No one emerges unscathed from a pact with the devil. The West has long since stopped fearing the devil, but he takes many forms. Like energy, he transforms. And he is omnipresent. He can at any time introduce himself into the routine of the average citizen, like a petit bourgeois named Giovanni: a mature civil servant, married to a housewife, father of a son who recently graduated. A gray and reserved type, one of those who go unnoticed both by choice and because he lacks sufficiently striking attributes. He emigrated from the countryside to the capital, he has done the same job all his life, with the same woman, in the same place. He is not a winner, but he is happy.
What can upset the order of a calm man? Dreams, illusion. And what could push you to take a risk at this stage, when retirement is fast approaching? There can be many reasons, and yours will be understood by many: the future of your son in a society that has left behind the optimism of the economic boom and is fading into general discouragement.
The future is uncertain, the threat and violence are felt in the streets. However, Giovanni has worked to give his son something he does not have, a degree in accounting, and is willing to risk his reputation so that his efforts do not fall on deaf ears (“he helped create a world of privilege for the son […] Many years had passed and all those years could not have changed things. He, who never asked for favors, knocks on the door of corruption; even though perhaps he had already been poisoned long before.
Giovanni, who could be called Juan, lives in Madrid and does scrolling drinking coffee, he lives in Rome in the 70s and plays A bit petty bourgeois (1976; Altamarea, 2024, translated by Fabrizio D. Morselli), the first novel by the writer and screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami (Rome, 1940 – 2013), co-author, with Roberto Benigni, of the screenplay for life is beautiful (1997), for which they received an Oscar nomination. He was a student of Pier Paolo Pasolini in high school, a mark that can be seen in the critical and implacable gaze with which he dissects the degradation of the common man. Because his hero, if we can call him that, is neither powerful nor heterogeneous, but rather an ordinary individual, part of the masses; the archetype of the expectations of a generation.
There are many reasons to recover a forgotten or unknown book in our language, and one of the most attractive is its ability to dialogue with the present, with today’s concerns. History is cyclical, and what makes a novel lasting is its ability to capture human nature, the emotions, desires and frustrations that we can all experience. And it is no coincidence that the proposal is supported by Nicola Lagioia (Bari, 1973), author of The ferocity (2014) and The city of the living (2020), which signs an intelligent prologue, compared to the Italian reissue of 2022, which situates the context of the work – the tension of the years of lead, with the murder of Pasolini still burning and that of Aldo Moro in the near future – and describes it as “a novel about the fragility of the average Italian who, deprived of everything, has no other way out than to become a monster”. Lagioia, like Cerami, has an eye trained to detect the darker sides of reality.
The Condemned Man
If anyone expects the balsamic effect of life is beautifulthat he looks elsewhere; In this book, there are no gestures of humanity or humor pills that soften the harshness. No, here the man condemns himself, redemption is not possible. To obtain a position for his son, Giovanni is advised to become a Freemason. He takes this seriously; While the young man prepares for the exams, he studies the functioning of the order. The brotherhood, however, has little in common with the mystical image evoked by historical novels: its members are individuals as innocuous as he, gathered in any seedy establishment, who use magazines to propagate their creed.
As Lagioia points out, these Freemasons, these dissatisfied and desperate citizens, are a subject for political manipulation; it is inevitable to think of the new wave of the extreme right, which also uses crude language, lacks scruples and organizes itself around a visible head. Or among the gurus “on personal development and finances,” encouraging viewers to buy their books and sign up for their events to learn the skills that will make them, too, rich and successful; as simple as that. Another deal with the devil, this one with one click.
In the opening scene, father and son enjoy a day of fishing. Encouraged by their newly obtained diploma, they tell their particular story about the milkmaid, ruminating on all the things they will buy when the boy finds a job. “Think of yourself, only of yourself,” Giovanni advises him, “in this world you do not have time to say yes with your eyes and no with your head…, it is enough time for your enemy to stab you in the heart.” “Back.” In this environment, they discover “the splendid color of the sky, the light breeze, the sweet scent of the earth… and peace, the infinite peace of nature,” but the charm is short-lived.
According to Lagioia, “the city has transformed the initial confusion into a struggle for survival”, that is, into individualism, materialism, alienation and other consequences of capitalism, compared to the notion of community that prevails in the countryside. In the city there are more, in the office there are more; but they are more alone. Problems of which we are now more aware, without yet knowing how to solve them.
All for the taking
Although we are talking about the decline of a man, the impersonal nature of the protagonist, the fact that he can easily be exchanged for another, allows him to see him as the paradigm of an era, of a generation. It is therefore not an individual failure but, and this is the key, a collective failure. The system appeals to the idea of a self-made man, as if he did not depend on others. Mutual trust has been lost, communication does not circulate even at home. Entering Freemasonry implies belonging, but it is a belonging interested in the achievement of a material good; nothing to do with the primary feeling of fraternity. When Giovanni retires, the boss seems in a hurry to say goodbye to him; he too has deteriorated, he neglects his forms (“from time to time I scratch my head to get rid of the dandruff …, it’s okay”). Falling into this (self)destructive drift only brings more frustration, more resentment.
Other symptoms that resonate today are a constant irritation (“He complained about traffic, about pedestrians, he honked his horn angrily, he distributed violent insults to anyone he thought wanted to get in his way, he complained about the city hall, about public transport, about the government, about Italy; about all of us, come on”), a stagnant misogyny (“… looking at the beautiful white legs of a young girl in a miniskirt. He whistled in approval, accompanied by a grimace and a crude expression. The young woman stuck her tongue out at him and he responded with a deep burp”) or the uncritical assumption of corruption as a common practice (“they counted above all two classes of people: ‘those who had culture’ and ‘those who had culture’. ‘who had a grip'”). His wife also likes to read bad news, “for her it was like breathing an extra breath of oxygen: this time luck had also been on her side, a kind of catastrophic scrolling analog.
Mario Monicelli released the film adaptation in 1977, titled in Spain A little, very little bourgeois. Lagioia, reflecting on the golden age of Italian cinema, states that “if we want to give art a civic function, it should have contributed to making Italians a more responsible, more courageous, less fragile and more adult people.” This is not happening, neither then nor now; culture also remains small, very small, next to faster and more influential forces. However, those who still like to appreciate a book will find in it, beneath its apparent simplicity – linear development, refined style, functional characters and narrative lines – a warning about the pitfalls of control mechanisms and the danger of the dehumanization of a bureaucratized and exhausted society.
