A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.

Contents:

Main

the Best

the Rest

Review Index

Links

to e-mail us:


support the site

the complete review - fiction

The Notebooks
of Serafino Gubbio
(Shoot !)

by
Luigi Pirandello

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

- Return to top of the page -

Our Assessment:

B+ : dark and well-turned tale of the dehumanizing effects of technological-industrial advances

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "There is unquestionable power in Signor Luigi Pirandello's Shoot, a power which atones for some defects in the telling of the story, which, in the work of a less practised writer, one might almost be tempted to stignatise as amateurish. (...) Occasionally the metaphysics get in the way of the melodrama, but this effect of the whole is one of sterling power." - Sunday Times
  
  
• "It is a compelling novel in its own right. (...) Dedalus Books has reissued the novel. But -- this being in Scott Moncrieff's translation -- it feels like a missed opportunity. Pirandello is poorly served by the ponderous, laboured language. There are also some awkward errors" - Ann Hallamore Caesar, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "Pirandello paints, but without the Romanticists' sentimental excitement, the cold fury of the cinema actors against the mechanics of their art which steals away their living audience (.....) The novel is not only powerful; it is clever in construction to the point of genius. Pirandello forces on us the most bizarre situations without sacrificing the sense of reality one gets from a contemporary milieu." - F. Stringfellow Barr, Virginia Quarterly Review

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

- Return to top of the page -

The complete review's Review:

       The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio is set in the early but already thriving days of the film industry, its protagonist: "an operator to the great cinematograph company, the Kosmograph" -- an early-days Cinecittà, one might imagine. He is a cameraman -- which at the time means that he finds himself: "to be nothing more than a hand that turns a handle", an extension of the machine: this is still the time before cameras had motors, and the film has to be cranked by hand; his nickname is, appropriately enough, Shoot !. He has a sure touch -- there's some judgment required, for example as to whether as scene must be filmed faster or more slowly -- and as such is a valued member of the crew: "Oh, they all respect me, here, as a first rate operator: alert, accurate, and perfectly impassive". If he takes some pride in his professionalism, he nevertheless finds the job -- indeed, the entire industry -- suspect, an industrial-age advance that moves everything farther away from the human.
       Gubbio has been on the job for eight months, lucking into it -- and proving quite adept at it -- but leery of this new art- and technology-form; The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio is far from a celebration of cinema and its possibilities; indeed, in no small part it is an indictment of the mechanical age that is increasingly coming to dominate all walks of life. The position suits him, however, to some extent: he expresses a determination: "to remain an impassive spectator", and standing behind the camera, seeing through the machine, he can readily distance himself from what plays out in front of him -- at least a few minutes at a time, for each shot. Life itself is a bit more complicated.
       These notebooks are a form of escape or refuge -- "I satisfy, by writing, a need to let off steam which is overpowering. I get rid of my professional impassivity". It is revealing that he turns to writing, rather than forcing himself to the fore in some other way; he is almost literally entirely a background figure throughout, even off-set -- there, but only incidental to the action, or the interaction among others. While he makes some efforts to actively participate -- in social interaction and the like --, he does not get very far; withdrawing into writing is practically all that is left to him. So also, eventually, in the story's conclusion, writing actually becomes the only way he can communicate, as he literally loses his voice, struck completely dumb.
       The plot is fairly straightforward (albeit a bit intricate in some of how it is presented): among the film-projects at Kosmograph is The Lady and the Tiger. They have a real-life tiger, an animal that was too wild for the Zoological Garden, where they were going to kill it; getting wind of that, the production company bought the animal, with the intention of shooting it on camera -- a dramatic scene that of course would be an easy sell to audiences. The leading lady in the film is a Varia Nestoroff, and the original plan was for her lover, Carlo Ferro, to play the hunter who slays the beast. He's a bit ambivalent about taking on the dangerous part and makes a variety of insurance and indemnity demands -- and then the production company brings in another actor, Aldo Nuti, to take on the role.
       Gubbio knows Nuti from way back when -- including also his history with Nestoroff. Years earlier, Gubbio had been a tutor to one Giorgio Mirelli; Nuti had visited the family, and taken an interest in Giorgio's sister, called Duccella; they had even gotten engaged. Giorgio then fell for Nestoroff -- with Nuti coming to play a role between them that led to Giorgio committing suicide.
       This dark history hangs over Nuti when he arrives, with Nestoroff continuing to play her games. Meanwhile, a young Luisetta Cavalena accompanies her father to Kosmograph one day; he is a man whose wife is so jealous and overbearing that he's had to give up his jobs, and now he keeps submitting screenplays to the production company in the hopes of at least having some success with those; unfortunately, they all involve suicide, enough for the film company to turn them down. Luisetta is more or less 'discovered' while at the studio, convinced to appear in a little scene while her father makes his case elsewhere.
       The Cavalenas also let rooms, to make ends meet, and the producers think it's a good idea for Nuti to stay with them. In light of Nuti's fragile state, however, they also want him to have another minder, and Gubbio is told to leave his own lodgings and take the other room at the Cavalenas'. We then find the trio of Nuti, Gubbio, and Luisetta regularly making the rounds to the studio -- along with father Cavalena, who doesn't give up trying to sell his scenarios. Luisetta develops a crush on Nuti, and Gubbio finds himself drawn to Luisetta, while Nuti's mind still drifts elsewhere -- and Nestoroff continues her scheming.
       Luisetta and her father are, in no small way, driven to the fantasy-world of Kosmograph by the blindly jealous delusions of the wife and mother, Signora Nene:

