A book about nothing. So he called Claudio Magris, obviously flattering tone, Flaubert's Sentimental Education. The same can be said today on the 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood, Adelphi, which has re-released on the occasion of the release of Tom Ford's A Single Man , which is inspired by the book. Released for the first time in Italy in 2003, one man recounts a day of George, mature literature professor in California in the early sixties, still shaken by the loss of partner, Jim, but always in search of those emotions that, in a word, it consists. There is no plot in the classic sense - and Adelphi speaks of a "novel in pictures " - and the node around which the story is technically a non-event, since Jim died in the romance out of space and everything revolves around other non-events, such as a possible new relationship with a young student, who remains, as far as we know, only imagined. Still, around this thing, Isherwood portrays a character then hard to forget, full of nuances and somewhat scandalous. In short, perfect for the movie and Tom Ford for his portrayal of Colin Firth.
The novel is very physical and very frank, and is based on a kind of interior monologue reinterpretation, more stringent in the first part and more diluted in the second, but with the balance control which the author leads us through the maze George's personality with a light hand, apparently equidistant. "George is different - Isherwood writes in a phrase crucial to understand the character - because, in a way that does not quite know how to define, but that jumps immediately to the naked eye seeing, has not given up." Well, perhaps sometimes the reader does not know define the novel, but its strength is clear behind the simple descriptions (eg of the highways of Los Angeles or the threat of nuclear missiles of the Cold War) and the mastery of Isherwood is the one to govern all of these matters as if nothing had happened, with the same ease that one would ask an actor called to playing a complex role.
George is sometimes cruel, sometimes cynical. But it was with himself, and that makes him a figure above the average and "one man" is indeed a sad story, but also surprising, absurd, essential vitality. It makes you think that, somehow, is close to the power of the outrageous and beautiful Theatre Sabbath Philip Roth, while maintaining a critical distance to the extent of the characters: both the puppeteer jew was a satyr and any predator (albeit huge and Shakespeare), so the professor homosexual is elegant and cultured. Beneath them, however, and here we return also Flaubert, burning life in its inexhaustible complexity. "I can not speak for others - said the young Kenny George - but for all I care nothing made me wise." And when the boy asks him if the experience is useless, he says, "I'm just saying it's okay if one does not. But if you do not even try, if you only know it exists and that you have ... then it can be wonderful .... " The book is all here, sorry if it is little.
