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54 (novel)
Encyclopedia
54 is a novel by Wu Ming first published in Italian in 2002.
Wu Ming is a collective of five authors founded in 2000. The members were formerly associated with the Luther Blissett
Project, and four of them wrote the international best-selling novel Q
.
The novel is set in Italy, former Yugoslavia, Britain and the US during the year 1954. It has been translated into several languages. All of the editions keep the original copyright statement, which allows for non-commercial reproduction of the book.
It's n 1954, Joseph Stalin
is dead, Yugoslavia
is the only socialist country to have broken relationships with the Soviet Union
, and the Free Territory of Trieste
is contended between Italy and her bordering neighbor country.
In Italy, dissatisfaction is widespread among former members of the Resistance
, as the Christian Democrat
government has allowed many top figures of the Fascist regime to re-enter public and institutional life, and several former partisans are being persecuted as their guerrilla activities are taken out of their context and regarded as criminal actions. In Naples
, mob boss Lucky Luciano
is supervising the creation of the global heroin trade. In Italian Communist Party
controlled Bologna
, a group of grumpy communists hang out at the Bar Aurora. The place is run by the young Capponi Brothers, whose father fought in Yugoslavia and decided to stay there after the war.
In the US Joseph McCarthy
's anti-communist witch hunt has reached its peak. In Hollywood, Cary Grant
is utterly bored with his new life after retiring from his career as a movie star. Both Alfred Hitchcock
and MI6 are trying to convince him to return to acting. While Hitchcock's proposal is precise and sharply focused — the master of suspense is preparing the filming of To Catch a Thief
— MI6's is vague and implausible: Grant is supposed to travel to Yugoslavia and meet up with President Josip Broz Tito
, to discuss the Marshall's willingness to co-operate with the western movie industry. MI6 reckon that a biopic on Tito's leading role in the Balkan Resistance would be a good weapon of psychological warfare
on the USSR.
A key role in the parallel unfolding of these sub-plots is played by an American television set, a McGuffin Electric DeLuxe which is stolen from an Allied military base in Southern Italy, sold on the black market and then passed from one buyer to the next as no-one is able to make it work. “McGuffin” is a real, sentient character, the authors address him as a “he” and follow “his” stream of consciousness throughout the book, as he reasons about the rough way the Italians are treating him.
. Plots were outlined in the aftermath of the Kosovo War
. Actual writing work ended ten days after the 11 September attacks, on the eve of the war in Afghanistan
. These two wars are explicitly referred to in the novel's End Titles: "Begun in May 1999, during the Nato bombings of Belgrade. Delivered to the Italian publishers on 21 September 2001, awaiting the escalation".
The events leading to (and following) 11 September are also allegorically described in the book's forenote:
The Observer
wrote that 54 is a skilled book “about narcotics, the cheap potency of Hollywood, the coming of television, the balance of political power, and how the effects knock on down the line”
Red Pepper
magazine noted that the book contains a “mockery of Berlusconi’s media and political excesses”
According to The Independent
, the novel tries to “explain how Europe's postwar quest for social justice was thwarted by rampant consumerism and a surrender to American power”
The novel has also been seen as an elegy for the shattered dreams of the Resistance movement, as well as a depiction of everyday life after the failure of a revolution.
In a 2008 speech given at Middlebury College, VT, Wu Ming 1 described the forenote to 54 as an "encrypted guide" to the poetics and allegories underlying many literary works produced in Italy in recent years, a heterogeneous narrative current which he called "New Italian Epic
".
Wu Ming is a collective of five authors founded in 2000. The members were formerly associated with the Luther Blissett
Luther Blissett (nom de plume)
Luther Blissett is a multiple-use name, an "open reputation" informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and activists all over Europe and the Americas since 1994...
Project, and four of them wrote the international best-selling novel Q
Q (novel)
Q is a novel by Luther Blissett first published in Italian in 1999. The novel is set in Europe during the 16th century, and deals with Protestant reformation movements....
.
The novel is set in Italy, former Yugoslavia, Britain and the US during the year 1954. It has been translated into several languages. All of the editions keep the original copyright statement, which allows for non-commercial reproduction of the book.
Historical context and plots
The novel presents a vast multitude of characters and sub-plots.It's n 1954, Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
is dead, Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
is the only socialist country to have broken relationships with the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, and the Free Territory of Trieste
Free Territory of Trieste
The Free Territory of Trieste was to be a city-state situated in Central Europe between northern Italy and Yugoslavia, created by the United Nations Security Council in the aftermath of World War II and provisionally administered by an appointed military governor commanding the peacekeeping United...
is contended between Italy and her bordering neighbor country.
In Italy, dissatisfaction is widespread among former members of the Resistance
Italian resistance movement
The Italian resistance is the umbrella term for the various partisan forces formed by pro-Allied Italians during World War II...
, as the Christian Democrat
Christian Democracy (Italy)
Christian Democracy was a Christian democratic party in Italy. It was founded in 1943 as the ideological successor of the historical Italian People's Party, which had the same symbol, a crossed shield ....
government has allowed many top figures of the Fascist regime to re-enter public and institutional life, and several former partisans are being persecuted as their guerrilla activities are taken out of their context and regarded as criminal actions. In Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, mob boss Lucky Luciano
Lucky Luciano
Charlie "Lucky" Luciano was an Italian mobster born in Sicily. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for splitting New York City into five different Mafia crime families and the establishment of the first commission...
is supervising the creation of the global heroin trade. In Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
controlled Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, a group of grumpy communists hang out at the Bar Aurora. The place is run by the young Capponi Brothers, whose father fought in Yugoslavia and decided to stay there after the war.
