The Twenty-Three Days of the City of Alba: Stories [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I was immensely taken with Beppe Fenoglio's "A Private Affair" when I read it recently. (See my review of August 11, 2010.) So I ordered and read this collection of stories by Fenoglio. Six of them are, like "A Private Affair", set during the civil war in northern Italy in 1943 and 1944 between Fascist troops loyal to Mussolini and partisan "freedom fighters" or the Resistance. The remaining six also are set in and around Alba (a city in the Langhe region of the Piedmont), though during the post-War period.

The dozen stories of THE TWENTY-THREE DAYS OF THE CITY OF ALBA are of disparate quality. The title story is about the 23 days partisan troops held the city of Alba during the fall of 1944, before Fascist troops, with pronounced superiority in numbers and firepower, stormed it and re-took it. It is written much as a journalistic account, and I suspect that it is largely or maybe even entirely non-fiction. It is quite modern in style and tone and, if indeed it is non-fiction, it can stand with the best of contemporary journalism. It is a superb piece. All of the remaining stories appear to be fiction, though they surely draw upon Fenoglio's own experiences growing up and living in the Langhe and fighting as a partisan during WWII. The other five stories dealing with the War are worth reading, though none approaches the literary excellence of "A Private Affair". But like that novel, all resolutely avoid glamorization of the war or the transformation of everyday men into mythological heroes. Fenoglio's war was one of fear and false bravado, hunger and cold, woefully inadequate weaponry, petty cruelty and ruthless executions, rain and mud. The remaining six stories, set in post-War Langhe, are not nearly of the quality of the first six. I really liked only one ("Nine Moons") and I thought that three of them probably did not warrant publication.

Fenoglio died in 1963, only forty years of age. In Italy he is recognized to have been a fine writer, but I don't sense that he really is honored or treasured. Part of that may be due to the fact that the Italian Left was not pleased with his depiction of the Resistance both in this book and "A Private Affair". To the Left, Fenoglio had "de-sacralized" the Resistance. As the translator writes in the Foreword to this volume, "It was as though people did not want to be reminded that men facing a firing squad lose control of their bladders." Another factor that might have worked against greater recognition of Fenoglio in his native land is that he was an Anglophile. As a student he immersed himself in English literature and later he translated into Italian works of D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, and Shakespeare. His affinity for English was such that he once told Italo Calvino that "I write first in English and then translate into Italian."

Whether English or Italian, Fenoglio has a spare, unadorned style that matches the gritty realism of his subjects. He is a writer worth getting to know.