police, but I will remember you with fondness and warmth, as if a part of me were leaving with you. Cordially Yours, VG.

Indeed, the sentence quoted by Sfascia deserves a correction.

A good review and a proposal that, sooner or later, would have been presented in this section with an obvious tail of controversy. The data in the book may be objective; however, I limit myself to noting briefly that: 1) its publication, by Mondadori, whose owner is a well-known Italian politician who, at the time and even today, could and can govern with the support of fascists, post-fascists, and former fascists—who are all united by a visceral yet ahistorical anti-communism—was instrumental at the time in contesting the then center-left government. It is a way to distort history for contemporary political purposes, thus betraying its very meaning; 2) it is somewhat erroneous to equate fascism, nazism, and communism based solely on the number of deaths. One must verify the assumptions and the quality of the work itself: and it is noteworthy that communist regimes primarily eliminated internal dissenters or used communist ideology as a tool for forms of ethnic cleansing, especially in Southeast Asia, while in nazism, the oppression of the individual and the elimination of "races" (from Jews to Slavs to Roma) was intrinsic to the proclaimed ideology and evident from the "theorization" of Hitler's "Mein Kampf"; 3) the relatively "modest" number of Holocaust victims, regardless of the inaccuracy of quantification, essentially depends on the "brief" duration of the war and the Nazi regime. I don't want to think about how many deaths the Nazis would have caused if, instead of ruling from '33 to '45, they had governed and/or dominated the world for other decades. The intention and Aryan ideology were not to stop at the extermination of Jews; 4) in any case, the issue is not ideological, meaning a valuation and weighing of the "evil" of fascism, nazism, and communism, given that a reflection on such doctrines is more interesting on a philosophical and political science level than on a historical-legal one. The focal point, which this book and various critics touch upon tangentially, relates to the legal form of the totalitarian state and the methods through which it implements its sovereignty over its people and territory, almost naturally tending to expand its power over foreign territories and peoples. I believe that the victims listed in this and other similar books are victims of that form of state, and not of one or another ideology: ideologies that I personally find hateful, but nonetheless ideologies. And ideas do not kill; it is the men who apply them who do, often for personal, vile ends, or for the preservation and assertion of power itself.