“The Importance of Small Things” part II
October 5, 2008
In this second excerpt from Edmund Gordon’s long essay, a consideration of narrative structure in PF’s Innocence. (a partial bibliography from this piece can be found here.)
The first part of the novel traces Chiara and Salvatore’s early relationship, an affair marked by tempestuous arguments and passionate reconciliations. Then, at the beginning of Part Two (just over halfway through the novel) we are given the scene of the couple’s wedding. This event is shown to us obliquely in eleven short chapters, some no more than a hundred words long, and all of which approach the ceremony from different, though uniformly unexpected angles. There is, for example, the following long paragraph, which makes up half a chapter: Read the rest of this entry »
