I found the portrayal of the church fascinating. Mosca seems to contact the more lenient, worldly former bishop with the current, austere one, who will force Mosca’s coming transformation in the public eye to something even more at odds with Mosca’s “self.”
Two implications here: one, the church (and the Catholic church specifically) is not only far for being an universal truth, but also controlled by egotistical or proud individuals following their own agendas.
And two, Moscarda is willingly acting like an hypocrite too, choosing to talk to the church man who can better help his cause.
I was quite surprised by the turn of events in this chapter. Up until now the plot has been focused on mostly everyday events with all the interest and intrigue taking place in Mosca’s mind. Then suddenly, we have not one but two gunshots! In a convent! Quite the turn of events. It hadn’t occurred to me that we might have an unreliable narrator on our hands. I would have expected that if he had tried to assault Anna Rosa he would have just blamed it on one of the ‘others’ so he couldn’t be responsible. But your pointing out of the clues was very intriguing! My guess is that our confused protagonist is on a downward slope to ruin. But we’ll see!
This is the first time I've been involved in a slow reading, and it's really fun and enlightening. To stop after every chapter and discuss it without knowing what happens next provokes a very different sort of exchange than happens when a book group meets after everyone has finished.
Mosca has been justifying some unstated behavior of his from the beginning, and I got the sense that his entire narration is almost like a statement made under oath to a judge or a prosecutor. So a lot of his convoluted self-reflections have had a very Nabokovian tone: "I know what it looks like, your honor, but here is the way it really happened."
I found the whole encounter with Anna Rosa to be the most unreliable and delusional so far. It seems to me that he abandoned all sense of time. I couldn't tell whether everything in the chapter takes place on the same day or over a period of months. It's all so dreamlike.
I hope the last chapter will clear up what this monologue has actually been, or at least indicate who he is speaking to. He presumably did not get killed by being shot in the chest—unless he is testifying to God in the afterlife.
I really enjoyed this part—Pirandello has lured me into a cage where I can no longer discern Moscarda's true story. I question how he's even writing and speaking if he was shot or killed at the end—I still can't answer this. Perhaps all of this is being written by an already deceased Moscarda, who has embraced the role of a dead man, as Pirandello might cleverly orchestrate. Who knows—did that shot even occur?
I was particularly struck by Moscarda's explanation to Anna Rosa about how one can never see oneself alive in photographs and mirrors. I yearn to read more such paradoxical reflections. Through his thoughts, he shatters all conventional concepts of reality. It's simultaneously refreshing and unsettling, leaving me with a profound sense of discomfort and vulnerability.
I found the portrayal of the church fascinating. Mosca seems to contact the more lenient, worldly former bishop with the current, austere one, who will force Mosca’s coming transformation in the public eye to something even more at odds with Mosca’s “self.”
Two implications here: one, the church (and the Catholic church specifically) is not only far for being an universal truth, but also controlled by egotistical or proud individuals following their own agendas.
And two, Moscarda is willingly acting like an hypocrite too, choosing to talk to the church man who can better help his cause.
I was quite surprised by the turn of events in this chapter. Up until now the plot has been focused on mostly everyday events with all the interest and intrigue taking place in Mosca’s mind. Then suddenly, we have not one but two gunshots! In a convent! Quite the turn of events. It hadn’t occurred to me that we might have an unreliable narrator on our hands. I would have expected that if he had tried to assault Anna Rosa he would have just blamed it on one of the ‘others’ so he couldn’t be responsible. But your pointing out of the clues was very intriguing! My guess is that our confused protagonist is on a downward slope to ruin. But we’ll see!
Ha, will it be ruin or salvation? As always in this book, depends on who you ask! I'm glad we had you here for this journey, Sharon!
I’m glad to have you as a guide. 😊
This is the first time I've been involved in a slow reading, and it's really fun and enlightening. To stop after every chapter and discuss it without knowing what happens next provokes a very different sort of exchange than happens when a book group meets after everyone has finished.
Mosca has been justifying some unstated behavior of his from the beginning, and I got the sense that his entire narration is almost like a statement made under oath to a judge or a prosecutor. So a lot of his convoluted self-reflections have had a very Nabokovian tone: "I know what it looks like, your honor, but here is the way it really happened."
I found the whole encounter with Anna Rosa to be the most unreliable and delusional so far. It seems to me that he abandoned all sense of time. I couldn't tell whether everything in the chapter takes place on the same day or over a period of months. It's all so dreamlike.
I hope the last chapter will clear up what this monologue has actually been, or at least indicate who he is speaking to. He presumably did not get killed by being shot in the chest—unless he is testifying to God in the afterlife.
I really enjoyed this part—Pirandello has lured me into a cage where I can no longer discern Moscarda's true story. I question how he's even writing and speaking if he was shot or killed at the end—I still can't answer this. Perhaps all of this is being written by an already deceased Moscarda, who has embraced the role of a dead man, as Pirandello might cleverly orchestrate. Who knows—did that shot even occur?
I was particularly struck by Moscarda's explanation to Anna Rosa about how one can never see oneself alive in photographs and mirrors. I yearn to read more such paradoxical reflections. Through his thoughts, he shatters all conventional concepts of reality. It's simultaneously refreshing and unsettling, leaving me with a profound sense of discomfort and vulnerability.
Thank you for the article, Ellie!