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Tanto gentile e tanto onesta
A tredici anni Melinda viene affidata alle cure di un famoso psicoanalista inglese, il professor Hochtensteil, il quale, prima di litigare con il maestro, era stato il migliore allievo di Freud. La ragazzina è finita sul lettino per aver amoreggiato col fratello e, soprattutto, per aver sedotto il padre, Abramo Publishing, importante editore inglese. Non contenta, Melinda affinerà le proprie arti venusiane, oltre che nel salotto letterario di casa sua, tra cene raffinate e ospiti eleganti, proprio sul lettino terapeutico giacché persino il dottore non saprà più chi sta analizzando chi. Incoraggiata da simile debutto, la bella e raffinata Melinda si immerge nella "swinging London", dove perfeziona la propria educazione sentimentale. Poi, con un invidiabile bagaglio di esperienza, comincia a sposarsi e divorziare a ripetizione, diventa duchessa, fa carriera politica, viene assoldata come spia, organizza la più grande rapina al treno del secolo, attraversa il globo terracqueo, fonda la prima banca del seme (esclusivamente di premi Nobel) e finisce in Urss, dove accetta di imbarcarsi su un'astronave come prima donna a essere lanciata sulla luna. Tornerà?
Rifiutato da dodici editori e infine accettato da Feltrinelli nel 1967 e tradotto in sedici lingue, Tanto gentile e tanto onesta diventò subito un bestseller mondiale. Il percorso folle e spregiudicato di questa eroina tra i miti, i tic, i tabù e le rivoluzioni degli anni Sessanta, non tardò ad affermarsi come uno dei romanzi più divertenti del Novecento.
Rifiutato da dodici editori e infine accettato da Feltrinelli nel 1967 e tradotto in sedici lingue, Tanto gentile e tanto onesta diventò subito un bestseller mondiale. Il percorso folle e spregiudicato di questa eroina tra i miti, i tic, i tabù e le rivoluzioni degli anni Sessanta, non tardò ad affermarsi come uno dei romanzi più divertenti del Novecento.
366 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1967
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About the author
Gaia Servadio
36 books5 followersGaia Cecilia M. Servadio is an Italian writer. She received a bachelor's degree from London's Camberwell School of Art. Her first novel Tanto gentile e tanto onesta, aka Melinda, was published in 1967 by Feltrinelli in Italy and Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK, and was a "a runaway success".
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 4, 2024
This 1967 'Pop' novel by Italian writer, actress & journalist, Gaia Servadio, who died in August 2021 at the age of 82, ranks as one of the most individual & unusual works of fiction I have ever read. (more than 1,500 give or take a completely unrecorded & forgotten one or two or twenty!).
Frankly, it's quite barmy...in a mostly positive way, as it meanders hap-hazardly around London & other European & American locations of the 'Swinging Sixties' like the Thames in a Waterloo Sunset!
The original Italian version 'Tanto gentile e tanto onesta', translated, somewhat surprisingly, not by the author herself, but by a certain L.K.Conrad!...(an in-joke with the literary reference to multi lingual Joseph?). It could well be...as Gaia's novel is laced with satirical & humourous moments, clearly intended to amuse & parody her wealthy friends & eccentric acquaintances.
Not quite a comic novel then but very much a focused 1960s viewpoint on the 'revolutionary' new ideas circulating amongst the so-called intelligentsia of the rapidly changing perspectives during the Cold War & its effects on western democracies' sanity!
Gaia had been an adolescent, student socialist-cum-communist but soon married into the British establishment. (She was actually, for a period, Boris Johnson's mother-in-law at the time when Bojo was married to her daughter, Allegra!).
She would have understood much of the socio-political madness that pervaded all forms of literature, art, theatre, cinema & sexual 'habits' at the time, no doubt.
More than 50 years on - and rescued from a Charing Cross Road book emporium in the late 70s for £3, attracted by its colourful cover, emblazoned with a Union Jack & Leighton's 'Flaming June',& its inside, evocative portrait of the mysterious-looking authoress by Patrick Lichfield - I finally got around to reading it!
(I have recently also read Gaia Servadio's memoir from 1978, 'Insider Outsider - a personal view of Britain', (again saved from a pile of library rejects for 30p.!), & I enjoyed some intimate insights into her lively 'social' life with a variety of men & women of some standing in her formative years in London where she arrived to less-than-seamlessly coalesce with Britain at the Camberwell School of Art & Belgravia!).
Melinda Publisher(!!), the eponymous heroine, moves relentlessly through a variety of contemporaneous characters, locations, incidents, accidents, murders, sexual liaisons, and acute observations of high-ranking men & women (with whom Gaia herself was more than just familiar!) to a comic climax in a Soviet space capsule orbiting the earth, out of control, oxygen & hope of a landing back on earth, & a world exclusive story for the hungry, though technologically-lacking media: a notorious & famous woman - as she had become in the novel - breaking barriers for her sex without any apparent active, feminist cause at its heart. Stanley Kubrick was waiting in the wings!...& 'Barbarella' too!
In 1968, few women were burning their bras though plenty were neglecting to wear them when their dissatisfied mood suited such departures from comfort & propriety! Alas, I was just a lusty teenager, watching from the wings!
