2024-01-11 15:59:18
After the gravity of his excellent novel “Solid Bodies”, the Italian-Swiss author Joseph Incardona takes us into a hilarious, outrageous, gory, incredible, and even tender story. In “Stella and America”, second degree and atrocities coexist with a sincere thought about kindness or consolation.
Stella? She is this candid 19-year-old prostitute touched by grace who, as long as you penetrate her (vaginally), will cure you of your leukemia, your psoriasis. Yes Yes! And this is starting to become known within the perimeter of your camper van.
But the Catholic Church lacks American saints. At the same time, the Holy See cannot celebrate the celestial benefits of fornication, unlike Joseph Incardona who preserves their beauty by modestly closing the camper door on the accomplishment of miracles. The Pope and his cardinals would therefore prefer Stella dead and a martyr.
Coen Brothers Creatures
They send after him a duo of killers of unparalleled cruelty (and keen on Heidegger): the Bronski brothers, similar to creatures of the Coen brothers who would have been forgotten in a Hollywood shed, and to whom Incardona, always generous , would offer a chance to break through.
Stella is both in a form of lightness and joy. She sees no harm in what she does. Maybe that’s why she was elected
Joseph Incardona
Stella, therefore, is charity. Whore and saint, she brings together two commonplaces of femininity. It also bears the Latin name of the star, symbol of another Catholic theological virtue: Hope.
As for America, it is the vast territory which for a long time represented… hope precisely! America, which subsequently became the den of evil, in the cynicism and brutality of the novels and noir films dear to Joseph Incardona.
Mischievous mastery
Certainly, the America of hope has failed. And America-den-of-evil is also showing signs of wear and tear. But precisely because we have consumed so many films and books made from these mythologies, they offer an inexhaustible reservoir of shared images and atmospheres: on the benches of diners as in the breathing of wide open spaces, Incardona’s America, an entertainment machine, remains a place where to think about good and evil.
With lightness, mischief and mastery, the author makes his reader laugh from the first pages of “Stella and America”, and immediately takes him into one of these intrigues of which he has the secret. With the assistance, if necessary, of supernatural subterfuges which pull the screenwriter out of a dead end into which he had unfortunately found himself. Incardona juggles with clichés, suddenly animating them with humanity.
Multiple characters
The characters multiply: a Hispanic journalist sniffing out the Pulitzer; a couple of nonagenarian and fellinian showmen with bony and joyful sexuality. Or Franky Malone, a former boxer from a previous book by Incardona himself (“The Fists”, which also reappears in paperback by Zoé). And above all, James Brown, a former “marine seal” who became a priest, very annoyed by his funky name, who will bring out his guns to defend the damsel. After the holy whore, the Bible and the gun. A gendered scenario? Rather yes. And it makes you laugh too.
Kindness, loyalty, consolation
It’s also that the author never ceases to challenge you, the reader: he tells you in black and white, in the first person, that all of this is cinema, that he is in the process of invent this story to have fun (and have fun with you). He invites you to be an accomplice around this cardboard America (the finale significantly takes place in Las Vegas, the quintessential city).
But you stubbornly refuse to disbelieve his story – you want to know who will live and who will die – which avatar of good will remain, which avatar of evil will perish, and you quickly turn the pages, laughing, suddenly briefly horrified (without laughing) or touched by the sweetness of a gesture.
Because once again Joseph Incardona speaks of goodness, loyalty, consolation. Which seems to count among his theological virtues. And while he writes, for real, yet another successful American novel, his characters never cease to make you understand that real life is not about words. Throwing themselves into the thrilling flow is their panache. And his.
Francesco Biamonte/mh
Joseph Incardona, “Stella and America”, Finitude editions.
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