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Todos los personajes de este libro parecen empenados en confrontarse con el tiempo: el tiempo de las vicisitudes que han vivido o estan viviendo y el de la memoria y la conciencia. Pero es como si en sus clepsidras se hubiera levantado una tormenta de arena: el tiempo huye y se deteine da vueltas sobre si mismo se oculta reaparece para exigir cuentas. Del pasado surgen fantasmas socarrones las cosas que antes se distinguian ahora se asemejan las certezas estallan las versiones ofiiales y los destinos individuales no coinciden. ... Read more

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Detective fiction is a universally popular genre; stories about the investigation of a crime by a detective are published all over the world and in hundreds of languages.Detective fiction provides more than entertainment, however; it often has a great deal to say about crime and punishment, justice and injustice, testimony and judgment.The Novel as Investigation examines a group of detective novels by three important Italian writers – Leonardo Sciascia, Dacia Maraini, and Antonio Tabucchi – whose conviction about the ethical responsibility of the writer manifests itself in their investigative fiction.

Jo-Ann Cannon explores each writer’s denunciation of societal ills in two complementary texts. These investigative novels shed light on pressing social ills, which are not particular to Italian society of the late twentieth century but are universal in scope: Sciascia focuses on abuses of power and the death penalty, Maraini on violence against women, Tabucchi on torture and police brutality.In addition, each of these texts self-reflexively explore the role of writing in society. Sciascia, Maraini, and Tabucchi all use their fiction to defend the power of the pen to address "il male del mondo."

The Novel as Investigation will be of interest to a broad audience of readers, including those interested in Italian and comparative literature, Italian social history, and cultural studies.

Customer Reviews (3)

Not just shorter, but lesser Tabucchi
I am more interested in the fiction by Antonio Tabucchi touching on sociopolitcal issues (notably police corruption) such as PERIERA DECLARES and THE MISSING HEAD OF DAMASCENO MONTEIRO than in the wispier tales of domestic and romantic misunderstandings. The stories in this collection I like best are those with a backdrop of terrorism and revenge, the title story and "The Trains that Go to Madras." Both have substantial accretions of irony and very apolitical, conventional male narrators. "Bitterness and Clouds" also touches on politics, though focused primarily on politics within academia (Tabucchi IS a professor--of Portuguese literature at the University of Siena).

Many of the other stories are slight and unengaging, including one set in Manhattan, "Sleight of Hand" (which like MISSING HEAD features a crime reporter. The only one of the stories in the collection that I actively dislike is "Anywhere Out of the World," a drab ghost story with one very long run-on paragraph (taking six of the eleven pages of the story). "Waiting for Winter" strikes me as way too pat an homage to THE SPOILS OF POYNTON. "Cinema," the story that closes the collection, is also disappointing, not to mention very oblique. If it is supposed to be a fable, the point was not made.

In a two-page "Author's Note," Tabucchi expounds on ambiguity. Stories simplify the flux and complication of life. Riddles without solutions fail as stories--which is not to contend that stories must explain everything. Indeed, the two stories I like best in the collection require the reader to do work of inference/interpretation.

Little Ambiguities
Tabucchi writes both novellas and short story collections. He's a minimalist but one who chooses his few words well. His writing seems slight at first and his plots almost nonexistent but there is a momentum that builds as you get to know him from story to story, his deceptively simple words and stories are like queries as to what the nature of life might be. This collection is just eleven short(10 pgs each) attempts to show how life might occur .The first story ,"Little Misunderstandings..."is about a group of friends. Each fall into roles chosen for them by the accidents of circumstance and all seem helpless to be able to participate in their lives except as observers who find themselves mildly amusing."Waiting for Winter" is a story Tabucchi himself says he wishes Henry James would have written. As Tabucchi tells it we see the widow of a great man of letters going through the motions of mourning. But there is at stories end a twist. James would have filled in the story with sufficient nuance and detail to give the reader a clear picture of a particular psychology and at least give us as readers a chance at understanding a characters motive for doing a certain thing. Tabucchi only gives you the barest amont of information. The last event of the story therefore remains an inexplicable one, the story remains an unsolved ambiguity. Tabucchi is interested in the interior lives of his characters but everything that happens there remains unclear, not really describable except in the most cursory way. His characters do not have psychologies in the traditional sense, "psychology" implies certain identifiable attributes and a certain consistency of character. The strongest thing a Tabucchi character has is perhaps a vague and growing suspicion or a never quite articulated emotion. "Things" have special importance in these stories or sometimes seem to because they seem to have a more stable existence than the characters themselves.In "The Riddle"an automobile that may have belonged to Proust is only one uncertainty in a story where nothing is certain, the car is the dominant image of the story, it is the central thing which draws our attention, it seems to tie the various aspects of the story together.Everything about the unlikely events related in the story is shady and shadowy and perhaps nothing more than a dream. Only the car seems to hold some significant meaning, carry some symbolic weight but ....but it doesn't. Its just a riddle after all.
Tabucchi's point in these stories is that the only way to make sense of ambiguous reality is to simplify it for ourselves. So the story crafting process for him is a playful one. The reader may want a solution or think he is supposed to look for one but there is not necessarily one there to be found. Not all the stories work in the same way. He has more than one tactic. Some are more conventional and some more fantastic. But all refuse to simplify, and so remain in the end ambiguities or complex puzzles for which there are no solutions.
An intriguing aesthetic.

Tabucchi fits in with Kafka and Nabokov and Borges and Cortazar & Calvino, like them he could be called a "fabulist", and fables are powerful because they remain ambiguous like parables or myths.Tabucchi's touch however is particularly appealing because of its lightness. He seems at times to revel in the ambiguities he describes, perhaps in the way a surrealist revels in the anarchy of aparticularly unusual dream.

More short stories by a master of ambiguity
These is my least favorite of Tabucchi's books; however, it is stillsufficiently good that I recommend it.

In his notes preceeding thestories, Tabucchi states: "Misunderstandings, uncertainities, belatedunderstandings, useless remorse, treacherous memories, stupid andirredeemable mistakes, all these irresisibly fascinate me ..."Thatfascination is the basis for several of these stories.

The title story isbegins as a court scene in which the judge, the defendent and the narratorwere good friends in the past and discover what roles they must play in thepresent.

"Waiting for Winter" follows the widow of an importantliterary figure as she does what is expected of her and what her emotionslead her to do.

"Spells" tells of a summer holiday with an auntand a cousin whose dislike of her step father and her interest in magic mayhave gone a bit too far.

"The Trains That Go to Madras" followsa narrator whose cabin mate is Peter Schlemihl (of literaryfame).

"Sleight of Hand" follows an organized crime courier whoknows he is growing too old and tire for his job.

The remaining storiesshow equal diversity and equal interest in life in some sense out of focus,uncertain, ambiguous. As usual, Tabucchi is well worth reading but if youare unfamiliar with him, I'd suggest that you read Letter From Casablancafirst if you prefer short stories or Requiem if you prefer novellas. ... Read more

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A stiff paperbook edition 142 pages ... Read more