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03 May 2006
I don't quite know where to put this, and it definitely doesn't deserve its own thread. Take a look.
Yar, there's one thing I've learned from my many years clinging to Posideon's salty bosom, and that's never, ever attempt to board a high-concept Japanese marketing campaign. (avast!)
Here's something else, a brief excerpt from Norman Lewis' Naples '44:
The ritual in this restaurant is for a waiter to appear and pass through the tables carrying on a dish what Lattarullo calls "the show-fish," for the customers to inspect with murmurs of admiration. This had a good-looking head, but the body had already been cut up into portions and was therefore unidentifiable. As usual, there was a trick in it. Lattarullo insisted on examining the fish and pointed out to me that the body didn't match the head, and from its triangular backbone evidently belonged to the dogfish family, which most people avoided eating if they could. The other recommended item on the menu was veal, Milanese style, very white but dry-looking, which the waiter, under pressure, admitted to being horse. We ordered macaroni.
No attempt was made to isolate the customers from the street. Ragged, hawk-eyed boys -- the celebrated scugnizzi of Naples -- wandered overlooked, or to snatch up leftovers before they could be thrown to the cats. Once again I couldn't help noticing the intelligence -- almost the intellectuality -- of their expressions. No attempt was made to chase them away. They were simply treated as nonexistent. The customers had withdrawn from the world while they communed with their food. An extraordinary cripple was dragged in, balancing face downwards on a trolley, only a few inches from the ground, arms and legs thrust out in spider fashion. Nobody took his eyes off his food for one second to glance down at him. This youth could not use his hands. One of the scugnizzi hunted down a piece of bread for him, turned his head sideways to stuff it between his teeth, and he was dragged out.
Suddenly five or six girls between the ages of nine and twelve appeared in the doorway. They wore hideous straight black uniforms buttoned under their chins, and black boots and stockings, and their hair had been shorn short, prison-style. They were all weeping, and as they clung to each other and groped their way towards us, bumping into chairs and tables, I realized they were all blind. Tragedy and despair had been thrust upon us, and would not be shut out. I expected the indifferent diners to push back their plates, to get up and hold out their arms, but nobody moved. Forkfuls of food were thrust into open mouths, the rattle of conversation continued, nobody saw the tears.
Lattarullo explained that these little girls were from an orphanage on the Vomero, where he had heard -- and he made a face -- conditions were very bad. They had been brought down here, he found out, on a half-day's outing by an attendant who seemed unable or unwilling to stop them from being lured away by the smell of food.
This experience changed my outlook. Until now I had clung to the comforting belief that human beings eventually come to terms with pain and sorrow. Now I understood I was wrong, and like Paul I suffered a conversion -- but to pessimism. These little girls, any one of whom could be my daughter, came into the restaurant weeping, and they were weeping when they were led away. I knew that, condemned to everlasting darkness, hunger and loss, they would weep incessantly. They would never recover from their pain, and I would never recover from the memory of it.
It's a fantastic book, shmegegge, and of course I chose an extremely moving section I read at lunchtime to transcribe for you.
Lewis thinks far less of the Allies than he does of the Italians, and while Naples '44 can be funny, it's more often bitter. He's describing a war-torn place that was poor to begin with.
It's a really great book. If I were teaching a course on World War II, it'd be in the curriculum.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
