{"id":306706,"date":"2017-07-25T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2017\/07\/25\/class\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:57:18","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:57:18","slug":"class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2017\/07\/25\/class\/","title":{"rendered":"Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

The thing about Class<\/em> is that I don\u2019t know what the hell to think about it, yet I can\u2019t stop thinking about it. I\u2019ll begin by dispensing with the usual info that one may want to know when considering adding the book to their \u201cto read\u201d list. Written by Francesco Pacifico. Translated by Francesco Pacifico. Published by Melville House. Set in Rome and New York. Specific Roman neighborhood of note: Pigneto. New York neighborhood of note: Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Does that matter? Apparently, yes.<\/p>\n

And this is perhaps my way into Class<\/em> (that was fun to type). Understanding a neighborhood and its denizens is key to understanding what an author like Pacifico may be up to in a book as odd as Class<\/em>. Williamsburg in Class<\/em> is the nexus of Italian hipsters. They meet, take drugs, laugh, fuck, grow weary, leave, return. It\u2019s the sort of place that bohemians with varying degrees of talent flock to, bringing the first wave of gentrification. First wave gentrifiers often bemoan their cherished neighborhoods\u2019 shift into commercial areas where moms push doublewide strollers into Lululemon. While they fail to see their role in the gentrification process, readers of their exploits are, allegedly, in on the secret. Dramatic irony notwithstanding, Class<\/em> doesn\u2019t seem concerned with judging the hipsters, even when they get up to some questionable activities. The reader is supposed to suspend that sort of moralizing. If that is impossible, the reader is screwed. Abandon the text ye who need redeeming characters.<\/p>\n

Recently, Pacifico stated that the \u201cproblem with American books is that there must always be something moral and sympathetic happening between characters.\u201d He may be onto something there, and I must admit that it\u2019s refreshing to read a novel where manufactured sympathy is chucked. Nevertheless, Class<\/em> confirmed my suspicion that the shallowness of hipsters is universal. That the Italians in Class<\/em> are so informed by American culture, that they travel across the Atlantic to the hipster mecca of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, suggests a larger point about cultural hegemony, though I don\u2019t feel comfortable forcing such an argument on Pacifico\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s look at this for a moment. One of the characters, Lorenzo, is a would-be filmmaker whose sole effort is a pretentious short film that bites off Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, and scores of other hip influences. Another character, Marcello, is an aspiring rapper emulating American MCs. The one American we meet is James Murphy, a novelist in the vein of Franzen and Wallace, though his name is, of course, the same as the frontman of LCD<\/span> Soundsystem, as hipster a band as one can find. Murphy\u2019s work is criticized by the main narrator (more on that in a minute) and later, when the reader gets a peek into his notes, one gets the impression that Murphy is an aging hipster coasting off marginal talent. Oddly, the superficiality of these characters is what made me want to keep reading Class<\/em>, even when they infuriated me. If they are products of a self-emulating culture that has now exported its cool shallowness, then great\u2014Pacifico has made a grand statement. If not, if my reading is wrong (likely), then I\u2019ll revert to the old reader-response cop-out and call it a day. In short: looking for one simple moral or overarching argument in Class<\/em> is probably silly. But, American reader that I am, I looked anyway.<\/p>\n

The narrator? For most of the book it\u2019s Daria: Marxist sometime lover of Nicolino, the playboy of the group. Daria oversees events via the time-honored tradition of omniscient narrator, though quite literally: she sees into people\u2019s thoughts. There are times when she can\u2019t and has to make do providing half a conversation, pointing directly to the absurdity of fixed narration in fiction. Shortly after we\u2019re finally introduced to her\u2014well into the book\u2014she leaves us, the narration taken over by another character before shifting again in a sort of montage. All of this occurs without warning and would be baffling were Pacifico not in possession of a deft hand. This unfixed narration is perhaps my favorite aspect of Class<\/em>. I prefer it to a novel that feels slavishly devoted to presenting a reliable narrator. <\/p>\n

Formal ambition helps this book, and the documentary that results is presented without overt sermonizing. Class<\/em> may be a social commentary, a weirdly funny look at Italian hipsters, or a larger statement on cultural influence. The kaleidoscope of characters, whose actions and drives are never one-dimensional, eludes easy classification, which makes the entire book a joy. I found myself both rooting for these individuals and delighting in their ruin. Few books can get me to do that. But few books dare go where Class<\/em> goes. The result is a shaggy, far-reaching, occasionally exasperating, consistently engaging book that is happier leaving an impression than making a grand statement. It\u2019s a testimony to the possibilities of the contemporary novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The thing about Class is that I don\u2019t know what the hell to think about it, yet I can\u2019t stop thinking about it. I\u2019ll begin by dispensing with the usual info that one may want to know when considering adding the book to their \u201cto read\u201d list. Written by Francesco Pacifico. Translated by Francesco Pacifico. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[66326,49646,14086,2816,22356],"class_list":["post-306706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-class","tag-francesco-pacifico","tag-italian-literature","tag-melville-house","tag-vincent-francone"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":332386,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306706\/revisions\/332386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}