A Smidgen of Italian Crime Fiction

Crime Fiction in Other Climes 

Part II

The First in a Three Course Feast from Italy - Montalbano

An introduction to Noir Italiano does that, to some extent - it covers highlights in the genre there from the 1930s to the 1990s. However, let's put our own heads together to try to solve the Mystery of the Missing Mascarpone on our crime novel bookshelves. Why is it that few, in the English reading/speaking lot, can cough up an Italian name or two in the genre? 

There was once an Italy that romanced the world. And then there was the Great War. It is around that time, perhaps, that a sinister glint enters the frame when we speak of that land - the olive grooves are dappled with Mafia and the vineyards insidious with fascism.

In terms of the crime genre, we look back, as those who read in English, and find the Italian a slightly coloured piece of sleaze. He totes guns, belongs to the familia gangsteria mamamiansensis. 

So, you see, the discrimination was not all black and white. Red, for example, was also given the apartheid treatment and is not out of the woods yet, effectively speaking. The yellow still spells peril. And, it does no good to be too white, either, for the pale Pole gets the rough end of the stick as often as does the swarthy Spaniard or Roman.

And so there is a gaping hole in our collective consciousness, as speakers/readers of English, where a niche for Italian crime fiction ought to be.

I mention 'English'. This is because China, Japan and Korea, at least, to my knowledge, habitually offer their people translations of world literature of all sorts, past and present, in sufficient amounts. I suspect that this is also true of most of the ex-Soviet Union and of the other Europe - the one that got Brexited out.  

The lands where English dominates seem to have a characteristic desire to limit their experience to writers from their own lands. Thus, it is more acceptable to read of a country when Italy is but a setting in a novel by fellow countryfolk. 

The digestion is so weak - it cannot tolerate 'outside' food. In other vocabulary or words, that which is not from the US, the UK, Australia, or Canada is almost 'haram' where the home-grown writing is freely labelled 'halal' for the whole world - safe to consume.

   

I started out, feeling like an imposter for I felt I had little to say! However, research paid off and I have blabbed up space.

Thanks to studying the matter, however cursorily, I find I'm not nearly as much at sea as I assumed I would be, given I have not read a piece of Italian crime fiction. I can, now, at least confidently mention that Montalbano is a big name, for one thing.

Andrea Camilleri's creation appears to have captured both a readership as well as eyeballs outside Italy too. 

Not such an easy feat - not all languages translate equally and translation is a complex interaction which can mar the experience if not done thoughtfully. Apparently, Italian has not fared as well as French - at least in so far as crime fiction in translation goes.

Too many figures of speech? Too much local colour? Too many chips and other crumbs on the shoulders of the English speaking/reading public?

However, once the taste is created, perhaps the rest follows necessarily. Was this how it was for Nordic Noir?

Another thing I learned is that, if I search for Montalbano, for instance, I get a lot of Tripadvisor type sites. Literature tourism is a bane - one that is not least of the evils greed, in general, brings to the table. The tradesperson mentality of publishers, we have already seen, harms quality writing, submerging past works of worth to pander to the existing client who pays to be published. Now this thug is joined by the hotel industry and so on who love to co-opt the names of the great and not in vain. We are the saps who pay up to lose the outright benefit of great literature. Today, we would rather eat a sausage called Steinbeck than read anything of his. Stay in Stendhal Hall than scrutinise his stories.

The result is that not many reviews or other writings can surface. In the end, the pure and simple greed for money is evil in its effects, within the pages of our thrillers as in the less bloody arena of real life. 

All in all, I would begin with a Montalbano if I were to tackle this region in the genre systematically. The corpses sound good and 

Camilleri writes in a mixture of dialect and Italian (helpfully translated into English by Stephen Sartarelli over the last few years) drawing the reader into the lives of Salvo, his deputy, best pal and womaniser Mimì and his trusty sidekick Fazio. So whilst Mimì flirts his way through investigations into underworld deaths, Fazio compiles information on the suspects like a human encyclopaedia. Meanwhile Montalbano cogitates silently for hours over platefuls of fresh caught seafood at his favourite trattoria, meditates under an olive tree on the south coast shore or swims in the azure waters off his beachfront villa.

I’m Montalbano!

I caught one episode of the TV series last night and it was hilarious. There was hardly any detection. There was a great deal of breathy sultry seduction though.