The Unseen by Nanni Balestrini

The Unseen Reviews

• 
  Makis Dionis

  Έπρεπε να αγωνιστούμε με τα μόνα όπλα που είχαμε στη διάθεσή μας. Η εξέγερση ήταν μία ξαφνική πυρκαγιά που είχε κάψει τα πάντα... για τις παρέες των δρόμων το βράδυ.. ένα γκράφιτι που δεν σταματά με σχέδια και φράσεις που ανακατεύονται αλληλεπικαλύπτονται πάνω σε όλους τους τοίχους ενάντια στα αφεντικά ενάντια στην παράνομη εργασία ενάντια στο γκέτο στην εκκλησία στο δήμαρχο στο συνδικάτο στην ηρωίνη στους φασίστες στους μπάτσους στους δικαστές στο κράτος στη φυλακή στη λιτότητα στην ανία
• 
  foxfire

  This book is so beautiful and devastating. I urge all of my friends to read it, if not for it's poetry than for the heavy lessons that can be gained from it.
• 
  Vaggelis

  Τό βιβλίο αυτό αποτελεί μία συγκλονιστική μαρτυρία ενός ανώνυμου αντιεξουσιαστή στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του '70 στην Ιταλία, καί βασίζεται σε αληθινά γεγονότα.
  Ο Balestrini παρουσιάζει ένα χειμαρρώδες κείμενο, χωρίς σημεία στίξης, κόμματα καί τέλειες, που αποτυπώνει πλήρως τίς εμπειρίες τού πρωταγωνιστή από τίς απαρχές τίς πορείας τού στις συνελεύσεις καί στις καταλήψεις, καθώς καί μετέπειτα την μόνιμη παρουσία του στις διαδηλώσεις καί την κατάληξη τού στην φυλακή.
  
  Τό γράψιμο είναι νευρωδες καί αληθινό. Μυρίζεις τά δακρυγόνα, νιώθεις στο σώμα σου την απάνθρωπη συστημική βία τών αστυνομικών στις φυλακές,την μεροληψίας τού Ιταλικού σωφρονιστικού συστήματος, την τοξική ασυνεννοησία καί τίς φράξιες μέσα στο ελευθεριακο κίνη��α,καί τελικά την αδιαφορία μίας κοινωνίας πού τα πολιτικά ιδανικά της τσαλαπατηθηκαν.
  Είναι ενα βιβλίο διαχρονικό για τόν ταξικό αγώνα, πού παρόλη την έντονη κινητικότητα καί την αντίδραστικοτητα πού τό διαποτίζει, αφήνει ένα τεράστιο αίσθημα ματαιότητας στο τέλος.
  "Οι αόρατοι" είναι ένα πολύ θλιβερό βιβλίο πού όμως έχει και θά έχει μεγάλη αξία .
  
  5/5
• 
  Hex75

  leggere "gli invisibili" piomba il lettore in un'epoca remota eppure vicinissima: la stagione a cavallo tra anni '70 e anni '80, subito dopo il '77.
  osserviamo la vita -raccontata non in ordine cronologico- di un ragazzo: militante di quel movimento che non aveva confini precisi e riuniva persone con le più diverse esperienze (e di cui vedremo, attraverso i suoi occhi e quelli dei suoi compagni, le ultime azioni, la decadenza e la sparizione), finito in carcere per una casualità e tra i protagonisti di una rivolta in un carcere speciale, partito parte di una massa e finito solo.
  la sua parabola è quella di una generazione arrivata dopo il lungo "'68" che ha segnato l'italia dal '68 al '77 e che si trovo schiacciata tra il terrorismo, l'eroina e la repressione: non tutto quello che il protagonista compie mi trova favorevole (la disintegrazione della scuola, ad esempio, pur partendo da idee condivisibili si riduce ad una farsa), ma riesce a comunicare l'insoddisfazione di chi voleva una vita e un futuro diversi.
  lo stile di balestrini -rapido, fatto di immagini, vicino più al parlato che alla narrativa- è perfetto per la storia e sembra davvero di trovarsi difronte ad un reduce di quegli anni che ti racconta la sua storia.
  consigliato per chi è interessato a quel periodo storico, affianco a "boccalone" di enrico palandri e ad "altri libertini" di pier vittorio tondelli.
  
  ah, ad un certo punto mi sono imbattuto in un passaggio familiare: divenne infatti una strofa di un pezzo degli ak47, posse romana proveniente dal primo nucleo degli assalti frontali.
• 
  Robert Wechsler

  Stylistically, this is a truly excellent novel. Its reasonably short paragraphs consist of run-on sentences without any punctuation. Like the recent
  Milkman by Anna Burns, Balestrini's paragraphs often contain multiple versions of sentences and thoughts. But the narrator here has far less personality and the content of this book is the opposite of Milkman, whose narrator stands apart from her city’s violence and conspiracies. Here the conspiracies and violence are the novel’s content (in late 70s Italy). Where Milkman is intensely personal, this novel is intensely abstract, just as the students are essentially without ideology. Students keep demonstrating, and the narrator ends up in a prison whose occupants take over the prison. Nothing means very much, and the violence is as senseless as it is horrible.
  
