Michele Mari
Roderick Duddle

[Contains spoilers]

The relationship with the novel has never been trivial or predictable in Mari's career. His books have never taken the easy path of the classic novel: pages and pages of undifferentiated prose, primarily focused on presenting us with captivating plots. On the contrary, one might even say the opposite: Mari's writing is first and foremost stylistic control, a cultured and intoxicating literary embroidery: stories and content come afterward. In fact, most of his books ultimately speak mainly about their author. His figure is expressed in a variety of profiles, exalted and enriched by the different styles and literary filigrees that characterize his various works.

Much of Mari's production is therefore centered on the exploration of his personality, his enormous cultural baggage, on the literary reformulation of his life. Think of Tu, sanguinosa infanzia, Euridice had a dog, or Sparrows on the Wire: the raw material of these works comes directly from the author's life, appropriately filtered and reworked according to different codes. The intertwining of existential content and literary masks is thus one of the primary values of Mari's writing, a common thread that accompanies us through long stretches of his journey as a writer.

When, on the other hand, the subject matter departs from biographical events, the hyper-literary scope of the prose becomes accentuated, ultimately becoming the supreme value and the ultimate message of his storytelling: The Hold and the Abyss, in this sense, attempted a reformulation of pirate narrative, but embodied in a magical perspective, and often relevant to the universe of the fantastic: or an epistolary novel like Io venia pien d'angoscia a rimirarti was mainly nourished by erudition, by a profound exploration of Leopardi's life and readings, then amplified immensely by the choice to write in an archaizing Italian, the one used by the Leopardi family. When it wasn't literature, the backbone of a book could be the history of music, as in Red Floyd, but there was always a fixed external reference to which to cling in order to unleash the author's impetuous literary vein. One might even think that Mari, dedicating much of his energies to sumptuous and complex stylistic writing, opted for structures that are more easily manageable and malleable. And what is more malleable than the story of one's own life, on the one hand, or the reworking of pages of literature read and reread over many years of academic work?

A first change begins to show itself with Verderame, where biography and literature (but also history, pop culture, television) were intertwined to serve a plot finally novelistic in the most authentic sense of the term. Sparrows on the Wire also united the two, but without managing to be accessible to a not exceedingly selective audience. Not that this was a problem, Mari's audience remains quite limited, but the opening up to a discourse capable also of entertaining the average reader further exalted the exquisite quality of the writing, pleasing both the intellectual pleasure of reading Mari and the more banal but equally legitimate pleasure of "finding out how it ends."

Now, the latest novel by the Milanese writer, released in 2014, is titled Roderick Duddle and features on the cover a Dickensian boy running. At first glance, I frowned: Mari indulges in the pure 19th-century Bildungsroman? Does Mari succumb to the trend of Anglophilia with even an English name for the title? Of course, I deserve exemplary punishment for doubting.

Roderick Duddle is ultimately the mature and comprehensive fruit of Mari's writing: it is in every respect a novel of intrigue that combines the protagonist's formative journey with a complex conflict over an inheritance, thus igniting the noir intrigue punctuated by murders and chases, imprisonments, escapes, deceptions, alliances, and betrayals, revenges. And then again, inns, ports, an endless array of characters, helpers, and enemies, ruthless assassins and benefactors, and so on.

Focusing on a complex plot obviously does not diminish the exquisite quality of the writing, which, though simplified (but this progressive tendency has been in place for some time in the writer), compared to monster novels like The Hold and the Abyss, maintains its prerogatives of beauty and meticulous care, of constant appeal to the worldwide literary heritage across time, with a constant literary filigree that transforms the pure and simple narration of an ordinary novelist into a process of rewriting the vast cultural universe that Mari must have in his mind. The references to other works or, in general, cultural calls of all kinds are no longer as dense as in the past (Sparrows on the Wire is frightening in its volume of references), but they retain their function as an indispensable scaffolding upon which the narrative is structured. References can be explicit, in the sense that the narrator quotes or has characters quote works/authors ("I am not who I was: a great part of me perished," continued Sister Allison, quoting aimlessly and in absolute bad faith. p. 478) or more subtly relate to the book's very structure, the conformation of the characters, and the diegetic dynamics. In this novel, it is impossible not to highlight the Dickensian dimension of the protagonist, the fierce charge in the style of the Unnamed of the Probo, one of the most terrifying characters. Mari even cites himself when midway through the book he sets Roderick sailing on a merchant ship, the Rebecca, to escape the crowd of oppressors threatening him: a miniaturized re-enactment of The Hold and the Abyss's adventures. The literary quality of the individual moments is then constantly supervised: every passage has its own inescapable aesthetic dimension, and we always take pleasure in imagining the scenes of this story, as they are so well-calibrated figuratively.

