Frank Lentricchia's Pretty Italian Actress

Call me a sucker but Gordon Lish has made his dinner meet-ups with DeLillo and Lentricchia somewhat legendary to me. At least legendary for the personal fantasies I frequently employ in order to make my own days more interesting. I have always wished to be their token fly-on-the-wall at one of these set-tos, though the only violence between them most likely is the intensity of their respective intellects. Nobody I know knows DeLillo except Spiotta and I doubt anybody knows Lentricchia except for me, and I don't know him very well. But I have bought books for him, and a lot of them. He has sat at my table. But certainly almost every writer I know has some idea about Gordon Lish. They have either attended his classes, with or without me, or have sent manuscripts to him in hopes of publication and have received back in the mail his precious notes accepting or dismissing their work but never their person. Gordon is one of the most gracious people I have ever known. He is also the most interesting. I can only imagine, hard as I try, the dinner conversation between these three literary greats. With Lish alone one can imagine the intense pleasure in even the simplest of things they might talk about. The way our Lish can carry on even about lint only leaves me with an enormous pleasure in the possibilities of their conversations and ultimately feeling an even greater gulf in missing them. Given the fact of the Lish-DeLillo long-term friendship and their weekly standing movie-dinner date between them, adding a third must bring an edge not normally present when the two of them are supping alone.

In writing class when Gordon spoke of Frank Lentricchia he made him out to be some sort of insanely violent intellectual that nobody should ever cross or you would most certainly be cut down by the brute force alone of the Old World Italian blood coursing through his veins. The many books of literary criticism Lentricchia has written demonstrates he has a vast grip on the literary canon, and his nickname "The Dirty Harry of Literary Criticism" of course promotes Lish's own gravity regarding that ever-present ominous sense of impending danger if one were to even cross paths with the man. Well I did, and I lived to tell about it.

After attending one of Lish's Fiction-Writing classes in Bloomington back in 1995 I hurried out to locate this so-called hard-core book of Lentricchia's published in 1994 titled THE EDGE OF NIGHT which comes across as a memoir at first read until you get to know Lentricchia a bit better and discover it is a work of fiction. But the voice is all his, and the voice is dangerous sounding, a tad bit angry, and I have never enjoyed a Lentricchia book more than my first and second readings of THE EDGE OF NIGHT. And I have told him so. Twice. And still I live.

Lentricchia researches his subjects extensively. He is a big reader. He is also so brilliant it is scary talking to him, but he is actually quite friendly. I am not sure how accessible he would have been to me had not Gordon Lish bestowed his ultimate blessing on me allowing access and due-diligence regarding my work as a poet and then as a bookseller gifted at procuring hard-to-find literary titles in pristine condition. Lentricchia likes this sort of vigorous activity. He likes gripping these artifacts and flipping through their pages. He also desires possession of these artifacts. He values ownership. So I became his guy. Any book he ever needed I found for him. This went on for some years until I told him that his maturing daughter could probably do the same work I did and it wouldn't cost him a dime. I haven't bought a book for him since. That is not to say Maeve is his new book hunter, but I wouldn't want to think otherwise.

Frank Lentricchia stopped by my home on Cochran Hill a few years ago on one of his family jaunts to his wife's side of the family still residing in Louisville. I couldn't tell you what he drives though I walked right by it. He came early in the morning so we could drink coffee together at my kitchen table and then walk the seven miles I daily hiked around the Olmstead loop in Cherokee Park a few steps across the street from my old clapboard house. I can't remember one word of our conversation that particular day but I do know we talked constantly from the time I met him until the moment he left a little over two hours later. The professor was a very nice fellow. A gentle man, tender but serious, and I could sense he might also be quick to anger, but mostly because of his extremely intellectual intensity. I am still amazed he easily conversed with me then given my lack of any formal education. Or even that I didn't scare him away forever with my crude attempts at serious conversation. But I have moved twice since residing on Cochran Hill, have been pretty involved with my own living of late, or more honestly my life living me. It is obvious to me now, given all this time passed where we haven't spoken or seen each other, that Frank has been deeply involved in the composition of his latest book, the one whose research I did his purchasing for. When I think of all those research books he gathers together before entering the catacomb in which he writes it is easy to imagine it being the same personal tomb he suffers in.

He recently phoned me, leaving a message asking for my latest mailing address so he could send me his new book, THE ITALIAN ACTRESS. I called him back and got his voice mail, left my message, and within days I was holding a new copy of his latest novel. As it is with Frank he also called to say he sent it, leaving another message, and as it is my custom I returned that call too to report that yes indeed I had received it. So we still haven't talked. And now this. This sort-of-review of THE ITALIAN ACTRESS.

It's a pretty book, and only one hundred and seven pages. That makes it doubly attractive. Add that a photograph of a beautiful woman (Claudia Cardinale?) graces the cover. But I was so deeply involved in my own latest study that when reporting back to him via phone that I did receive the book I had to say I wouldn't be able to get to it for a couple of weeks. I did read the first few pages as a teaser for me and immediately was taken with his lyrical use of the English language, his choice of those pleasing Italian names that roll so gently off one's tongue, and I thought how pleasant a read this should be, even as I consciously, and almost positively subconsciously, gathered the mental strength necessary to make my impending struggle through his customary literary intensity. Lentricchia writes dense books. He is not an easy read. And I wouldn't have it otherwise.

When I finally got to sit down seriously and be diligent with THE ITALIAN ACTRESS I discovered that reading ten or eleven pages was enough to pour over in one sitting. I had to go back and forth a little bit. But it was pleasant. An enjoyable experience. Something I looked forward to every morning with coffee in preparation for my new daily hike each morning before work through the streets of downtown Louisville where I have lived through two exacting winters. Sort of like living out McCarthy's THE ROAD full time. It ain't cool. But I continued this daily practice of reading Lentricchia each morning until I finished the book about a week after I started it. And I had fun every day. What I liked most about this book was that I felt I knew the fellow narrating. I had met a part of him at my table. I liked his edge. I wasn't afraid. I was immediately struck by the beauty of his language and it brought to mind the style of Thomas Mann. And I hope Frank feels that this is a compliment because by my lights it is. Of course, I have only read DEATH IN VENICE by Mann, but in my own selective mind Lentricchia's language in THE ITALIAN ACTRESS really did sound that beautifully written.

It was my understanding quite some time ago that Frank has some natural affinity for Claudia Cardinale and also the films of Fellini and Antonioni. But what matters here most importantly is the mutual connection between them all. THE ITALIAN ACTRESS is an intensely focused gaze into a possible life revolving around this particular Italian world Lentricchia inhabits, not to mention his veritable world of cinema. It is the history of this cinema, as well as the history of the remnants preserved in the cities he highlights of Rimini and Volterra that Lentricchia plucks and prunes the interesting characters frequenting them. It is here, in the beginning, the novel initially portends a fateful turn into a pornography of the senses, and then ultimately delivers it.

But it is our own contemporary life Lentricchia actually calls into question; the values we put on the importance of fame and celebrity, the aging process, love and addiction. And all the time I am reading this book I am thinking Frank, you clever devil, what hard work you do. And I the better person for it. It is my opinion that any new work published by Frank Lentricchia is to be celebrated. And in my house, THE ITALIAN ACTRESS is.

When searching for reviews of Lentricchia's book one website suggested this:

If You Enjoy "The Italian Actress (Paperback)", May We Also Recommend: Cougar Tales (Paperback) ~ Deirdre Savoy (Author)