There are shades of 'Bond...James Bond', comic-stripper Modesty Blaise & that era's spying tropes aplenty...not least a licence to kill which Melinda accomplishes with some cool panache!, & an intimate touch or two of risque soft porn - Melinda has many inadequate husbands & lovers! - pre-dating the modern interepretation of sexual politics, (including a scheme with a posh friend to set up a company to market high-quality sperm in a Swiss 'bank' for profit, though Melinda is something of a brood mare herself with several 'spawn' herself!)...
All-in-all then, a leisurely-moving parade through a whole host of 1960s situations...with no dividing chapters in its 335 pages & several pages of straight dialogues without 'she said...he confided...she looked away...he...' : well, imagine! Melinda was very attractive to men!
On many pages I found myself saying 'This could never have happened, could it?'...but I enjoyed its exaggerated realities & bizarre events.
The fact that nobody I know has ever heard of this novel or the writer...though it & she did receive good reviews at its publication by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, is a sobering thought for writers. How quickly they become like yesterday's newspapers - which still exist! - particularly in the modern, 21st century of literary 'planned obsolescence'. If it's not topical or woke or instantly convertible into T.V or film...forget it...and take your dog for a walk or stroke your pussy...'cause we publishers ain't intr'ested!
Shelf-life is limited...aaaagh!
Frankly, it's quite barmy...in a mostly positive way, as it meanders hap-hazardly around London & other European & American locations of the 'Swinging Sixties' like the Thames in a Waterloo Sunset!
The original Italian version 'Tanto gentile e tanto onesta', translated, somewhat surprisingly, not by the author herself, but by a certain L.K.Conrad!...(an in-joke with the literary reference to multi lingual Joseph?). It could well be...as Gaia's novel is laced with satirical & humourous moments, clearly intended to amuse & parody her wealthy friends & eccentric acquaintances.
Not quite a comic novel then but very much a focused 1960s viewpoint on the 'revolutionary' new ideas circulating amongst the so-called intelligentsia of the rapidly changing perspectives during the Cold War & its effects on western democracies' sanity!
Gaia had been an adolescent, student socialist-cum-communist but soon married into the British establishment. (She was actually, for a period, Boris Johnson's mother-in-law at the time when Bojo was married to her daughter, Allegra!).
She would have understood much of the socio-political madness that pervaded all forms of literature, art, theatre, cinema & sexual 'habits' at the time, no doubt.
More than 50 years on - and rescued from a Charing Cross Road book emporium in the late 70s for £3, attracted by its colourful cover, emblazoned with a Union Jack & Leighton's 'Flaming June',& its inside, evocative portrait of the mysterious-looking authoress by Patrick Lichfield - I finally got around to reading it!
(I have recently also read Gaia Servadio's memoir from 1978, 'Insider Outsider - a personal view of Britain', (again saved from a pile of library rejects for 30p.!), & I enjoyed some intimate insights into her lively 'social' life with a variety of men & women of some standing in her formative years in London where she arrived to less-than-seamlessly coalesce with Britain at the Camberwell School of Art & Belgravia!).
Melinda Publisher(!!), the eponymous heroine, moves relentlessly through a variety of contemporaneous characters, locations, incidents, accidents, murders, sexual liaisons, and acute observations of high-ranking men & women (with whom Gaia herself was more than just familiar!) to a comic climax in a Soviet space capsule orbiting the earth, out of control, oxygen & hope of a landing back on earth, & a world exclusive story for the hungry, though technologically-lacking media: a notorious & famous woman - as she had become in the novel - breaking barriers for her sex without any apparent active, feminist cause at its heart. Stanley Kubrick was waiting in the wings!...& 'Barbarella' too!
In 1968, few women were burning their bras though plenty were neglecting to wear them when their dissatisfied mood suited such departures from comfort & propriety! Alas, I was just a lusty teenager, watching from the wings!
There are shades of 'Bond...James Bond', comic-stripper Modesty Blaise & that era's spying tropes aplenty...not least a licence to kill which Melinda accomplishes with some cool panache!, & an intimate touch or two of risque soft porn - Melinda has many inadequate husbands & lovers! - pre-dating the modern interepretation of sexual politics, (including a scheme with a posh friend to set up a company to market high-quality sperm in a Swiss 'bank' for profit, though Melinda is something of a brood mare herself with several 'spawn' herself!)...
All-in-all then, a leisurely-moving parade through a whole host of 1960s situations...with no dividing chapters in its 335 pages & several pages of straight dialogues without 'she said...he confided...she looked away...he...' : well, imagine! Melinda was very attractive to men!
On many pages I found myself saying 'This could never have happened, could it?'...but I enjoyed its exaggerated realities & bizarre events.
The fact that nobody I know has ever heard of this novel or the writer...though it & she did receive good reviews at its publication by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, is a sobering thought for writers. How quickly they become like yesterday's newspapers - which still exist! - particularly in the modern, 21st century of literary 'planned obsolescence'. If it's not topical or woke or instantly convertible into T.V or film...forget it...and take your dog for a walk or stroke your pussy...'cause we publishers ain't intr'ested!
Shelf-life is limited...aaaagh!
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July 27, 2020Libro alquanto assurdo sia per trama (una che si sposa, divorzia, fa figli di continuo, ma anche fa la spia e uccide) che per scrittura (prosa, teatro, poesia). Non l'ho capito, ma credo che sia stato un "cult" negli anni in cui è uscito (1960).
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