Everything perfectly adheres to the topoi of literary good taste: inns cannot help but be sordid, the abbess obviously a ruthless schemer, the lone sailor Jack kind and generous, the protagonist alone and oppressed, the lawyers Peabody and Moriarty cunning and fraudulent, the investigator Havelock a brilliant but fragile mind, and the innkeeper Jones ignorant and lecherous. The paradigmaticity of the characters is absolute, but this doesn't imply a flattening of the figures, which are even deepened with interesting character refinements: Mari constructs a standard microcosm for this type of setting and story, but makes it vivid with what I might call his poetic acumen, with his meticulous precision and coherence in describing everything, and especially by instilling subtly discordant characteristics in these highly classic figures. The examples could be endless; it would have been too easy for the Probo to follow the same existential path as the Manzonian Unnamed, but Mari avoids this trap and shows him compassionate towards Jack, who helps him, but without this leading to moral redemption and a switch to the "good" side. The coarse Jeremiah Jones, who swims in meanness throughout the book, also plays a role in less villainous actions, allowing the real Roderick to obtain half of the inheritance (certainly for self-interest as well) and proving less callous than expected when he falls desperately in love with the hermaphrodite Sister Allison.

Roderick is clearly the character in which the author sees himself: he tells us this with amusing metanarrative devices on pp. 7-9 and 479-480. This protagonist appears very sharp and clever: his coming-of-age journey is not really so arduous (space had to be made for all the strands), as he shows himself to be very smart and shrewd from the first pages, though inevitably stumbling into several mistakes due to naivety and inexperience. Mari's figure titanically dominates each of his books; this one, in which for the first time we are projected into a world external to his solipsistic micro/macro-cosmos, could not betray the rule, and thus all the brilliant adventures and ideas of the boy are automatically projected onto the author: he is a child, naive only to a certain extent, profoundly intelligent, like Michelino in Verderame. The surname Duddle is earned through his actions, proof of his achieved dignity and independence.

An utterly intriguing issue is how the "external" world is presented to us, so elusive and distant in the rest of the author's production. Clearly from high up in his ivory tower Mari can only somewhat despise everyone, as seen in Sparrows on the Wire, but in this novel, where evil largely dominates, the author cannot help but come to terms with the world, reach a compromise. As mentioned earlier, even vile characters have positive traits. Overall, there prevails a sense of inevitable acceptance of people's meagerness. The world's ugliness is tolerated because in this case, it is precisely this world that is to be discussed: the author has already wandered far and wide through the meanders of literature and his mind, now he wants to try and tell us how things go outside. Faithful to his constant tendency towards absolute depth, he presents an extraordinary and complex hierarchy of characters, in this sense at the opposite of Manzoni's value system (and this can be seen in the differences between the Probo and the Unnamed, between Sister Allison and the Nun of Monza, etc.). No definitive judgment is given to people: or rather, the judgment is inherent in their actions, but the motives are most varied. There is the desire for wealth that moves many characters, from Jones to the Abbess, from Moriarty to Peabody; but even within this collection of profiles, the soul's inclinations are manifold. If Salamoia or Miller revel in committing evil, the Abbess is blinded by her faith, always believing herself to be on the right side, despite her numerous frauds; the Probo commits the worst atrocities to escape the evil that pursues him, La Fayette is an egoistic dandy, but capable of falling in love, like Jones, albeit with a morbid and degenerate love.

