Is every 13 year old's future wife his mother-mistress?

#Agostino #albertomoraviapincherle

I read a first edition, 1947, such a cute pre-computer 1978 borrowing card! The cover puzzles me; is it waves on the water? beach sand? the tall grass of his wanderings? Agostino mentions buying a book, I imagine it having such a cover, and him sitting mesmerized by it in his adolescent confusion.

I liked this novel, cute and sweet and innocent, lacking the violence of our courses’ previous novels. Totally the opposite of what I expected after reading Ian Greenlees’ introduction. Writer Alberto Pincherle (pseudonym Moravia) wrote this during WW2, holed up in a little farmhouse after twenty years of hassle from the fascist Italian dictatorship who interpreted his writings as anti-government. I expected bitterness and Marxist disgust with his upper-class roots, but found instead a gentle, class indifferent, adolescent transition. The introduction does point to this, suggesting that the only way Moravia stayed sane for twenty years was by eschewing provincial Italian writing and keeping current with literary developments in France and England. Impressionist. This is the first time I appreciated the writing more than the story! I enjoyed the prose, it seemed effortless unlike Proust and Bombal who seem to be trying so hard to write to impress.

Moravia portrays the mean, sordid, egoist lifestyle of the rich Italians and their stylish clothes, cars, chauffer, cooks, throwing dance parties with hired waiters, including one waiter who is likely the father of one of his new poor friends. Another summer at the beach house for Agostino and his mum turns interesting when Agostino leaves the safety of the rich beach at Speranza for the poor beach at Vespucci. Bravely, innocently, but effortlessly, Agostino makes friends with the poor kids and joins their gang. He passes the initiation of taunting, adventure, and sexual exploration and becomes one of them. At the same time, he maintains the pretense of no change when with his mother. This was enjoyable to read, he doesn’t spend the whole time in his head as with Proust and Bombal, and doesn’t need the frantic violent pace of Arlt’s Silvio in Mad Toy.

Agostino is smart, he understands quickly the transitions he is going through in real time. He doesn’t need to die to understand his life (Bombal) or to treat everything as a stressful dramatic turning point (Arlt). I don’t know anyone like Agostino, it was interesting the way he continually suffers humiliations – his mother’s boredom, his cousin’s dance rejection, mothers’ lovers’ smirking, cigarette burnt into his hand, red tent boys’ taunting, prostitute’s disrespect – yet they roll off him and he just lives his life one minute at a time. He’s a very likable character! Unlike Proust, his bedtime mother’s kisses suddenly make him quiver and he realizes he has grown up. This unshared “conflict between repulsion and attraction” is the defining characteristic of men’s lives.