Luca Guadagnino, I have your next movie idea king!
I actually really liked this novel. It was fast-paced, interesting and genuinely made me go WTF several times. I fully forgot that what I was reading was based on a true story, because everything about it felt like a movie. But even with the genre of ‘crime fiction’ this novel did not necessarily feel entirely fictional. The relationships and characters felt real (honestly super understand the lawsuits). The only fictional thing in this novel and real life is how much emphasis we put on the value of money. And how easy it is for governments to become filled with greed and corruption.
One thing I want to talk about is the idea of art imitating life (and vice versa). In the video lecture, there was a particular quote that stood out to me “What does robbing a bank compare to founding one”. Cause if we want to talk about corrupt governments and shitty banks, let’s call up my homeland -Lebanon!!
Lebanon has a long history of government corruption that would take way too long to explain. But one of the main concerns is the pure lack of access to banks that the citizens have. You literally cannot access your own savings because the government has frozen all access to banks and sunk the worth of money. It’s gone so far that people are fully ‘robbing’ banks and staging sit-ins to gain access to their own savings. Money in Lebanon has basically lost its (fictional) value. Right now one Lebanese dollar is worth 0.000015 of a Canadian Dollar. Again, as stated in the video lecture: money is the most powerful structure, we place so much emphasis on pieces of paper and coins (that could lose value any minute). The only really good thing that’s come out of this crisis is the sense of community that has happened in Lebanon, something that is slightly touched on in this novel.
Piglia is writing about sizing control from a corrupted state is what is happening currently all over the world. Piglia just turns that real-life experience into art via crime fiction.
Another thing I’m super curious about is the idea of crime fiction and the true-crime podcast. For me, a lot of the time when I hear true crime podcasts they feel exploitative of victims and that they’re just interested in the ‘glamour’ of criminality. This brings me to my discussion question: do you think it’s ethical/moral that Piglia invents backstories/characteristics of the characters? Is Piglia also feeding into the glamour of criminality?
Piglia and other similar authors, in my opinion, create characters just for their stories, which could present ethical issues. To prevent negative preconceptions, responsibility is essential. Narratives of criminality vary; but Piglia frequently leaves readers to piece together the subtleties rather than glamorizing crime.
Lol your title is to die for!
Your question is SO INTERESTING!!!!! Like I genuinely want to involve myself in this conversation. When reading, I do agree with you that the novel felt like a movie. Especially knowing that the novel is meant to emulate true events, almost everything felt very “romanticized”. It’s like the true events but on steroids. And I believe people write stories like these because it’s something that is supposed to be consumed, enjoyed, and be interesting. It’s like adding bright colour to a pallet of grey. And I feel like it’s because of this that it can be somewhat problematic to take real-life narratives and insert other things to fatten its “interesting radar”. Because at that point, it’s not really “reality”, it’s like reality’s mirror image, they’re the same but also not really. IDK where I’m going with this but yea, very interesting question.
Maya, you couldn’t have chosen a better quote than “What does robbing a bank compare to founding one,” to exemplify the greyness between governmental corruption and crime that is at the center of the novel! Maybe it’s also one that comments on consumerism/capitalism? (not sure!) Your point about inflation and the actual monetary value of money is interesting thinking about Argentina and its financial state.
Thanks for your comment!
– Tesi