Luciano Bianciardi
L'integrazione

Luciano Bianchi is the narrator, protagonist, and alter ego of the author of this Integrazione in Milan, the city to which, at the end of the 1950s, he moved together with Marcello, the protagonist’s brother and the author’s second alter ego.

The depiction of the city unfolds in opposition to their hometown, in an antithesis that splits the first chapter in two: on one side, Grosseto, the small town of childhood and adolescence in the Tuscan Maremma, is a city that spreads out into the rural countryside but does not forget the evenings of festive days: the different populace fills the streets and nooks, intent on talking and observing, running and strolling, discussing and flirting. Thus, in Milan, what immediately stands out to newcomers are, inevitably, the streets, taken over by vehicles driven by anonymous motorists, and the way its inhabitants move, turned into a silent march.

The Milanese live active days: so many people running, wrestling with themselves, ignoring each other, needing to get somewhere: a harsh, cruel, tense, and harried place. In the office, everyone is working on the "big editorial initiative": a work of fundamental importance for the country’s cultural development, for which they try to create some organization; yet, everyone has a different idea about this initiative.

Thus, it soon becomes clear that no one actually understands this endeavor. Everything is shrouded in a strange fog, around which the six people involved turn into ten, the boss doesn't lead, decisions are made elsewhere (where, no one knows), and staff are fired or reassigned in September. When Marcello integrates, Luciano experiences his love escape; when Luciano integrates, it is the brother who disappears.

For one year the publishing house seems like a madhouse, where every day there's a new idea that is never brought to completion. For another year, while waiting for the great undertaking, they start translating foreign novels, disparaged in conversation but in the end more effective than the others. Finally, the third year begins, with even more changes, program shifts, with ever-new enthusiasms and the inevitable disappointments.

As with a funnier and more amused Lieutenant Drogo, Luciano’s years in the Milanese outpost inexorably pile up one after another. And defeat is inevitable: another two years go by before it becomes clear what Luciano’s real integrazione consists of, still opposed antithetically to Marcello’s isolation, who continues to exist for the world only under names other than his own.

The central object of the book is Milan as the birthplace of the cultural industry. Bianciardi, whose own biography took him from the role of employee at the nascent Feltrinelli to that of a freelance translator, unmasks this industry in Integrazione and exposes its dual nature. Cultural industry means editorial series, translations, and newspapers, but above all research offices for marketing, modern corporate life, business management techniques, advertising agencies…

The sharp irony with which this microcosm is described comes through in the words obsessively and vainly repeated by the men inhabiting it: “i rapporti di forza,” “la narrativa latino-americana,” “i pericolosi intellettuali romani,” “la condizione femminile,” “il proletariato”—these are mere wisps of breath before the action of the machine that sweeps everything away. A book that can be read (even now) in an evening, but that stays with you for a lifetime.