Alessandro Iovinelli. L'autore e il personaggio. L'opera metabiografica nella narativa degli ultimi trent'anni.

Alessandro Iovinelli. L'autore e il personaggio. L'opera metabiografica nella narativa degli ultimi trent'anni. Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro): Rubbettino, 2004.

This book is, I would dare to say, one of the more bold and innovative studies I have read on theory that has come out of the Italian literary establishment. It exhibits an impressive sophistication overall, and it is well written yet not--as some of those who hark back to theoretical yesteryear might lament with these types of studies--aimed only at the specialist reader. It offers a bit more than 400 pages of analysis and theory, together with more than thirty pages of bibliography.

It is abundantly clear that Iovinelli possesses an impressive command of the theoretical worlds of literary and visual studies. More important, he is most adept at making sure he is rigorous in analysis, exhaustive in breadth, and clear in his language. In a sense, this book serves as an antidote, a sort of response ante litteram, to Mario Lavagetto's small essay of 2005, Eutanasia della critica, in which he bemoans for the most part what has become of literary criticism today. Unfortunately, Lavagetto and his ilk had not read, or--as sometimes happens--chose to ignore the likes of Iovinelli and his theoretical confreres.

Like any book-length critical study, L'autore e il personaggio. L'opera metabiografica nella narrativa degli ultimi trent'anni is demanding of its reader, lovinelli's point of departure is the early 1970s, well after the Barthesian proclamation of the "death of the author." Yet, in spring-boarding off of such a concept, he wants to underscore the seemingly contradictory value of the "author" in his various and sundry "presences." Namely, Iovinelli, in dedicating his study to the meta-biographical aspect of the author in the past thirty-plus years, sees both Barthes and Foucault as, we might want to say, two peas in a pod to varying degrees. That is, on the one hand we have the seemingly total elimination of the author, as Barthes seemingly reduced the text to a series of linguistic structures from which "meaning" is supposed to emanate. On the other hand, Foucault tells us that the "author'--not the flesh-and-bones person, but that construct that has, for him, replaced the human being--is very much part of the interpretive act. As such, both concepts are indeed more complementary than they are contradictory, as Iovinelli wants us to understand. That is, he sees a shift in perspective from the author as biographer--i.e., authoritative subject--to the author as object of the narrative act--i.e., a character in the fiction of first- or third-person quality.

Throughout this study Iovinelli is sure to offer his reader a vast array of examples in which we may understand how all of this has come into play. This book is divided into three major sections: "Parte Prima: Il personaggio dell'autore nell'opera biografica"; "Parte Seconda: II personaggio dell'autore nella fiction (meta)biografica"; "Parte Terza: Un'opera ipertestuale." Each section, in turn, is subdivided into chapters. The first part of the book offers the reader an intellectual tour through various theorists for the first two thirds, moving then to an analysis of the works of Pietro Citati and how his numerous literary biographies reflect the various critical trends of the "figura" of the author (34).

While Iovinelli dedicated the first part of his study to literary biography, the second part of this volume is dedicated to "biographical metafiction," as Iovinelli characterizes it. Beginning with an excurses on the rebirth of the historical novel in the likes of Consolo and Sciascia as authors of the archetypes ('opere architestuali" [171]) of the neohistorical novel, Iovinelli sees this rebirth in Eco, in all four of his novels that appeared before the publication date of L'autore e il personaggio. Iovinelli's thought process in this regard is exemplary of what the reader finds throughout this study:

... E' vero che nel corso degli anni e alla luce di diverse letterure critiche si e insistito sul suo [Il nome della rosa] carattere di palinsesto (vedi Genette) e di romanzo postmoderno (vedi lo stesso Eco nella Postilla del 1983). Tuttavia non si puo dimenticare che:

1) quando usci, il romanzo fu letto non solo come un pastiche citazionistico o un giallo molto erudito, ma anche come un vero e proprio romanzo sul Medio Evo (anche perche Eco conosce molto bene quest'epoca ed ha anche scritto sull'idea che noi moderni ne abbiamo);

2) sempre a proposito della recezione presso il pubblico, e da segnalare che si apprezzo nell'opera di Eco il meccanismo della retrodatazione o, se si preferisce, di proiezione nel passato, di problemi e temi del presente (gli "anni di piombo", il Sessantotto, ecc.);

3) vi sono ancora elementi di romanzo storico sia nel secondo romanzo di Eco (Il pendolo di Foucault, 1988), sia nel suo terzo romanzo (L'isola del giorno prima, 1995), sia nel quarto romanzo (Baudolino, 2001) che e fra l'altro, ambientato in epoca medievale.

