THE STORY OF MY PURITY

it might have been that i was in seville and had been recently enamored of cultural catholicism and its apparent pertinence to my remapping of my own personal history. it might also have been that i was in seville from portland and that the book was about a guy who flees himself as he's become in rome and goes to paris to ruminate and dissipate. it might also have been that the protagonist was (about to be?) thirty and had found himself just starting to refigure things out. but i don't exactly know. i can't remember now (especially now that my memory has been blighted by my recent familiarity with the translation published by fsg) what i read in the jacket copy of the spanish translation that i first came across at the book store of el corte inglés on the plaza del duque. i only remember that i wanted to read it, and that after reading the first paragraph several times (and on several different occasions) in spanish, i decided, by whatever digressive inspiration or for whatever lack of confidence (and after a web search confirming that it was likely forthcoming), to wait for francesco pacifico's the story of my purity to come out in english.

if i was going to read the book in translation, i should read it translated into my first language. maybe my thinking went something like that -- even if thinking about that now makes me think about whether the book in spanish (or in spain) might have been "closer" to the original italian. i'd like to say that it doesn't matter anymore, but anymore i just don't know. and i waited regardless. then the english translation was published, and i bought it, although not immediately. but only a couple of days after i had, i picked up the spring 2013 issue of n+1 to find that -- by some sort of commutative property of intellectual interest -- the first chapter of stephen twilley's translation of pacifico's book had been published there as well. (the coincidence of the release of the translation and the heat of the discourse surrounding the election of the new pope probably had something to do with it too.) i didn't buy the magazine, but i did think that i should get around to reading the book, for which my interest had waned after the fruition of my anticipation -- and after i'd already made my own way through that first chapter.

and i did eventually get around to it, although it wasn't immediately. and the book was indeed interestingly timely -- although in a different way than it seemed to me that it might be when i first came across it in spain. the story of my purity is about a young, roman papist. his catholicism has been his quarter life rebellion against the middle left bourgeois lifestyle typified by the circumstances and social trappings of his journalist sister and his well enough to do father. he works for a reactionary catholic publisher, and his name is about to be given editorial credit on a forthcoming book indicting john paul ii as a subversive, frankist interloper. he's a faithful husband, but his marriage is essentially sexless, positioning it, ironically, among those secularly sanctioned unions that are unopen "to life." but piero rosini senses that something is wrong. and it's not just that he finds himself obsessed with his sister in law's perfect tits. from paragraph two of that first chapter, he's semi-actively trying to extricate himself from the social, spiritual and professional milieus that he chose for himself in his twenties, and he starts by making a pathetic request of his father for a loan to start his own publishing house.

he flails. and he equivocates. then he quits his job and goes to paris, where he heeds (the echo of) the call of the flâneur and is tempted by bohemia. he comes up against the monolith of contemporary european jewry (by way of brooklyn, of course), and he finds new friends. then the story of piero rosini's purity goes schizoid, and francesco pacifico's deliberations on the current conflict between moral relativism and the doctrinaire are increasingly personified by rosini's two selves: the one who goes to visit his wife in rome, and the one who elaborates an insane sexual artifice in order not to cheat on her in paris. ("modesty itself," as it's been said, "is a temptation" too.)

i can't remember now if i suspected any of that when i first came across pacifico's book in spanish. what the words were that won me over in the fall of 2011 i couldn't even guess. i can, however, say that francesco pacifico has a way with words. his articulation of the thrills of of self-doubt self-abnegation are sublimely acute and forthright. his descriptions of the tribulations of piero's purity are as colorful as the ostentation that it (ostensibly) doesn't allow itself. they are, as it were, beautifully explicit. but (and it's a big one), the story itself isn't much of an achievement. the question of whether the prodigal son will return to his father or to the holy father is a clever conception, and not unsuited to the times. but the core narrative has gotten too tired in its age oldness. however cleverly conceived or colorfully told, the story of my purity is just another coming of age story about a man from a dominant paradigm living on inherited wealth. (at least give us some madonna-whore!) where the book strays from the straight and narrow it never goes too far, and all of its roads, regardless, lead back to the cliched. and it doesn't at all devalue the family to say that pacifico's book could have been better if it hadn't forced itself into a choice between one and another sets of family values.

before piero rosini goes to paris, while he's still got his editor's gig, a young man contacts him about a book. a novel. piero is looking to expand his social circle beyond the church and so refrains from making clear to the man that the publishing house where he works doesn't publish fiction until after they've embarked on a friendship. (at one point they enjoy a sit together on a love seat with the sister in law and take advantage of the opportunity to rub themselves up against either of her breasts.) piero is all but sure that he can't get it published, but the man is writing a book about the gays: "a novel about a gay couple obsessed with traditional family models, who want 'a happy family fifties-style, a suburban town house.'" the idea, "is to make fun of gay people a bit." unfortunately, in pacifico's book, the idea isn't taken any further. maybe the brief mention was intended to raise the relationship between piero and his wife into different relief. he might narrowmindedly relish the opportunity to ridicule some homosexuals, but the joke would also be at his expense. i won't speculate on pacifico's inspiration for its conception, but i will say that the young man's book is the one that i might probably have preferred to read.

that book would surely be no less unsuited to the times. as the world was settling into the college of cardinals' decision on the new pope, the supreme court of the united states was hearing arguments on two laws regarding same sex marriage. a month ago, on march twenty-fourth, the new york times published an op ed piece by frank bruni that frighteningly articulated the story of our purity here, the distorted, conservatized narrative that has stolen the standard from the vanguards of self-expression and social justice.

"marriage has forced many americans to view gays and lesbians in a fresh light. we're no longer so easily stereotyped and dismissed as rebels atop parade floats, demanding permission to behave outside of society's norms. we're aspirants to tradition, communicating shared values and asserting a fundamentally conservative desire, at least among many of us, for families, stability, commitment. what's so threatening about that?"

in order not to seem so threatening (a defensive, negative way of saying annoyingly politically outspoken), we've gotten with the times and rebranded: as supplicant, de-sexed conformists, buttoned down in traditional, homogenized values. unfortunately, bruni's statements show absolutely no sign of being in jest, although the joke is at the expense of all of us. (never think of an elephant when you're wondering what's the matter with kansas.) francesco pacifico deserves at least some credit for poking the fun that he has, then, even if he was probably at the tail end of the analagous discussion in italy when his book was first published in 2010. and maybe he deserves a little more for very sexually writing a book about the generally desexualized political spaces occupied by the children of the sexual revolution. could an inkling of that have been the source of my initial interest in it? i can't remember, but in the interest of permissiveness i'll allow it.