Brandon’s Reviews > Everybody's Right > Status Update

Chp. 14: On “One of the most beautiful terraces in the universe” (366), Tonio Paziente and Gegè Raja deliver respective monologues to party guests not unlike Jep’s in La Grande Ballezza. Tony embeds scenes with Antonella Te, his parents and ends addressing Beatrice. Is that fair to her? Life isn’t fair. Why should death be any different?

Chp. 13: Performance for Fabio frames Tony’s inner monologue on economics followed by the band on the beach where Titta the guitarist plays The Big Rest (348).

Fabio seduces Tony back to Italy to sing again, but is his “secret. This little hiding place that nestles inside me like a wound” still nestled (56)?

“…the one I did once love truly and deeply “ (57).

Chp. 11: Is Tony’s apostrophe to murdered Beatrice musical enough to unsettle his “secret” of Beatrice’s name (chp. 4, p. 56)? “spitting out a few paltry notes, stitched together in all the possible combinations….(309-310)” Where is “I’m not lying….I’m asking for…For the fear of no longer being able to love ….(57).

Chp. 11: Alberto Ratto isn’t exactly a doppelgänger, but he and Tony are exiles together. When “Tonio” asks “Albè” to reveal the show’s magic trick, my skin begins to crawl. Magicians never reveal the trick to The Audience. Does that mean the favela was a performance (307)?

Chp. 11: in Brazil, TP gives a long meditation on cockroaches (“scarafaggi” 262-6) and meets Alberto Ratto (267) and his wife Bella Coimbra dos Santos (283).

Chp. 11: Tony lets the band go and never sings or phones Italy again. Is this like Jep turning 65 and deciding not to do anything he doesn’t want to again?

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.