Another Scrittore Pynchoniano

[Ya Sam]

Someone from the list, I believe, has already sent a reference to the 
article on Pynchon by the Italian cultural critic and editor Leonardo 
Colombati.

http://www.perceber.com/archives/2005/01/percha_thomas_p.html

As I found out while browsing through his site, in 2005 he published a novel 
called Perceber, which was compared to guess who. Many reviews were quite 
raving, and I just thought that if properly translated this novel might be 
of interest to the reader of TRP. It is evident now that his influence has 
become a global phenomenon, like that of Joyce, reaching over into the 
non-English-speaking regions. Below are some odds and ends that I really 
enjoyed in culling. The English translations are followed by the originals. 
All mistakes are mine.

“Perceber was written in eleven years [ ...] and tells about three men-a 
journalist, a physician, a lawyer –testifying about an accident in avenue 
Trastevere in Rome on July 6, 2000: a tram runs over an old man cutting off 
his right leg. Full stop. That’s the story, and it runs for more than 500 
pages. In the middle, or behind, or below, which is the same, there is a 
parallel story of Perceber, a Spanish city founded in the Middle Ages whose 
inhabitants talk continuously without the slightest pause between one word 
and another. […]
The other characters of the narrative, is a rumbling myriad of historical 
and literary figures […]
and also rabbis, whores, alchemists, talking statues, night guards, a 
cabaret performing crab (on the most comical pages of the novel), etc. All 
this is cemented by writing which is ambitious, difficult, maximalist and 
encyclopaedic, to such an extent that in the appendix to the novel the 
author had to insert another hundred pages of apparatus (notes, quotations, 
glossary, sources) without which little can be understood and with which 
sometimes one understands even less…”

Perceber è stato scritto in undici anni di lavoro [...] e racconta di tre 
uomini - un giornalista, un medico, un avvocato - testimoni di un incidente 
in viale Trastevere, a Roma, il 6 luglio 2000: un tram travolge un anziano 
tranciandogli la gamba destra. Punto. Questa è la storia, e scorre per più 
di 500 pagine. In mezzo, o sopra, o dietro, o sotto, che è lo stesso, la 
storia-parallela di Perceber, una città spagnola fondata nel medioevo i cui 
abitanti parlano in continuazione senza neppure una pausa tra una parola e 
l’altra. [...]
Coprotagonisti della narrazione, una miriade chiassosa di personaggi storici 
e letterari [...] e poi rabbini, puttane, alchimisti, statue parlanti, 
guardiani notturni, una grancevola cabarettista (tra le pagine più comiche 
del romanzo), eccetera. Il tutto cementato da una scrittura ambiziosa, 
difficile, massimalista ed enciclopedica, tanto che in appendice al romanzo 
l’autore ha “dovuto” pubblicare altre cento pagine di apparati (note, 
citazioni, glossario, fonti) senza le quali si capirebbe poco e con le quali 
a volte si capisce ancor meno...


“Colombati’s Rome is enormous, spectral, stuffy, but it has the merit of 
being absolutely authentic and absolutely contemporary. Colombati, fond of 
Petronius, Caravaggio, Belli, Moravia, Fellini. has attempted to serve them 
in Pynchonian sauce”

“La Roma di Colombati è enorme, spettrale, afosa, ma ha il pregio di essere 
assolutamente vera e assolutamente a noi contemporanea. Colombati, amando 
Petronio, Caravaggio, Belli, Moravia, Fellini, ha tentato di servirceli in 
salsa pynchoniana.”

“Through the chaos that governs Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 as 
well as the metaphor and the dream imbuing Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One 
Hundred Years of Solitude, Colombati tries to represent narrative experience 
in its entirety…”

“Tra il caos che governa L’incanto del lotto 49 di Thomas Pynchon e la 
metafora e il sogno che impregnano Cent’anni di solitudine di Gabriel Garcia 
Marquez, Colombati tenta di rappresentare un’esperienza narrativa tutta 
sua...”

“He is omnivorous like Thomas Pynchon, and just like him he is tormented by 
the demon of classification that impels him to transform the narrative into 
a confused encyclopaedic register”

  “E' onnivoro come Thomas Pynchon, e come lui tormentato da un demone 
classificatorio che lo spinge a trasformare la narrazione in un disorientato 
regesto enciclopedico”

“Greeted by eminent literary critics and writers as an immortal masterpiece 
already before its publication, with comparison to James Joyce and Thomas 
Pynchon…”

Salutato da eminenti critici letterari e scrittori come un capolavoro 
immortale ancor prima della sua pubblicazione, e giù paragoni con James 
Joyce e Thomas Pynchon, ...”



http://www.perceber.com/archives/dicono_di_perceber/index.html

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