Giorgio Bassani's short novel is a day in the life of a man adrift and unsure of his place in society and the meaning of his existence. Seemingly well-off, he is afraid of the employees whose work enriches him. His marriage is defective, and the only true affection he gets from a woman is from his mother. The centerpiece of the story is a pointless hunting trip in which the man shoots nothing as an underling massacres scores of ducks and other birds and, sickeningly, a heron. What is the point? "You only had to observe life's events from a certain distance to conclude that all they amounted to was what they were; in other words nothing, or almost nothing."
The importance of money and status overrides all, in this telling. "Money, cash, dough: in the vicinity of those who had it, everything but everything – Fascism, Nazism, Communism, religion, family quarrels or affections, agricultural disputes, bank loans and so forth – everything else suddenly became of no concern or importance."
The ending comes not as a surprise but as a culmination of all the factors that Bassani has so meticulously assembled up to that grim point.
No comments:
Post a Comment