Status Updates From Todos tienen razón

Chp. 10: Tony leaves Maria. Is the decision sufficiently motivated? What was the Rita Formisano interlude about? I get that the baroness turns him on to cocaine, but other than that, they are no reason to sing. They aren’t Beatrice.

I have to say Hand of God revises Chp. 9 admirably where Tony’s beloved is concerned. It’s good to see a writer working through his or her obsessions (225).

Chp. 9 begins with a lot of philosophical musings. Do I take them as Sorrentino’s through the prism of Tony’s unreliable persona? Baroness Eleonora Fonseca “was lazy as a band of Mexicans” appears as its own paragraph. I’m searching for clues in nearby paragraphs to let me say the racism is limited to the character and not his author. No luck.

Chp. 8 follows Tony’s sermon on education with a scene of reconciliation in Rituccia’s kitchen where she feeds him zucchine alla scapece and arouses him with a confession of infidelity with two traveling salesmen. When she ruins his fantasy by approaching him, he ruins hers by saying she reminds him of his mother and by holding her to become a “truly good man” (189).

Chp. 8 begins with Tony at his most philosophical: “ what is fabulous about adulthood, is precisely the scholar, the humiliation, the heart, Scrabble, and the grimness…. We wanted poetry, what we got was a bag, full of aches and pains…. A university professor is always a coward” (163-6)

Chp. 7: Disappointed at the soccer game, Tony visits Rita Fomisano, who disappoints him again, so he throws her around, flees to his lawyer cousin’s office, en route tells story about his brother in law shooting the cousin in the leg for shitting in his hallway. At the law office Mr. Heavy shoots an employee for calling Tony a “minstrel” (161).

Chp. 6: Tony breaks a bedside table (103);Maria wants a divorce because Tony’s “superficial” (104); Tony gives his parking attendant Attilio Colella 200,000 lire to meet a prostitute in Barcelona where Attilio plans to become a bullfighter (107); snorts cocaine on Mimmo’s doorstep (118); and gives Samanta a ride to school and a kiss (121).

Using a New Year’s Eve trying to seduce Antonella as a case study, Tony delivers a lecture that ends with him crying, not unlike Jep’s lecture about how NOT crying at a funeral ends with Jep crying (94).

Somewhere between between skewering academics and celebrating his own skill at seduction, Tony Pagoda lost me. I read at least two pages on autopilot. Who’s at fault, my eyes or his words? (83)

Chp. 4 begins the Beatrice saga of why Tony really sings. Yet his sex-at-first sight feels like satire (70).

Chp. 4: Sings honest pain (57). Beatrice disappears. Peppino ruin his voice (61).

Chp. 3: The murder of Maurizietto (50), the boat chase, 20 grams of cocaine from Mr. Heavy (55).

Chp. 2: Titta Palumbo debates calzone and Margherita pizza with Gino Matire. Guitarist v. bassist shuts down lead vocalist (40).

Point about chp. 1’s structure: reversals both within & across scenes.

Further structure of chapter 1 plot includes what seems to be Italian lyrics:
“Un treno per Il mare”
“Una cometa nel cuore”
“Quel che resta di mi”
“Un giorno lei mi penserà”
“Non c’ero amavo”
“Lunghe notti di bar”
“Gondolier, carry me back to Napoli”

Chp. 1 structures contrasts: Tony’s 13-million lire ring v. Sinatra’s $122,000 dollar (1979 prices) v. guitarist Titta’s wedding ring. After big hall concert during which Tony’s balls feel “cubic” and “hexagonal,” (25) they are “pulverized” by the theft of Tony’s ring by three hookers while he was on the phone to his wife and daughter….

The foreword is a list poem — disguise this paragraphs —of things Maestro Mimmo Repetto cannot stand.