The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism (Literature Now) by Sarah Chihaya

The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism (Literature Now) Reviews

• 
  Story

  Reading Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet was one of the most intense literary experiences I've enjoyed as an adult; her books led to much deep and interesting conversation amongst the women with whom I shared the books.
  
  "The Ferrante Letters" helped me revisit the pleasure and interest I found in the novels. The authors combined literary criticism with the kind of book talk one might expect to find in a really good book group.
  
  I particularly enjoyed the letters section of the book though the critical essays were also interesting and illuminated several ideas and themes I hadn't previously considered.
  
  Recommended for the serious Ferrante fan and for students wanting to understand the books on a deeper level.
  
• 
  Adreeta Chakraborty

  a joy, a thrill, a marvel, a dream!!!!! time to read the neapolitan novels again, it's been long enough.
• 
  B. H.

  One of the most interesting aspects of Ferrante's work is the amount of academic engagement it has engendered. I can't quite think of another author who - less than a decade following the publication in English of her career-defining work - would go on to become the subject of not one, but several books and at this point hundreds of academic articles that go beyond mere book reviews.
  
  "The Ferrante Letters" is part of the literature coming out of the nascent academic sub-genre we might even be tempted to call Ferrante studies. As a book, it epitomizes the interdisciplinary and personal flair that these academic responses to Ferrante can take. "The Ferrante Letters" began as an online project, when four friends, all tenured professors at various academic institutions, spent one summer reading the Neapolitan Novels together and sending letters to each other with their thoughts. It is a boundary-breaking book, as we see the four authors pick up on Ferrante's literary references, do some illuminating and detailed close readings of the text, and perhaps more entertainingly see how the lives of Ferrante's characters map into the authors' own lives, past and present.
  
  Chihaya, Emre, Hill, and Richards know what they're doing. Their letters are erudite, full of intertextual analysis, but also replete with personal anecdotes and musings that make the book approachable, a bit like talking to a friend about your favorite author. As a person who has been there, it is also fascinating to see how other women respond to particular chapters and exchanges, how Ferrante, writing about Italy in the 50s and 60s, still manages to feel extremely personal. It's that sort of magic that I think we keep seeking after the first time a book makes us feel like we've just emerged from a very powerful, and life-changing, spell. And "The Ferrante Letters" is precisely this: four friends on a thrilling literary treasure hunt, trying to discover the source of Ferrante's magic through words.
• 
  Frank

  If all literary criticism had this approach, I'd read more of it now that I'm out of school. The various letters were great and a more streamlined way if communicating some of the main points and criticisms of the novels.
• 
  Jenna Watson

  I could take or leave the actual Ferrante analysis here, but loved the concept of collective criticism, academic writing done in community, a slow burn that lets conversation and contemplation shape academic argument over time.
• 
  Michelle

  I need to finish reading The Neapolitan Novels so that I can read this book. And not be spoiled by the HBO adaptation.
• 
  Anna

  The Ferrante Letters An
  
  Experiment in Collective Criticism by Sarah Chihaya, Merve Emre, Katherine Hill and Jill Richards is one of the most new intriguing books published by Columbia University Press.
  
  Four women of letters decided one day of writing a book, exchanging their own critical letters through a fertile and absolutely captivating correspondence with the other participants, analyzing a saga of an author that they would have picked up. Choices were immense as you can imagine, but at the end their attention fell on the books written by mysterious Elena Ferrante.
  
  The book is divided in three sections. In the first one you find the correspondence of these four teachers, the second are various essays that I know you will find extremely interesting and at the end in the appendix, letters written by people involved in this conversation about Elena Ferrante and her books thanks to the authors's invitation.
  
  I read recently a book where the author admits that the best of writing is this one: the possibility of re-capture the past, resuscitating it, for setting people free; in a way or in another a writer heals problems, re-putting in the correct order the events of a life-time; this process means sharing informations, feelings, honesty in the narration. It should be all the time in this way.
  
  Sure, these authors articulate, sometimes a writer can be "dishonest." A writer, as also admitted these teachers sometimes can't be loyal: first of all this friend, as Elena is knows Lila so well? She can changes fragments of the story for keeping the novel more interesting.
  Is it true the portrait donated us by Elena? It depends; surely is more real than not a tale written maybe by someone who hadn't never met that girl but that had just heard of her.
  
  Friends remain in grade of perceiving, capturing the soul of another person and they can guess, understand, feelings, emotions, and emotive state; why? Because they are "in love" in a completely different way, with and for another soul. What a friend searches in another person is that pieces in grade of completing her/his character. A friend is a discovery, a powerful engine.
  
