Trigger warnings on the pages

A true writer does not publish anything by chance. If Walter Siti has compiled in a single volume (Il romanzo sotto accusa, Rizzoli, 390 pp., 21 euros) critical essays spanning forty years of work – ranging from seventeenth-century moralists to a tribute to Francesco Orlando – then he intends to entrust us with the task of independently unravelling the implicit connections. Among these, though I may be mistaken, is the following. A substantial analysis is devoted to today’s ‘Trivialliteratur’ – the recent best-selling novels in Italy – in the second essay of the collection; in the penultimate one, an even more substantial analysis is devoted to the lyrics of successful Italian trap music. This symmetry must mean something.

Analysing the novels of Erin Doom, Felicia Kingsley, Stefania S., Francesca Giannone, Roberto Emanuelli, Lorenza Gentile, Riccardo Bertoldi and Gianluca Gotto, Siti notes the disappearance of the ‘problematic individual’ identified by György Lukács as the hero of the modern novel. Contemporary Italian fiction only sells if it demonstrates a clear-cut division between good and bad characters (a recurring theme is the definition of a villain as a ‘toxic narcissist’) and a constant, explicit explanation of every implication – to the point of excess, such as a character who ‘covers his ears with his hands’, so as to dispel any doubt that he might do so with his elbows or feet.

This gives rise to an edifying trend in fiction, which manifests itself in the inclusion of trigger warnings, political proclamations or self-help guides within the pages. Trap music, on the other hand, explains Siti, does indeed adhere to an American-style ‘black Petrarchism’, which glorifies delinquency and hardship, just as the Provençal troubadours all lamented the same sufferings; yet it retains an ambiguity expressed through heavy irony (Pippo Sowlo), soul-searching (Madame) and literary experimentation (Rancore’s Pascoli). For Siti, these verses share the contemporary tendency in prose towards an over-exposure of the first person; yet this is a lyrical ‘I’ that is not cloying, as it is in the works of those who pander to bestseller lists. He concludes by expressing the hope that somewhere in Italy, someone is stubbornly persisting in writing ambiguous, immoral, unsettling novels, and that he would not be reduced to having to listen to trap music.