Now that I think about it, this was the first
book by Fenoglio that I read, at a time in which I hadn’t really started
reading yet, and when all the partisans in these short stories had the face of
either Stefano Dionisi (who portrayed Johnny in the dramatically underrated
movie taken from Il Partigiano Johnny)
or of my grandfather (whom I’ve never met, and so was always pictured in my
mind as the dashing 20-something year old that I saw in my grandma’s photo
albums).
Every place has its proud moments, that get
passed down and glorified from generation to generation, and in my region there
are very few of those that can compare with the twenty-three days of existence
of the Partisan Republic of Alba (one of the first cities in Northern Italy to
be – momentarily – freed from Fascist rule).
Fenoglio was a supremely talented writer, able
to strip the partisans of their myth and paint them for what they really were:
ill-equipped scared little kids with their hearts in the right place. Needless
to say, the six stories about the Resistance War in this collection have had
much more of an impact on me than those on agricultural life in the period
(still extremely interesting, just way less inspiring).
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