Tra i numerosi fili che collegano le quattro opere di Eco, due ci interessano in modo particolare. In primo luogo, la loro natura di libri fatti, per cosi dire, di altri libri (attraverso un sapiente gioco di citazioni implicite e esplicite, peraltro rivendicato dall'autore). In secondo luogo, il carattere apertamente antistoricistico della loro concezione storica. L'uno e l'altro aspetto sono fondamentali e basterebbero da soli a qualificare l'opera di Eco come l'architesto del neoromanzo storico. (172-3; emphasis textual)

Iovinelli then goes on to discuss the relationship between these "architesti" (Consolo, Sciasica, Eco) before engaging in a much longer discourse on the various identities, if you will, of the author within the text. These different incarnations include: the authorcharacter in masquerade; the author-character's presence; the centrality of the authorcharacter; and the narrator as another character within the fiction. The last ninety pages of this chapter go on to discuss the author's "presence" or lack thereof in the two narrative categories of autofiction (which depends "sull'invenzione di una personalita e di una esistenza, vale a dire su un tipo di finzionalizzazione della stessa sostanza dell'esperienza vissuta" [2481) and metafiction (which deals with the "presenza dell'autore come personaggio all'interno di generi letterari di origine tutt'altro che biografica" [253]), demonstrating such distinctions and particulars through the reading of a series of authors, Italian and not (e.g., Borges, Calvino, Manganelli, Savinio) throughout the twentieth century to today. All of this leads, as Iovinelli rightly underscores a bit more than mid-way through his study, to the following:

      Se parlando di autofiction ci siamo gia posti la domanda sul
   perche un autore si racconti come un personaggio di fiction, ora
   dovremo cercare di rispondere ad un'altra domanda: perche un autore
   diventa un altro autore? E ancora: pur accettando l'"effet de reel"
   imposto dal patto narrativo, chi e che parla--l'autore reale,
   l'autore implicito o l'autore ideale? (253; emphasis textual)

The final section ("Un'opera ipertestuale') of this book is dedicated to "Il caso Pessoa-Tabucchi," as aptly entitled. In these seventy-plus pages, Iovinelli looks at the other aspect of his study, the intertextuality of one author influencing another, concentrating on one of Italy's most read and discussed authors who, significant for this type of study, is very much international to varying degrees.

In all, Iovinelli draws on an array of critics and writers, national and international, in order to investigate the thirty-plus years of literary and meta-literary activity in Italy and beyond. In so doing, he draws on a plethora of fiction writers and theorists that include, in addition to the above-mentioned, the likes of: Dario Bellezza, Andrea Camilleri, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Davide Lajolo, Elisabetta Rasy, Paolo Ruffilli, and others for biographies; Peter Ackroyd, Simone de Beauvoir, Oriana Fallaci, John Fante, Claudio Magris, Lalla Romano, Jose Saramago, and others for fictional (meta)biographies; and Michail Bahktin, Remo Ceserani, Jacques Derrida, William H. Epstein, Linda Hutcheon, Wolfgang Iser, Thomas Kuhn, Philippe Lejeune, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Paul Ricour, John Updike, and others for theoretical and cultural discourses.

As I mentioned at the outset, L'autore e il personaggio is demanding of its reader; Iovinelli casts a wide net with regard to both fiction and non-fiction writers, all of which requires his reader to help create the literary map he eventually creates with his study. Iovinelli's study is, at the same time, rewarding and satisfying, guiding its reader through various theoretical mine fields while clarifying certain concepts as Iovinelli adroitly adopts the numerous notions and concepts for his own authorial intention in writing this book. Graduate students and scholars alike will find L'autore e il personaggio an indispensable tool for any foray into any conversation about literary theory and its serious and judicious application to primary texts.

ANTHONY JULIAN TAMBURRI

John D. Calandra Italian American Institute

Queens College/CUNY