L'industria nella letteratura italiana contemporanea by Michele LeoneReview by: Zolita L. VellaItalica, Vol. 56, No. 2, '900 (Summer, 1979), pp. 247-248Published by: American Association of Teachers of ItalianStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/478962 .

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REVIEWS 247

Michele Leone: L'industria nella letteratura italiana contempo- ranea. Saratoga, California. Anma Libri, 1976. Pp. 156.

The relationship between literature and industry, much discussed in

Italy during the late 1950s and through the 1960s, is the central issue of

this second volume in the Stanford French and Italian Studies collection.

There are different schools of thought as to what industrial literature is or

should be. However, as the title of his work indicates, Professor Leone avoids

showing partisanship. He approaches the industrial novel from many angles - philosophically through El6mire Zolla's Eclissi dell'intellettuale (1959):

culturally, structurally, and linguistically through Elio Vittorini's article in

Menabb 4 (1961); ideologically and sociologically through Gianni Scalia's

essay in the same Menab#o issue: historically through a discussion of the

effects of industrialization. He continues his examination of the genre chrono-

logically through 18mile Zola's Germinal (1885) and Carlo Bernari's Tre operai

(1934); politically through an exposition of the Marxian interpretation of

alienation and class struggle; psychologically through a presentation of char-

qcters' relationships and motivations, and the stereotyping of women; econom-

ically through a discourse on the profit motive, the publishing boom., consum-

erism, and objectification; thematically through a treatment of various aspects of technologically dominated life; ecologically through the contrast of city-

country, polluted-pure; and finally as reportage by intellectuals who played an

active part in the industrial processes. The spectrum of the work is immense - the five principal sections in-

clude " L'industria come contenuto narrativo," " Esperimenti di societh in tre

romanzi industriali," " L'alienazione come modus vivendi," " Il romanzo in-

dustriale tra documento e impegno," " L'industria come anti-umanesimo."

Although Professor Leone has dealt with his numerous topics exhaustively, he has failed to unite them successfully. In fact, in his conclusion/apologia, he begins yet another discussion - the bourgeois origin of most industrial

novelists and his reasons for excluding proletarian novelists from his study. He concludes that his choice was based on finding those works that best il- lustrate man's condition in the working world rather than emphasize his role

as a worker. Instead of dealing exclusively with the contemporary Italian industrial

novel, as the title suggests, this is a comparative study including references to

works by Verga, Gorky, Vittorini, Kafka, Pirandello, Marx, with asides about

works by Dante, Boccaccio, Morante, Sereni, Mumford, Tilgher, Marcuse.

Baudelaire, Lawrence, Huxley, and Svevo. Unfortunately, the wealth of material

weakens the unity and focus of the study, making it appear fragmented and

tangential. One aspect of Professor Leone's work that is particularly confusing is

his contradictory presentation of the factory as it relates to worker alienation.

In the Introduction, Professor Leone discusses the deleterious effects of the

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248 REVIEWS

factory on the worker: " L'ambiente industriale, per quanto negli ultimi anni fatto oggetto di tutto un ripensamento in termini socio-psicologici, rimane non di meno un luogo dove all'operaio viene quotidianamente usato violenza. Violenza che consiste nella brutale riduzione di quella mobilitai (sia fisica che spirituale) ... e nella sua strumentalizzazione in un processo economico-produt- tivistico che, sotto un profilo storico-umanitario pii ampio, non puo offrire una soluzione duratura ai pii veri problemi che sono alla base del travaglio umano." In a subsequent, heavily footnoted section entitled " L'alienazione mar- xista nella storia e nella letteratura otto-novecentesca," the writer declares that the factory worker does not necessarily become more alienated by working conditions than other workers if one differentiates between Marxist alienation and existential alienation " La cosiddetta alienazione dell'operaio rimane essenzialmente una considerazione di carattere accademico, e pertanto esi- stente assai meno nella vera condizione industriale quanto nella mente del- l'intellettuale che ama immaginare alienato l'operaio... Nel senso metafisico e probabile che l'operaio sia meno alienato di tutti, proprio in virtih degli ostacoli e delle avversita di cui e irto il suo arduo cammino."

After reading both sections, one is uncertain about Professor Leone's own

ideological stance on the subject. Ironically, his presentation and analysis suffer from the same malady that he ascribes to contemporary society (" Piui che di commissione, il peccato piii tipico dell'uomo moderno rimane pur sem-

pre uno di omissione ") - it offers no definite position nor does it draw any individual conclusions.

Among the writers of industrial novels, Professor Leone devotes particular attention to Ottiero Ottieri, Carlo Bernari, Silvio Micheli, Giovanni Arpino, Luciano Bianciardi, Giancarlo Buzzi, Libero Bigiaretti, Italo Calvino, Lucio

Mastronardi, Paolo Volponi, Goffredo Parise. The novels that he chooses to summarize and analyze and the writers whom he includes parallel closely Giuliano Manacorda's selection in the " Letteratura e industria " chapter of his Storia della letteratura italiana contemporanea (1945-1960) (1967).

Following Manacorda's chapter, Zolla's seminal Eclissi, Gian Franco

Veni's article, " Per una storia dell'industria come contenuto narrativoe " (Le ragioni narrative, March 1960), and his encyclopedic historical work, Lettera- tura e capitalismo in Italia dal '700 ad oggi (1963), and Claudio Toscani's

history of criticism of the industrial novel, " Vie e teorie della 'Narrativa d'industria' " (Forum Italicum, December 1972), Professor Leone's new study is a considerable addition to the criticism available on the topic. The excellent

bibliography is not only helpful to the reader but attests to Professor Leone's extensive knowledge of his field. His careful examination and exposition of writers and works may be considered an historical, thematic anthology of criticism of the industrial novelists and novels, and as such very useful to those who study nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature.

Fordham University at Lincoln Center ZOLITA L. VELLA

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