  For me, the problems with this novel were (i) the abstract nature of the content caused me to lose interest in what was happening, and the prose, as it good as it is, couldn’t hold my interest alone; and (ii) the violence was overwhelming, even though not grisly, for the most part. After about 2/3 of the novel, I felt I’d experienced enough of it. I’m very glad I read it, and highly recommend it, especially for those who would like to see how this approach can work in a way and context the opposite of Milkman.
• 
  tout

  This book cut deep into me, more than any other book I can remember. It's an incredible testimony to the lost generation of autonomia, lost to repression, murder, suicide, drugs, armed struggle, betrayal, and the banality of a life that goes back to normal. This loss is all the more devastating because of shining star (or galaxy) that was autonomia at its height in 77. This is easily one of the best books I've ever read and likely will read.
• 
  Karlo Mikhail

  A vivid, fast-paced account of the militant struggles of the youth, workers, and unemployed led by the Italian Autonomist Marxists in the 1970s.
  
  The book gives us a slice of life of the people who were caught in the current of this powerful movement which stood up against the bourgeois state at a time when the official communist party and its politics of class collaboration could no longer serve as a channel of workers' resistance.
  
  Nanni Balestrini's prose form of free flowing statements arranged in blocks with no punctuations strangely helps rather than impede the novel's exhiliratingly racy and forceful movement.
  
  We read the great sacrifices and oppression endured by an entire generation of youth, which is depressing.
  
  We get a glimpse of the exploits and weaknesses of the Autonomists' horizontalist organization, direct action, lumpen antics, uncompromising posturing, and later on a form of armed focoism.
  
  But most importantly, we are told the story of the class struggle that raged in Italy's prisons by political prisoners--"The Unseen."
  
  Balestrini never fails to point out the creativity, dynamism, and solidarity of people enmeshed in a collective endeavor to transform an unjust society even in the most hopless and repressive conditions.
  
  This is a stunning masterpiece. A must-read!
• 
  fetid wretched deviltry

  At times haunting, at times amusing, always conflictual and full of life. A moving portrait of the autonomia generation at both its peaks and valleys, which conveys the beautiful spirit of that time and place before its trampling by the boots of repression and history. Don’t let the lack of punctuation turn you away, after a few pages it gives the text a relentless momentum which I found really enhanced its impact. Very highly recommended.
• 
  Magdalena

  Read this book if you want a breathtaking account of certain parts of the movements emerging and declining in 1970s Italy. Do not read this book if your about to go to jail.
• 
  shilpa

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• 
  Fede P.

  Non credo che consiglierei mai questo libro. Concluderlo è stata una lotta con me stessa, ho fatto fatica a seguirlo e a seguire il flusso.
  Ci sono passaggi che mi hanno coinvolta di più, soprattutto quelli relativi al processo e alle vicende giudiziarie del protagonista ma per il resto è un libro in cui ho faticato a tenere le fila del discorso
  
• 
  Joseph

  This novel is perfect and essential. It has already been tragic that it remained out of print for so long, but it is even more tragic that it has yet to be considered the masterpiece of world literature that it is.
• 
  Anton Relin

  the transition from pride to despondency. devastating
• 
  Jacob Wren

  Nanni Balestrini writes:
  
  
  but look I told him I don’t know why but I sounded annoyed but you know I really can’t stand any more I really mean it that we’re still stuck here with this bullshit still with this bullshit about winning or losing and it seems to me that it’s always really been our big misfortune that every time we’ve thought the thing that mattered was basically just winning or losing when instead the things we’ve really done have never had anything to do with winning or losing it’s clear that here we’ve already lost everything and not just in the last five minutes but the fact is that I think and a lot like me think so too that deep down we’ve never had not only have we never had any notion or desire to win but not even any notion that there was anything to be won anywhere and then you know if I really think about it now to me the word winning seems exactly like dying
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  And then there is this review from Pierce Penniless -
  http://piercepenniless.wordpress.com/... :
  
  
  The Unseen is written in unpunctuated paragraphs interspersed with different voices, differing levels of narrative intervention, reading at times as a stream-of-consciousness recollection, stitched together across jumps in time. This is not literary pretension, but technique serving its object: in other words, it is the literary form taken to best embody the narrative – sensitive to the individual’s relation to history and politics, rendering its questions always in terms of individual suffering, immediate relationships rather than political abstractions. Its technique is then in service of the ethical-political axis that drives its story, in the achievements and suffering of its nameless narrator; this shift of the ethical axis away from the ragged contemporary consensus on the ‘responsibility’ of Autonomia for the repression undertaken by the Italian state and instead toward the individual political subject (replete with intense political bonds of friendship, love and solidarity) is perhaps what most outraged its early critics.
  