The great modernity of this pyramid of wickedness is also given by the outcomes of the various characters: their fates are in no way linked to their conduct in life. The worst murderers continue to live, while some of the best benefactors meet their end. There is room for both good and evil: Roderick and Michael will live as brothers at Pemberton House, but Jones and the Abbess will have their share of the loot. Lennie is acquitted, despite having killed; Mari allows himself a bit of kindness. La Fayette, however, will suffer one of the worst fates, sodomized in prison without having committed a crime. In short, good and evil do not divide the world's fates according to proper logic, there's no karma punishing those who deserve it. The world is deeply entangled, inextricably fused with injustice and falsification. Suffice it to say that even Havelock himself, the law's guardian, at one point becomes complicit in concealing evidence. We are very close to the "gnommero" of Gaddian memory. The world is too complex to be interpreted deeply and judged: Judge Bonahm, in the end, won't know which of the two children is the real heir, the events have become too tangled to truly understand.

In short, Mari's introspective world view does not succumb to minimal schematism or Manichaeism: in a moral reality a monstrous character like Sister Allison could never obtain legal custody of both children. Her soul's perversion is so radical that, in an absurd but well-argued reversal, she is ultimately the main character of the entire story: her path of depravity and immorality is so absolute that it is interpreted as a status of superiority over the fallible events of the world. Just as nature gave her a superior sexual form, so her spirit is eager for events, flattery, revenges, triumphs over all and everything. Sister Allison is evil incarnate but at the same time the most fascinating and elevated profile, in the least moralizing sense possible. Allison has mastery of reality, just as she has cultural and literary mastery. An infallible character, she is only defeated by Roderick in the convent basement of St Mary. As I mentioned, Mari can also be generous with his characters.

As for the structure of the narrative, it is wisely divided into very short chapters like a feuilleton, two or three pages, where we are bounced from one strand of the story to another. Rarely do two contiguous chapters concern the same character: this makes the diegesis extremely agile yet closely intertwined. The paths proceed parallel and at the same pace: thanks to this granular subdivision, the writing doesn't risk incurring structural distortions or imbalances. The threads of the discourse proceed with implacable regularity: every subplot is perfectly deepened, there isn't a detail that escapes the pen of the irreproachable narrator.

The narrator constructs the diegetic fabric with extrinsic modes: numerous passages indeed directly address the reader, using different adjectives each time, to explain, for example, the reasons for his reticence, or conversely, his expressionism, or again to inform the reader that he intends to skip over a certain passage because it's boring and rhetorical. In short, the narrative warp is constructed before the reader's eyes, who is led to understand the inevitable discrepancies formed between the facts and their narration, between fabula and plot.

A prime example of this critical and explicit stance toward material selection by the narrator is the final decision to close the story. It's indeed the most radical choice that can be made in constructing a plot: consistent with the concept of a reality "gnommero," a narrative must necessarily conclude, but reality never has a true conclusion.

"My patient and tolerant reader, who has followed me step by step up to this point: I imagine you are tired and eager to learn how this story ends. I will try to satisfy you, even if no story ever truly ends: a segment concludes, but this apparent cut-off is just part of a broader story, which only by convention (or if you prefer, to avoid going mad) we have limited to the events that happened to certain characters over a limited time period" (p. 464).

The astonishing quality of Roderick Duddle is precisely its ability to be deeply novelistic and at the same time meta-literary, classical in themes and modes yet relentlessly original and modern. A novel that brings together all the qualities of Mari's writing but projects them into a new dimension of greater accessibility, but also of greater reflection of the concrete data of life. Michele Mari has come down definitively from his fortress perched in the highest literature, deciding to get his hands dirty with the tragic and comic affairs of common people. His inquisitive gaze, however, has not ceased probing with great acuteness the mechanics of human souls and social relationships/conflicts. His potential, previously directed towards the constitution of an alternative, personal-literary microcosm, now opens to the world. The result is immense, impossible to render here in few pages. It must be experienced to understand its vastness.