An intriguing but uneven modernist-tinged tale about a frustrated man.
A baby boomer makes his way through life and a television career in this debut novella.
Born to a working-class Italian American family in Brooklyn on the cusp of World War II, the unnamed narrator of this story grows up in a claustrophobic world of small, crowded apartments and sprawling extended families. A multiethnic kettle of Italian, Jewish, Black, German, and Russian residents, his neighborhood is a place of discovery for the boy while the Roman Catholic Church and the girls in his class prove dual sources of mystery. Then, in the seventh grade, his family relocates to a larger home in Queens—much to his chagrin. Upset over the move, he consoles himself with trips to the local movie house and library. The bookworm does not attend college after high school but instead goes to work at a series of jobs he doesn’t like—carpenter, stock boy, bank agent. “Coming off the beat generation,” he reflects, “I was more than beat. I was confused as to which direction to best cast my lot in life. Having been given none of the enormous perplexities, I would have to face on the abstract road lying ahead.” After an unsuccessful stint in the Navy and a few rocky romantic relationships, he winds up back in New York City, enrolled in the Electronics Circuits and Systems Program at the RCA Institute. From there, he has an opportunity to work as a colorist in TV production, just as he begins to start a family of his own. Has he finally found his true calling, the thing that will silence the doubts and dissatisfaction that have categorized his life up until now? Or is he fated to remain perpetually stuck between where he’s been and where he wants to go?
Violandi’s oblique prose is reminiscent of high modernism, particularly James Joyce. Here, he describes going to confession as a boy: “Roman Catholic at this tender age. One in good standing, I entered the confessional with apprehension, chastity and Priapus in hand. Confessing touching number one. When confirmation rolled around, I’d change my tune to confessing impure thoughts. Feeling more comfortable with the latter, for its truth.” There are some fun and surprising turns of phrase as well as some other eye-catching stylistic flourishes, such as annotations explaining the childhood cartoons and pop hits he references throughout the text. The world of TV production—when it’s presented in any detail—is engagingly antiquated. Unfortunately, there is not a lot to the book apart from its slippery prose. There’s little plot and insufficient character development—even the protagonist remains hardly known to readers, hidden behind the text’s indirect narration. Though the novella is only 123 pages, its dense aimlessness makes it feel quite a bit longer. The author rarely offers scenes and instead tells the whole story as continuous, discursive exposition. Readers will be disinclined to care much about the protagonist, and Violandi gives them few reasons to change their minds.
An intriguing but uneven modernist-tinged tale about a frustrated man.Pub Date: June 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-29125-3
Page Count: 123
Publisher: KDP
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
An emotionally acute study of manliness.
Scenes from the life of a well-off but emotionally damaged man.
Szalay’s sixth novel is a study of István, who as a 15-year-old in Hungary is lured into a sexual relationship with a married neighbor; when he has a confrontation with the woman’s husband, the man falls down the stairs and dies. Add in stints in a juvenile facility and as a soldier in Iraq, and István enters his 20s almost completely stunted emotionally. (Saying much besides “Okay” sometimes seems utterly beyond him.) Fueled by id, libido, and street drugs, he seems destined to be a casualty until, while working as a bouncer at a London strip club, he helps rescue the owner of a security firm who’s been assaulted; soon, he’s hired as the driver for a tycoon and his wife, with whom he begins an affair. István is a fascinating character in a kind of negative sense—he’s intriguing for all the ways he fails to confront his trauma, all the missed opportunities to find deeper connections. To that end, Szalay’s prose is emotionally bare, deliberately clipped and declarative, evoking István’s unwillingness (or incapacity) to look inside himself; he occasionally consults with a therapist, but a relentless passivity keeps him from opening up much. His capacity to fail upwards eventually catches up with him, and the novel becomes a more standard story about betrayal and inheritances, but it also turns on small but meaningful moments of heroism that suggest a deeper character than somebody who, as someone suggests, “exemplif[ies] a primitive form of masculinity.” István’s relentlessly stony approach to existence grates at times—there are a few too many “okay”s in the dialogue—but Szalay’s distanced approach has its payoffs. Being closed off, like István, doesn’t close off the world, and at times has tragic consequences.
An emotionally acute study of manliness.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781982122799
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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