I have no idea what to say about Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die! No, it’s not about Sacco and Vanzetti. Or at least, it’s not about that Sacco and Vanzetti. Except that it is. Sort of. In a way. That is, this isn’t the Sacco and Vanzetti tried for a Braintree murder and electrocuted in 1927. No, this is the Sacco and Vanzetti who made all those slapstick silent movie comedies, and then went on to such classics as Sacco and Vanzetti Meet the Fascist Aviator Italo Balbo.
This is a very strange book.
A very strange book.
Do you know the sort of book that you read, and you think “I have to find somebody to recommend this book to, because I must know somebody that would just love this book, I mean really, really, love it.” Not that I love it. No, I couldn’t say that. There were bits that I quite liked, an extended excerpt (f’r’ex) from Sacco’s notes for a thorough analysis of lazzi, including a detailed outline for the chapter on the gag where you get a whole bunch of people in a telephone booth, the recommended order of the people, the various mechanisms for luring the sucker into the booth in the first place, the options for the tag line, etc, etc, etc. But I am a fiend for narrative, and this book is not interested in narrative. No, I mean this book rejects narrative, not because anybody feels that narrative should serve character or truth or meaning or any of that cal, but because the book rejects the bourgeois notion that narrative, that servant of the elites, has a place in the revolution. No, narrative is the opium of the masses, or else film is the opiate of the masses, or laughter, or something. Actually, the masses are pretty keen on all the opiates, aren’t they? I know I am.
You know what? The person who thought that the real problem with Moulin Rouge! was its slavish devotion to traditional structure—that, maybe, is the person who would love this book.
And somebody should love this book. Somebody should just get their mind blown clean away by this book. Make little marginal notes in it. Underline a few sentences here and there. Somebody should rip up the thing they are writing and start writing something totally different because of this book.
I just don’t know who.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.