In the US Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
's anti-communist witch hunt has reached its peak. In Hollywood, Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
is utterly bored with his new life after retiring from his career as a movie star. Both Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
and MI6 are trying to convince him to return to acting. While Hitchcock's proposal is precise and sharply focused — the master of suspense is preparing the filming of To Catch a Thief
To Catch a Thief (film)
To Catch a Thief is a 1955 romantic thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis and John Williams. The movie is set on the French Riviera, and was based on the 1952 novel of the same name by David Dodge...
— MI6's is vague and implausible: Grant is supposed to travel to Yugoslavia and meet up with President Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
, to discuss the Marshall's willingness to co-operate with the western movie industry. MI6 reckon that a biopic on Tito's leading role in the Balkan Resistance would be a good weapon of psychological warfare
Psychological warfare
Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...
on the USSR.
A key role in the parallel unfolding of these sub-plots is played by an American television set, a McGuffin Electric DeLuxe which is stolen from an Allied military base in Southern Italy, sold on the black market and then passed from one buyer to the next as no-one is able to make it work. “McGuffin” is a real, sentient character, the authors address him as a “he” and follow “his” stream of consciousness throughout the book, as he reasons about the rough way the Italians are treating him.
Contemporary context and interpretations
Background research for the book began in 1999, after the publication of the group's previous novel QQ (novel)
Q is a novel by Luther Blissett first published in Italian in 1999. The novel is set in Europe during the 16th century, and deals with Protestant reformation movements....
. Plots were outlined in the aftermath of the Kosovo War
Kosovo War
The term Kosovo War or Kosovo conflict was two sequential, and at times parallel, armed conflicts in Kosovo province, then part of FR Yugoslav Republic of Serbia; from early 1998 to 1999, there was an armed conflict initiated by the ethnic Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army" , who sought independence...
. Actual writing work ended ten days after the 11 September attacks, on the eve of the war in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
. These two wars are explicitly referred to in the novel's End Titles: "Begun in May 1999, during the Nato bombings of Belgrade. Delivered to the Italian publishers on 21 September 2001, awaiting the escalation".
The events leading to (and following) 11 September are also allegorically described in the book's forenote:
The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
wrote that 54 is a skilled book “about narcotics, the cheap potency of Hollywood, the coming of television, the balance of political power, and how the effects knock on down the line”
Red Pepper
Red Pepper (magazine)
Red Pepper is an independent ‘red, green and radical’ magazine based in the UK. For most of its history it appeared monthly, but relaunched as a bi-monthly during 2007.- Origins :...
magazine noted that the book contains a “mockery of Berlusconi’s media and political excesses”
According to The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, the novel tries to “explain how Europe's postwar quest for social justice was thwarted by rampant consumerism and a surrender to American power”
The novel has also been seen as an elegy for the shattered dreams of the Resistance movement, as well as a depiction of everyday life after the failure of a revolution.
In a 2008 speech given at Middlebury College, VT, Wu Ming 1 described the forenote to 54 as an "encrypted guide" to the poetics and allegories underlying many literary works produced in Italy in recent years, a heterogeneous narrative current which he called "New Italian Epic
New Italian Epic
New Italian Epic is a definition suggested by the Italian author Wu Ming 1 to describe a body of literary works written in Italy by various authors starting in 1993, at the end of the ‘First Republic’. This body of works is described as being formed of novels and other literary texts, which share...
".
Editions
The following are printed editions. Downloadable online editions in several languages can be found here.- Dutch: Vassallucci, 2003, ISBN 90-5000-485-7
- English: HeinemannHeinemann (book publisher)Heinemann is a UK publishing house founded by William Heinemann in Covent Garden, London in 1890. On William Heinemann's death in 1920 a majority stake was purchased by U.S. publisher Doubleday. It was later acquired by commemorate Thomas Tilling in 1961...
, 2005, ISBN 0-434-01293-9 – HarcourtHarcourt Trade PublishersHarcourt was a United States publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. The company was based in San Diego, California, with an Editorial / Sales / Marketing / Rights offices in New York City and Orlando, Florida.In 2007, the U.S...
, 2006, ISBN 0-15-101380-2 – Arrow, 2006, ISBN 0-099-47233-3 - Italian: Einaudi, 2002, ISBN 88-06-16203-9
- Portuguese (Brazilian): Conrad, 2005, ISBN 8-5761-6028-5
- Spanish: Mondadori, 2003, ISBN 84-397-0985-4
- Serbian: Plato, 2010, ISBN 978-86-447-0523-9
Trivia
- The inclusion of Grant in the book was serendipitous and due to a mistake. As a member of the Wu Ming collective explained it in an interview: 'leafing through a 1954 magazine, [WM2] found an article on the film stars female readers loved the most. Gary Cooper topped the list. [He] jotted in a hurry "G.C." on his notebook. A few weeks later, going through his scrawls he read "C.G." instead of "G.C." and thought: Cary Grant. At our meeting he told us: "Cary Grant was the most popular actor among the female readers of such magazine. Inspiration! Cary Grant!'