Reader's file: the fascist archives - Italian publisher's reader's reports on foreign books from fascist period

Literary Review, Spring, 2002 by Minna Proctor

--ALESSANDRA SCALERO

ERNEST HEMINGWAY To Have and Have Not (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1937, 200 pp)

My report on Hemingway's To Have and To Have Not [sic] heartily endorses its translation. I'll begin by pointing out that there is nothing in this novel to alarm the censors. It is not impregnated with political satire and there's no sexual intrigue. It is an adventure novel and travel book, constructed around an entirely coherent, simple (almost elementary) psychological conflict. It is set in Key West, a little archipelago south-west of Florida, near Cuba, home to poor fishermen and millionaires in decline. These are the adventures of one Harry Morgan, a prototype of the Key West local. A simple sailor who carries visitors into the port on his boat. He is transformed, gradually--with suggestive crescendo--into a smuggler of alcohol, illegal immigrants, and so forth. He meets death in a dramatic scene where a band of teenage Cuban revolutionaries, who've just robbed a bank, kill Morgan's first mate and force him to take them to Cuba. The novel's beauty lies in the dissolute drama of adventure. But especially in the last half of the book, the periodic character sketches are performed with a kind of ironic psychology that betrays some weariness on the part of the writer. Which means that Hemingway's portraits here are not particularly better than any other author's. Though this doesn't constitute a defect as far as the public is concerned--he might even consider this quality some kind of ingenious concession to the laziness of his audience. I should note that the entirety of the novel isn't more than 400,000 characters and so it would need to be rounded out, maybe with a short story. That wouldn't be so bad. Hemingway's written some marvelous short stories.

--ELIO VITTORINI

Hemingway didn't "explode" in Italy until after the second world war. His work was banned in Italy after the publication of Farewell to Arms ("Addio alle armi") which upset Fascist authorities because of its take on the Italian war. [The publisher] Longanesi (with their characteristic ability to surmount obstacles) published some of the American writer's work in L'Italiano (1933, no. 21, translation by [Alberto] Moravia). The Italian edition of The Sun Also Rises (Einaudi, 1946) took its title from the English edition, Fiesta.

WILLIAM FAULKNER Sanctuary (Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1931)

9 February 1934

To the Councilor Delegate, Rome

I am permitting myself to call upon you regarding an unusual circumstance. The book at issue has found enormous success throughout the world, everyone is talking about it now, and it is being considered one of the most significant publications of recent years (it came out in 1931). We would without hesitation include it in our Medusa catalogue were it not for two facts:

1.) the overwhelming number of commitments we've made and have no idea yet how we'll be able to fulfill them all,

2.) the rather bold character of the book (a kind of [Vitaliano] Brancati on a larger scale).