La vita agra

La vita agra is a story of a man who has moved from the country to the city in order to support a wife and her son. He is a disenfranchised man but lives and somewhat enjoys his social life in the local bohemian neighborhood. He spends his days eating and smoking in the cafes and watching some friends play for a local sport team. He shares an apartment with one of his friends in a tenet building where some of his sport team acquaintances also live. He is an educated man and occasionally frequents the local library. After becoming a pariah and then being fired at a company he starts writing headlines at a newspaper though this work is very tedious for him. Through a chain of events and wanting to become connected to the lower class workers he soon becomes passionately involved in a mission to blow-up a corporate office building after hearing about a mine disaster in which several of the workers were killed. He believes the amorality of the mining company is responsible for the workers' demise. He begins a relationship with a woman and they quickly move in together. Things are hard but they find a way to make things work. He finds a translating job for a publishing company and works from home. This work situation suits him better than his previous situations but his work is constantly disturbed by the telephone and relentless annoying salesmen. With the assistance of his live-in girlfriend he is able to translate and type pages to earn a modest living and send money back to his wife and her son. The man eventually comes to the conclusion that his plan to blow-up the office is not a solution.

The story is very much about the effects of consumerism and how the desire to have many things can lead to working more, selfishness, and social decay. It criticizes how city life becomes fast paced and detached from humanity. This is poignantly expressed in the book when a drunk man injures his head and eventually dies because everyone was either too busy or doesn't seem to care to help him. Luciano Bianciardi was a critic of the cultural establishment in Italy during the Italian economic miracle from the 1950's to the late 1960's. La vita agra was a bestseller in Italy after being published by Rizzoli, Bompiani in 1962. I highly recommend this English edition of La vita agra (It's a hard life) by Eric Mosbacher.

Review by Jason Gearin.