She shuns publicity and her identity is a mystery. Yet, as the last in her acclaimed series of novels about two friends in Naples is published, Elena Ferrantes reputation is soaring, with Zadie Smith, James Wood and Jhumpa Lahiri among her fans. Meghan ORourke on a literary mysteryElena Ferrante is an Italian novelist who was born in or near Naples. She seems once to have been married; she may have lived in Greece; she appears to be a mother. Or so we think. In our self-promoting, Twitter-saturated age, Ferrante is an outlier, an author who wishes to remain totally private. She refuses face-to-face interviews, has only given a handful of written ones (a few of her letters have been published), and makes no personal appearances; no photographs of her have been published. In 1991, shortly before the publication of her style-defining first book, Troubling Love, Ferrante sent a letter to her editor, explaining that she would not be promoting it: I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they wont. Anonymity, she thought, would preserve a space of absolute creative freedom, a freedom all the more necessary because her books stick a finger in certain wounds I have that are still infected.That absolute creative freedom has resulted in a series of brilliant novels. (Six are now available in English, all exquisitely translated by Ann Goldstein, an editor at the New Yorker.) Ferrantes project is bold: her books chronicle the inner conflicts of intelligent women (professors, novelists) who, having made their way to Florence or Rome and to good jobs, find themselves confronting memories of the crude violence and misogyny of their youth. Shaken by a surprising event, they lose their grip on reality, lapse into a Neapolitan dialect full of obscenities, and are drawn into hallucinatory quests to heal old emotional injuries. The books taglines might be No self can be left behind: in Ferrantes world, no character can escape her past.When my daughters moved to Toronto, where their father had lived and worked for years, I was embarrassed and amazed to discover that I wasnt upset; rather, I felt light, as if only then had I definitively brought them into the world. For the first time in almost twenty-five years I was not aware of the anxiety of having to take care of them. The house was neat, as if no one lived there, I no longer had the constant bother of shopping and doing the laundry.I touched it with the hem of my bathrobe, it moved and became immediately quiet. Male, female. The stomach of the females doesnt have elastic membranes, it doesnt sing, its mute. I felt disgust. One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me. He did it while we were clearing the table; the children were quarrelling as usual in the next room, the dog was dreaming, growling beside the radiator. He told me that he was confused, that he was having terrible moments of weariness, of dissatisfaction, perhaps of cowardice. He talked for a long time about our fifteen years of marriage, about the children, and admitted that he had nothing to reproach us with, neither them nor me. He was composed, as always. Then he assumed the blame for everything that was happening and closed the front door carefully behind him, leaving me turned to stone beside the sink.You wounded me, you are destroying me, and Im supposed to speak like a good, well-brought-up wife? Fuck you! What words am I supposed to use for what youve done to me, for what youre doing to me? What words should I use for what youre doing with that woman! Lets talk about it! Do you lick her cunt? Do you stick it in her ass? Do you do all the things you never did with me?They were magnificent hours of play, of invention, of freedom, such as we hadnt experienced together perhaps since childhood. Lila drew me into her frenzy. ... With extreme precision (she was demanding) we attached the black paper cutouts. Continue reading...
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