The Searchers: Conflict and Communism in an Italian Town, by Belden Paulson (With Athos Ricci)
Lelchuk, Alan
THE SEARCHERS: CONFLICT AND COMMUNISM IN AN ITALIAN TOWN, by Belden Paulson (with Athos Ricci) . Chicago: Quadrangle Books. 347 pp. $6.95. To novelists, social scientists seem a subversive...
...Far worse...
...The interest in Castelfuoco, a town of 5000 lying 30 miles outside of Rome, issues from the fact that since the 1948 elections it has regularly led the rest of Italy in voting the Communist ticket...
...Sounding as if he hailed from Arizona, not Castelfuoco, Patriottini sermonizes on the moral decay rampant in Italy, recalling the days when Fascism was a symbol of order, discipline, and high moral standards ("the morality of the regime was such that if a pocketbook were lying on the ground, you could almost be certain it would remain there untouched...
...What is implied here about Castelfuoco is amply demonstrated in the surrounding text, namely, the moral and political vacuum that engulfs the city...
...From all classes in the town we witness evidence of emptiness and fatigue, people parading about aimlessly in Antonioni streets...
...Obviously, it would be imprudent to use Castelfuoco as a model upon which to construct large and definitive generalizations...
...In recent years they have sought to pry further into the novelist's secrets and to escape with the precious jewels of his art: those peculiar aesthetic forms that transmute the invariable topical...
...These have dirtied its mission...
...Lewis and his methods are relevant to the book at hand, The Searchers, a study of the social and political structure of a small Italian town...
...Espoused openly and candidly by Fascists of varying classes and mentalities, it finds its most respected speaker in the aristocratic Patriottini, a former Fascist general, consul, and friend of Mussolini, who is now the town's leading dignitary...
...Even those who most want to believe in the Christian Democratic party and have the most to offer it—the young professional class—are repelled by its corruption...
...Lotta is an impressive example of intellectual and worker, Party man and Party critic, idealist believer and realist sceptic...
...He concludes by prophesying that "it is just a question of a few years until Fascism comes back...
...Writing in his Notebooks some 20 years ago, Camus said, "There is a whole civilization to be remade...
...The first concerns the inadequacy of the Christian Democratic party, both as a political-moral rallying point and an administrative arm...
...Although his story about the rise and fall of the God of Communism has been narrated before (and most eloquently by a fellow countryman, Ignazio Silone), it nevertheless compels our interest: Who knows how many times I have thought about the contradictions of our movement and wanted to send everything and everybody to the devil...
...Enlightened Castelfuocans, of every political stripe, still feel this need acutely...
...Naive and self-defeating, however, is the attempt to do this by interviewing, in the space of three months (in 1961), no less than "old aristocrats, fascists, communist idealists, communist practitioners of power, Churchmen, Christian Democrats, bourgeoisie, youth," and, for good measure, "representatives of the old civilization...
...The difference between a vote for Communism in Castelfuoco just after the war, and one now, lies in the degree of conviction it symbolizes...
...How could I forget the horrors of fascism and the Nazis, my father's protest against injustice, my compagni with whom I fought in the Resistance, some of whom are no longer here, a lifetime of insults against fighters who seek a better life...
...The decline of Communist fervor, after the failure of the Church, Fascism, and history, is notable mainly for its swiftness...
...Their painful groping for a "new humanism" echoes Camus' words, and it is not very different from most of the groping in the West...
...For it is not through despair and cynicism that the situation will be improved...
...But I have always stayed "orthodox...
...The Searchers is another of those books that, by charting the course of past failure, can help us to define the road ahead more carefully...
...Paulson is more impure than Lewis, and sees fit to interlace these personal accounts with commentary of his own...
...I enter the "solitude...
...one, a dull affair, the pieties of the American missionary, and the second more lively and valuable, the accounts by the Italians themselves...
...The sense of futility is evoked most emphatically by the Mayor, who was himself a staunch Fascist during the war and now calls himself a Communist...
...THE SEARCHERS: CONFLICT AND COMMUNISM IN AN ITALIAN TOWN, by Belden Paulson (with Athos Ricci) . Chicago: Quadrangle Books...
...But the knowledge of a center fallen apart, of a purpose gone astray, that pervades every honest confession (Communist and nonCommunist) in the town, is a theme familiar enough to all of us...
...It is not merely that the latter have increasingly invaded the hitherto settled territory of the novelist—the individual's complex ties with his society...
...Through skillful use of the first-person narrative forms, and patient revision of his material, Lewis has consistently brought to artistic life the enduring and painful lives of the poor, the marginal, the exiled...
...But when you have become "married" you overlook some of the truth, you are a bit like a child...
...ity of material into works of perman ence...
...If this book tells us anything, it reminds us of the dangers and consequences of losing faith in politics at times of setbacks and crises...
...The second interesting note concerns the continuing hold and fascination of Fascist ideology...
...Among the arch-criminals is Oscar Lewis...
...To novelists, social scientists seem a subversive class...
...The attempt to put together a "human document of happenings .. . over the past fifty years" is indeed admirable...
...The most vivid account is by Spartaco Lotta, a bricklayer's son, formerly a Resistance fighter and now a top Communist...
...It is the task of the democratic Left to reaffirm our belief in politics...
...The result is a disaffected and pitiable group, turned off from both Church and politics, only too conscious of the self-debasing consequences of their position...
...Embarrassing in their self-deception, they are frequently as helpful as television commercials (pushing American "ideals," no less...
...The Searchers tries to assimilate information that will explain this decisive dominance of the Left...
...The easy candor of Patriottini, the venerable position he holds in the town, the small band of followers that surround him (including some semi skilled workers), all suggest a flame that was never quite extinguished (and perhaps never will be...
...In this sense it is especially useful for us here in America, who, at this moment, are more aware than ever of the debasement of our government and its institutions...
...Anyway, apart from the textbook observations on the passing of the old ways, and the customary nuggets about alienation among youth, two interesting facts emerge...
...The most successful portions of The Searchers occur when the actors are given time on the stage...
...We lose no sleep over Italy or the town which we love, Castelfuoco," writes the young lawyer, Piero Riservetti, trapped by the "loneliness, disgust and meaninglessness of our social system...
...The comrades who have wihdrawn become lonely individuals blown by the wind, divorced from their friends with whom they fought great battles in war and peace, cut off from a great ideal, coldshouldered by the party itself, where they spent the best years of their lives...
...Surprisingly, neither arises from the Communist experience...
...For thousands of people like myself these are the things that are important...
...On the contrary, it is through people coming together once again, through the pain of political reconstruction, that despair can be diminished...
...True, you can say that communism has reduced the dignity of some people, with its pettiness and the hundreds of objections to its details...
...Thus the upshot is really two books uneasily joined...
...Compared to the emptiness outside the party, the evils within are small...
...For Belden Paulson, the American author, has chosen to shape his material by means of tape-recorded interviews with the inhabitants of Castelfuoco, so that they can narrate their own stories...
...More powerful yet is the merciless knowledge of the alternatives that confront him: So if I leave the party, where do I go...
Vol. 14 • July 1967 • No. 4
