The Untameables

by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

"How could one define The Untameables? Adventure novel? symbolic poetry? science fiction? fable? philosophical-social vision? None of these categories fits. It's a free-word book. Nude crude synthesizing. Simultaneous polychromatic polyhumourous. Vast violent dynamic." So F.T. Marinetti the founder, theoretician, and ringleader of Italian Futurism, describes his fiction.

Well known for his manifestos, polemical writings, and theatrical arts (collected in Let's Murder the Moonshine), Marinetti here reveals his playful side. The adventures of Vokur, Mirmofim, and the Untameables, engaged in loony combat in the land of the Paper People, makes for hilarious reading. It is a portrait of the modern world in flux, of gearshifts, bayonets, electronic light signboards, and "spotlights inscribing acetylene words."

Comparing Marinetti's fiction with the great literary experimentation of the second half of the nineteenth century and with twentieth-century prose innovators such as Gadda, Delfini, and Landolfi, critic and scholar Luigi Ballerini reveals the full significance of this new translation of The Untameables. As opposed to the more psychologically based modernism of James, Proust, Woolf, and Mann, Marinetti's writing pushes narrative limits and creates a fiction more at home, perhaps, in our postmodern context than in 1922, the time of its first publication.

Genres: Fiction, Italian Literature, Italy, Futurism

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian ideologue, poet, editor, and founder of the Futurist movement.

Reviews

[Domenico Francesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dopo Mafarka il Futurista, scritto poco più di dieci anni prima, il romanzo più rappresentativo e celebre nonché forse l'ultima grande opera di Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, fondatore del Futurismo. Qui si continua la distruzione del linguaggio e della struttura narrativa tradizionale del romanzo già iniziata dal suo predecessore, il ritmo è ancora più frenetico: l'intero romanzo lo si può definire come un'unica grande battaglia in un'Africa coloniale dai contorni indefiniti, quasi fuori dal mondo; le sue tematiche ancora più astratte e le allegorie ancora più dense che raggiungono l'apice in una conclusione quasi metaletteraria con l'esaltazione del Futurismo e di Marinetti stesso come ideatore del movimento. Non sembra difficile riscontrare negli Indomabili del titolo, liberatesi dalle catene, le classi più abiette e gli ultimi della Terra, pronti a ribellarvisi per una rivoluzione totale, una critica al Fascismo cui nel 1919 Marinetti stesso aveva aderito per allontanarsene appena Mussolini e il suo partito iniziarono ad arrivare a compromessi con la tanto odiata borghesia, il capitalismo e il conservatorismo. Lo stesso Marinetti anni dopo si riavvicinerà al fascismo, seppur principalmente per motivi anticlericali e antimonarchici forse persino con la vana speranza che si potessero ravvivare quelle istanze rivoluzionarie originarie risalenti a prima che il fascismo mettesse in crisi e neutralizzasse la carica vitale del futurismo.

[Ian Andersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of what Marinetti says in this book is incredibly offensive, but the way he writes and combining words in futurist freeword analogies makes really wonderful poetic reading. The imagery in the book is wonderfully articulated in his prose, even at it's most violent the way he describes it makes it beautiful. The opening of the book is very engrossing and the beginning of the adventure it describes is compelling until the end where it transforms into a heavy handed self-aggrandizing praise of his futurist ideas.

[Douglas Messerli · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can read my essay-review of this title at http://greeninteger.blogspot.com

[lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

a kind of thick read but fun to adventure along with brutes like these for a shortish and unusual 'bout with fiction on my end — fun for the hole ;]

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something like an allegorical fantasy/science fiction with a bit of Raymond Roussel mixed in.