  
• 
  Troy

  This is the novel I've been looking for.
  
  the unseen is fast and furious and perfectly captures the excitement that's endemic to being part of a larger movement part of a larger group part of a scene that is bigger than you but that supports you and loves you and wants to change the world for the better
  
  that's the way it's written with fast and punchy paragraphs that are devoid of punctuation but are filled with propulsion speeding you forward with a sense of everything-at-once and sense of fullness and violence all at the same time
  
  The book zips between a few turbulent years. The start of the
  Autonomia movement at school, then to a wild cat march which he captures perfectly especially when the cops turn violent and everything is chaos and fear but still with the sense of infinite possibility, and then to a massive prison strike, and his trial, and his upbringing, and attempts to join with the labor unions, and his time learning how to survive in prison, and learning to live communally with a sense of boundlessness, and the suddenness of the feminine movement within the larger movement, and on and on, just stop reading this and pick up this book...
  
  because it really is that good and it really does get the excitement of a new world even if the book ends on a dour note wondering if anything they did was really worth it but of course it is even if they failed this came out and this can inspire me to go out to carry on to not give up...
  
  (BTW, this is the second novel I've read about the Italian
  "Years of Lead". The first was
  Time On My Hands, which concentrated on three precocious and amoral 11 years old obsessed with The Red Brigades, and next up is
  The Flamethrowers which I know little about, but I know it's roughly about the years of lead.)
• 
  Julian

  Highly recommended. The lack of punctuation put me off at first, but after a while I really liked how dreamy and poetic it made the book. So much at stake, so much horror, so much defeat; yet to be in that whirlwind where it seems like everything is up in the air and the whole world could change in an instant--isn't that what we all really want?
• 
  jan tuno

  generalizzare l'offensiva significa radicalizzare l'insubordinazione a qualsivoglia gerarchia esercitare la nostra creatività distruttiva contro la società dello spettacolo sabotare le macchine e la merce che sabotano la nostra vita promuovere scioperi generali selvaggi a tempo interminato riunirsi sempre in assemblea in tutte le fabbriche della separazione eleggere delegati sempre revocabili dalla base collegare costantemente tutti i luoghi di lotta non trascurare tutti i mezzi tecnici utili alla comunicazione liberata dare un valore d'uso diretto a tutto ciò che ha un valore di scambio occupare in permanenza le fabbriche e gli edifici pubblici organizzare l'autodifesa dei territori conquistati e avanti musica
• 
  Luke

  Gritty prose poem of creating autonomy and fear amid deadend factory life and uncertain prison life. Quite good as a visceral description of direct action, factionalism, and state repression in 70s Italy.
• 
  Ellen

  I really enjoyed this book - the absence of punctuation takes a wee bit of getting used to, but you soon find yourself swept away in the passion and fast-pace of riots, prisoner strikes, debates, work-ins, protests and political action. I like how it follows a group of young Italians with no theoretical knowledge of class struggle who are just giving it all they've got and struggling best they can. For me this book really highlighted how to be victorious we really need to be united in an organisation that can provide theoretical lessons of the past and solutions for the future, that can carry out meaningful mass actions, so that we are no longer groups of 5 individuals struggling separately, or one prison in the middle of the countryside burning sheets that no-one can see, but that together we are marching on the streets, dismantling the bourgeoisie state and building a new society which works in the interests of everyone, rather than a handful of billionaires and bankers.
• 
  Wilhelmcrip Sr.Maduro 1952wish for Ms.Gemmel Mr.n.Mrs.Rosendahl-Saleem

  "Bela"the Hungaryan forename forbitten
• 
  Shelley Ettinger

  Wonderful! I wish I still had the time to keep up my blog because this book certainly deserves a posting but alas I don't think it's in the cards so I'll just say this is the kind of novel I dream of. It takes us right into the experience of the struggle in a way that's extremely rare. Bravo Balestrini! I'm working on ordering what I understand is his masterpiece, Vogliamo Tutti (We Want Everything), just published in the first English translation by an Australian press.
• 
  Donald

  One of my favorite books that remains tragically out of print.
  
  A chronicle of revolt and defeat in late 1970's Italy (the joys of occupying a school and the challenges of feminism, the disaster of 'armed struggle' and the bitter isolation of prison), it is written without punctuation but remains compelling and readable.
  
  Are there any other novels that capture this period of history?
• 
  alex

  Really great, Balestrini doesn't succumb to the self-romanticising, 'glorious defeat' perspective you expect of leftist fiction and history, instead he describes the disintegration of a movement. The final part is devastating.
• 
  Daniel Burton-Rose

  Intense evocation of the autonomist movement in Italy in the 1970s, from the perspective of an introspective incarcerated militant. Moving and thought-provoking.
• 
  Mills College Library

  Fiction B184u 2011