Steel Wagstaff
Trying to do good things for good reasons
Tag: Ignazio Silone
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My December 2016 Reading
Books As the year limped its way to a close, I tried to keep up my torrid reading pace. I slowed down considerably from my October/November frenzy, and spent a lot more of my free time reading and writing on dissertation related topics (hi, Objectivist poets!) but still managed to read a fair number of…
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Three versions of an Objectivist Poetics
“Grandmother, have you ever looked a donkey in the eyes?” “I may have done, my dear boy, I don’t remember.” “In that case you haven’t, because otherwise you’d certainly remember. Grandmother, if donkeys could speak …” “Believe me, my dear boy, they wouldn’t and couldn’t say anything superhuman. They’d ask for good straw and clean…
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Ignazio Silone’s Fontamara
At the recommendation of my friend Spencer, I recently began reading the Italian novelist Ignazio Silone’s The Abruzzio Trilogy, beginning with his 1933 novel Fontamara. It is an extraordinary bit of social-realist inflected anti-fascist satire, and I found myself quickly devouring it and eager to begin the next book in the series. It’s a very short book,…
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From the Preface to Ignazio Silone’s Fontamara
The art of storytelling — the art of putting one word after another, one line after another, one sentence after another, explaining one thing at a time, without allusions or reservations, calling bread bread and wine wine — is just like the ancient art of weaving, the ancient art of putting one thread after another,…