This fiction which ought to be reality, as everyone sees, for everyone admits that Signora Nene has absolutely no reason to torment her husband, this thing which ought to be reality, I say, is a dream. The reality, on the other hand, must be something different, utterly remote from this dream. The reality is Signora Nene's madness. And in the reality of their madness -- which is of necessity an agonised, exasperated disorder -- here they are flung out of doors, straying, helpless, this poor man and this poor girl. They wish to consolidate their position, both of them, in this reality of madness, and so they have been wandering about here for the last two days, side by side, sad and speechless, through the studios and grounds.

And idiotic above all my own part, the part which I had allotted to myself of a comforter on the one hand, on the other of the guardian, and, in my heart of hearts, the saviour of a poor little girl, whom the sad, absurd confusion of her family life had led also to assume a part almost identical with my own; namely that of the phantom saviour of a young man who did not wish to be saved !

     It is not so much for me, Gubbio, this antipathy, as for my machine. It recoils upon me, because I am the man who turns the handle.

     The machine, with the enormous profits that it produces, if it engages them, can reward them far better than any manager or proprietor of a dramatic company.

     Here they feel as though they were in exile. In exile, not only from the stage, but also in a sense from themselves. Because their action, the live action of their live bodies, there, on the screen of the cinematograph, no longer exists: it is their image alone, caught in a moment, in a gesture, in an expression, that flickers and disappears.

     India will be a sham, the jungle will be a sham, the travels will be a sham, with a sham Miss and sham admirers: only the death of this poor beast will not be a sham. Do you follow me ? And does it not make you writhe in anger ?

But how are we to take seriously a work that has no other object than to deceive, not ourselves but other people ? And to deceive them by putting together the most idiotic fictions, to which the machine is responsible for giving a wonderful reality ?

You have nothing to do but feed it now and then with cakes of lead, and keep an eye on it.

I reflect that these hands belong to men who are men no longer; who are condemned here to be hands only: those hands, instruments. Have they a heart ? Of what use is it ? It is of no use here. Only as an instrument, it too, of a machine, to serve, to move these hands.

- M.A.Orthofer, 28 February 2021

- Return to top of the page -

Links:

• Dedalus publicity page publicity page
• University of Chicago Press publicity page
• BUR Rizzoli publicity page
• Oscar publicity page
• Feltrinelli publicity page
• Gallimard publicity page

• The Bioscope
• La chiave di Sophia (Italian)
• Leggere a Colori (Italian)
• Virginia Quarterly Review

• Nobel Prize, 1934
• Luigi Pirandello at books and writers

• One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

• See Index of Italian literature
• See Index of Books by Nobel laureates under review
• See Index of Books Written Between 1900 and 1945

- Return to top of the page -

About the Author:

       Italian author Luigi Pirandello, best known for his plays, lived 1867 to 1936. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934.

- Return to top of the page -

© 2021-2022 the complete review

Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links