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"'It is a shameful thing to win a war.' The reliably unorthodox Curzio Malaparte's own service as an Italian liaison officer with the Allies during the invasion of Italy was the basis for this searing and surreal novel, in which the contradictions inherent in any attempt to simultaneously conquer and liberate a people beset the triumphant but ingenuous American forces as they make their way up the peninsula. Malaparte's account begins in occupied Naples, where veterans of the disbanded and humiliated Italian army beg for work, and ceremonial dinners for high Allied officers or important politicians feature the last remaining sea creatures in the city's famous aquarium. He leads the American Fifth Army along the Via Appia Antica into Rome, where the celebrations of a vast, joy-maddened crowd are only temporarily interrupted when one well-wisher slips beneath the tread of a Sherman tank. As the Allied advance continues north to Florence and Milan, the civil war intensifies, provoking in the author equal abhorrence for killing fellow Italians and for the "heroes of tomorrow," those who will come out of hiding to shout "Long live liberty" as soon as the Germans are chased away. Like Celine, another anarchic satirist and disillusioned veteran of two world wars, Malaparte paints his compatriots as in a fun-house mirror that yet speaks the truth, creating terrifying, grotesque, and often darkly comic scenes that will not soon be forgotten. Unlike the French writer however, he does so in the characteristically sophisticated, lush, yet unsentimental prose that was as responsible for his fame as was his surprising political trajectory. The Skin was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, and placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. "--… (more)
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Malaparte the character is slippery and morally changeable – sometimes he is hectoring the Americans for their ignorance or hypocrisy, other times he shrugs and notes that selling children is probably the best thing for their parents to do. Even his moments of moral indignation feel false and hypocritical – there’s a sense that he is condemning the things that he almost lovingly depicts in vivid, extremely detailed, sometimes hysteria-tinged colors. The intro in this edition by NYRB perfectly captures the feel of much of the book, noting it “depicts, with a certain voluptuous horror, a depraved and ruined postwar Naples under American occupation, a world where selling out is the ugly and cunning art of survival.” There are ridiculous/horrible scenes that go on too long and many chapters also have a brutal comic feel. Malaparte has a creepily fetishistic interest in various groups (that he likely considered “other”) – dwarves, black American soldiers, gay men. It is certainly distasteful today, but that, along with Malaparte’s moral hypocrisy, fits right into the perverse narrative.
Each chapter mostly focuses on separate episodes, but many of the characters reappear – mainly Malaparte’s friend Colonel Jack Hamilton, a learned and gentlemanly American who doesn’t get quite as much criticism as some of the others. Various chapters are about the plague (really symbolic of Neapolitan toadying), a virgin prostitute, a party held by gay soldiers and their friends, a banquet supplied by the aquarium and a volcanic eruption – but that can’t really describe all the random musings and circuitous routes Malaparte takes in his writing. It’s very smoothly written and compelling if you can get past all the nastiness. Even with all the terrible and disgusting things that happen to people, the most disturbing story for me was one about his dog (lots of “No….not the dog!” thoughts while reading it).