A Novelist I Hate ... With Ethnic Justification

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If 

you read 

a specific 

 ten-page chapter

of this "novel"

you would be 

mind-numbingly awestruck

by the deadly behavior

of Italian street gangs

in the Bronx

 

You could easily 

repeat that process

with a much shorter chapter

 

Virtually

everyone in the novel

is from one

of three generations

of Italians

and 

ALL of them

speak in the most imitated dialect

that does not involve 

black folk

 

My birthplace

—Hunts Point—

 is mentioned 

on the third page

 and possibly

someone three blocks away

heard me screech

with delight

 while reading that page

at 3AM on my 

smoke/coffee-stained patio

 

I know the fuh-getabout-it

speech pattern 

more than I care to admit

and I began life as

a third-generation

full-blooded

Italian,

rarely spending a Sunday

with less than

ten family  members

and half as many bowls

of delicious pasta

to feed us

 

YET 

only one

of eleven members

of the middle generation 

duplicated 

that immigrant dialect

as opposed to

other siblings

[Aunt Kay/Aunt Jean]

being mothers of 

 a paternal cousin

who introduced me to

Ernest Hemingway

+

a maternal cousin

who introduced me to 

Catcher In The Rye

 

One on those cousins

became a very successful

Long Island dentist

and the other

is best remembered

as being verbally assaulted 

by Ted Koppel:

my cousin Richard 

was the public face

of something called 

The e-cigaret   

 

There is no link for the dentist

because he is alive and well

and still painfully refusing 

to correspond with me 

  

But the reason I hate

RICHARD PRICE

—author of The Wanderers—

is because that book

reads as-if

all Italian-Americans

have no choice

but to become

murderers, thieves or prostitutes

______________

______________

 

The two "chapters" mentioned

at the top of this page

are legitimately known as

vignettes

while the rest of 

The Wanderers

is the conjunction of

misch and masch

+ 

steaming bowls

of spaghetti & meatballs

BUT

the book 

sold enough copies

for the author

to presently live 

in a five-storey 

estate

overlooking

the East River

 

—Undeniably—

The Wanderers

became 

a successful movie   

______________

______________

 

Regarding 

authored words

as give-and-take,

2 good vignettes

does not

a novel make

______________ 

 

© Oliverio © 

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