I keep thinking about Strega Nona. Recently, I spotted a title in the kids' section of Barnes and Noble. "Strega Nona's Magic Ring." My heart stopped. A new Strega Nona installment? But then I realized what had happened. Corporate types somewhere had realized that "Strega Nona" had more branding potential than the name "Big Anthony." "Strega Nona," in a title, would sell more books. So they took "Big Anthony and the Magic Ring" and rechristened it: "Strega Nona's Magic Ring." So gross. This is like Broadway, when someone decides to call "Porgy and Bess" "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess." (As opposed--says Sondheim--to "Amy Schumer's Porgy and Bess.")
When John Cheever wrote "Goodbye, My Brother," he wasn't really writing about two warring brothers, but about two warring halves of himself. Something similar is happening in "Strega Nona," I'm certain. The artist--Tomie dePaola--has taken two halves of his psyche and put them on the page. One part is the ego-like Strega Nona, who keeps a tight schedule and gets shit done. The other part is the id-like Big Anthony, who can't help but make a mess everywhere. Remove either character, and we don't have a story. Remove the playfulness from the virtuosic dePaola brain, and we don't have dePaola-the-artist.
(I think of Big Anthony as a Larry David-ish shlemiel, breaking rules as compulsively as if he were scratching an itch. So it's fitting that the narrator in the link below is Mary Steenburgen.)
So much is delightful in the first "Strega Nona." The sense of a fully-realized world--the Old World spires and piazzas, the nuns, the priests, the jesters, the vaguely Tuscan-seeming trees, the moon, the stars. (I see that Calabria is separate from Tuscany, but still, when I spot those tree-squiggles...) The tubby little people who seem to have stumbled out of a Brueghel painting. (DePaola is borrowing heavily from his own Italian ancestry; like Strega Nona, blowing kisses at her pot, DePaola works with love.) SN keeps things running by curing warts and baldness and finding spouses for the young ladies--and, if you're a small child, you might listen and think, yep, that's just about precisely the way I imagine the bizarre Adult World works. Warts, baldness, loneliness: What else could adults ever find to worry about?
(The gender politics is questionable. DePaola was writing in the seventies. Like a Judd Apatow hero, Big Anthony is allowed to be a childish clown while the women clean up various messes. One wonders if dePaola would feel so indulgent toward his protagonist if he, Big Anthony, were a woman. But: times change. Let's let a charming, moderately conservative man in the 1970s tell his charming, faintly retrograde story.)
Education--all the way from pre-K to grade 12--is all about setting and testing boundaries, and that's what happens in this story. When a teacher says, "Whatever you do, don't talk in the hall," he, or she, is engaging in a sort of game; everyone knows talking will ensue, and so the teacher and the kids do a kind of dance. (Tug-of-war as a weird expression of care or even love.) Strega Nona is maybe as much of a fool as Big Anthony; in her heart of hearts, she knows this kid is going to do foolish things with her pasta pot. And Big Anthony is a stand-in for Impetuous Youth; he believes he has the answers, when he does not, and he acts accordingly.
If we did not have foolish children--if we did not have Ramonas, and Big Anthonys--then we would not get pasta flowing through the streets of Calabria. We would not get those unforgettable, semi-anthropomorphized noodles, worming their way into convents and the basins of large fountains. The chaos is exhilarating. And we aren't asked to linger over the punishment--to wonder if forcing Big Anthony to gorge himself is really very humane, if it is really a smart way of avoiding the risk of a future lifelong eating disorder. No. We just admire the symmetry: Crazy misadventure, crazy punishment. No one seems deeply harmed. Like a murder mystery, the narrative restores its own order. SN and Big Anthony will live to see another day.
I don't know why Mary Steenburgen uses a tilda when she says "Strega Nona." She has an Academy Award; hasn't she done her research? I don't know why we see so little of her in the world--after her dazzling villainess performance in "Philadelphia," one of the big film highlights of the last few decades. I *do* know we will soon watch her performing car-in-motion fellatio in "Book Club," a story of four older women finding new thrills in "Fifty Shades of Grey." So that's something to look forward to. It's Friday. Enjoy some "Strega Nona."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGVXwMX0e5w
When John Cheever wrote "Goodbye, My Brother," he wasn't really writing about two warring brothers, but about two warring halves of himself. Something similar is happening in "Strega Nona," I'm certain. The artist--Tomie dePaola--has taken two halves of his psyche and put them on the page. One part is the ego-like Strega Nona, who keeps a tight schedule and gets shit done. The other part is the id-like Big Anthony, who can't help but make a mess everywhere. Remove either character, and we don't have a story. Remove the playfulness from the virtuosic dePaola brain, and we don't have dePaola-the-artist.
(I think of Big Anthony as a Larry David-ish shlemiel, breaking rules as compulsively as if he were scratching an itch. So it's fitting that the narrator in the link below is Mary Steenburgen.)
So much is delightful in the first "Strega Nona." The sense of a fully-realized world--the Old World spires and piazzas, the nuns, the priests, the jesters, the vaguely Tuscan-seeming trees, the moon, the stars. (I see that Calabria is separate from Tuscany, but still, when I spot those tree-squiggles...) The tubby little people who seem to have stumbled out of a Brueghel painting. (DePaola is borrowing heavily from his own Italian ancestry; like Strega Nona, blowing kisses at her pot, DePaola works with love.) SN keeps things running by curing warts and baldness and finding spouses for the young ladies--and, if you're a small child, you might listen and think, yep, that's just about precisely the way I imagine the bizarre Adult World works. Warts, baldness, loneliness: What else could adults ever find to worry about?
(The gender politics is questionable. DePaola was writing in the seventies. Like a Judd Apatow hero, Big Anthony is allowed to be a childish clown while the women clean up various messes. One wonders if dePaola would feel so indulgent toward his protagonist if he, Big Anthony, were a woman. But: times change. Let's let a charming, moderately conservative man in the 1970s tell his charming, faintly retrograde story.)
Education--all the way from pre-K to grade 12--is all about setting and testing boundaries, and that's what happens in this story. When a teacher says, "Whatever you do, don't talk in the hall," he, or she, is engaging in a sort of game; everyone knows talking will ensue, and so the teacher and the kids do a kind of dance. (Tug-of-war as a weird expression of care or even love.) Strega Nona is maybe as much of a fool as Big Anthony; in her heart of hearts, she knows this kid is going to do foolish things with her pasta pot. And Big Anthony is a stand-in for Impetuous Youth; he believes he has the answers, when he does not, and he acts accordingly.
If we did not have foolish children--if we did not have Ramonas, and Big Anthonys--then we would not get pasta flowing through the streets of Calabria. We would not get those unforgettable, semi-anthropomorphized noodles, worming their way into convents and the basins of large fountains. The chaos is exhilarating. And we aren't asked to linger over the punishment--to wonder if forcing Big Anthony to gorge himself is really very humane, if it is really a smart way of avoiding the risk of a future lifelong eating disorder. No. We just admire the symmetry: Crazy misadventure, crazy punishment. No one seems deeply harmed. Like a murder mystery, the narrative restores its own order. SN and Big Anthony will live to see another day.
I don't know why Mary Steenburgen uses a tilda when she says "Strega Nona." She has an Academy Award; hasn't she done her research? I don't know why we see so little of her in the world--after her dazzling villainess performance in "Philadelphia," one of the big film highlights of the last few decades. I *do* know we will soon watch her performing car-in-motion fellatio in "Book Club," a story of four older women finding new thrills in "Fifty Shades of Grey." So that's something to look forward to. It's Friday. Enjoy some "Strega Nona."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGVXwMX0e5w
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