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

What I meant by Chp. 14’s effect on the arc is really about Tony telling Beatrice to wait for them to be united in in/by death. Sounds horribly dark for her, death being the rest of eternity with the man who murdered her because she stopped loving him.

By “arc,” I mean how a character changes during the story. So Tony arcs from playing for Sinatra to leaving music and Italy to returning and singing for The Nostalgia Biz and waiting to die and be with Beatrice.

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: 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?

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.