A baby boomer makes his way through life and a television career in this debut novella.
Born to a working-class Italian American family in Brooklyn on the cusp of World War II, the unnamed narrator of this story grows up in a claustrophobic world of small, crowded apartments and sprawling extended families. A multiethnic kettle of Italian, Jewish, Black, German, and Russian residents, his neighborhood is a place of discovery for the boy while the Roman Catholic Church and the girls in his class prove dual sources of mystery. Then, in the seventh grade, his family relocates to a larger home in Queens—much to his chagrin. Upset over the move, he consoles himself with trips to the local movie house and library. The bookworm does not attend college after high school but instead goes to work at a series of jobs he doesn’t like—carpenter, stock boy, bank agent. “Coming off the beat generation,” he reflects, “I was more than beat. I was confused as to which direction to best cast my lot in life. Having been given none of the enormous perplexities, I would have to face on the abstract road lying ahead.” After an unsuccessful stint in the Navy and a few rocky romantic relationships, he winds up back in New York City, enrolled in the Electronics Circuits and Systems Program at the RCA Institute. From there, he has an opportunity to work as a colorist in TV production, just as he begins to start a family of his own. Has he finally found his true calling, the thing that will silence the doubts and dissatisfaction that have categorized his life up until now? Or is he fated to remain perpetually stuck between where he’s been and where he wants to go?
Violandi’s oblique prose is reminiscent of high modernism, particularly James Joyce. Here, he describes going to confession as a boy: “Roman Catholic at this tender age. One in good standing, I entered the confessional with apprehension, chastity and Priapus in hand. Confessing touching number one. When confirmation rolled around, I’d change my tune to confessing impure thoughts. Feeling more comfortable with the latter, for its truth.” There are some fun and surprising turns of phrase as well as some other eye-catching stylistic flourishes, such as annotations explaining the childhood cartoons and pop hits he references throughout the text. The world of TV production—when it’s presented in any detail—is engagingly antiquated. Unfortunately, there is not a lot to the book apart from its slippery prose. There’s little plot and insufficient character development—even the protagonist remains hardly known to readers, hidden behind the text’s indirect narration. Though the novella is only 123 pages, its dense aimlessness makes it feel quite a bit longer. The author rarely offers scenes and instead tells the whole story as continuous, discursive exposition. Readers will be disinclined to care much about the protagonist, and Violandi gives them few reasons to change their minds.
An intriguing but uneven modernist-tinged tale about a frustrated man.