  Sometimes being friend is searching for someone completely different from us as it happened for Elena and Lila.
  
  Lila and Elena were two different universe, but not because, after all, there was a great difference in their existence; more or less their life, people they met in a daily base were the same ones; but yes, the family of Lila, was more practical and less intrigued by school, education and a possibility of bettering the existence through culture. Lila was very intelligent but no one in her family invested in culture. This one was perceived by them like another language.
  
  Lila at the end will prefer a more practical life, the one every daughter born in that district of Napoli would have choosen because the only possible one.
  
  Elena is absolutely absorbed by the violence, brutal character of Lila, when she meet her the first one and they are little; and she is powerfully attracted by it.
  Lila feels the necessity of being strong every second of her existence. Elena is passive regarding life. She is simply an observer, while Lila acts, acts every second of her existence.
  To Lila, my point of view, being a prepotent and feareless girl means to her trying to giving back to life the answer to the existence that that same life donated her; her answer to the asperity of an existence that, she understood, wouldn't never been too pleasant.
  
  Errors committed by Lila has been maybe the common consequences of choices she made for trying to stay more happy with a man plenty of money, without asking too much to her existence; but that one will be just the beginning of other tribulations.
  
  The two girls read together Little Women when still at the elementary school, and it was for them a formative book: they imagined a beautiful existence, where they would have been in grade of reading but also writing many books, telling stories. They both fell in love for Jo March, the girl more independent, more free than the rest of the other sisters March. Amy was in love for beauty; Meg was the perfect little woman devoted to the house; Beth the sweetest one.
  
  The authors will write a lot about the idea of disappearance; disappearing without existing anymore is possible? Under many ways, maybe for the person, but not for the rest of people who touched that existence. As you will read the result of this conversation will be absolutely touching.
  What we know for sure is that Lila, tormented by her sad past, had a desire: leaving this world for good, every single cell of her body deleted from the stage of life.
  
  An author of this book arranged an interview with mysterious Elena Ferrante, without, after all obtaining a lot of answers. She tried to contact her via the American publishing house, (they declined at first the interview and later, accepted it) via Ann Goldstein American translator of the Ferrante's books.
  
  Personally I discovered the Ferrante's world for case. Ann Goldstein, American translator of all the books of the Ferrante's saga was in Umbertide, at Civitella Ranieri for a meeting two years ago. What attracted me of that lady, so skinny, and with a sweet face when I received the newsletter with the invitation, was just a fact, I confess: she was once a co-editor of the The New Yorker. I read that magazine when I find it, and to me is one of the best ones in circulation. It's a temple of the American Journalism, and I wanted to see who could be a co-editor of that immensity. Personally, I didn't know anything of Elena Ferrante; I didn't know who that italian writer was and obviously when I introduced Anna Maria to Goldstein, from her face I understood I mispelled the name of Elena Ferrante: not having heard that name before I didn't feel any shame.
  
  Beautiful book! For everyone, if you are new at the Ferrante's world this one will be a great introduction. If you read the books it will be a formative reading and a possibilily of seeing the story under many different ways thanks to these authors that won't leave any voice apart.
  
  Highly recommended.
  
  I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.
• 
  Siyu

  When I was reading the quartet, I distinctively felt this “pleasurable unpleasure” that makes it impossible to put down the book, but at most times, feeling somewhat uncomfortable - the honesty, the class consciousness, the lack of description of the physical environment, which the emotional intensity makes up for, the ending that is so real and disappointing at the same time… The collection of essays from the four authors and the guest authors helped me make sense of what it is that made the reading so enjoyable and unpleasant at the same time. The letters were less interesting, but a good companion in any case.
• 
  Amanda

  I can't wait to do a full reread of the Neapolitan Quartet. Reading it was such a fever dream and I couldn't get them done fast enough. Diving back in inspired me to watch the television show for now which I am enjoying more than I remembered after I started and then quit again. This was fun, if not maybe that new to me. Mostly like joining a fan club for a little while.
• 
  Sara

  I'd like to thank Netgalley and Columbia University Press for allowing me to read this book. It was quite an experience. I had read all four books of the Napolitan Quartet four years ago. As I started reading the Ferrante Letters, I went back to my Library and got My Brilliant Friend out. I'm now working my way through all four of them a second time. I put down the Letters until I finished My Brilliant Friend.
  
  This book is a compilation of letters that four academic women sent to each other over the course of a summer. In advance, they picked the book(s) they wanted to read, set up the guidelines and went their separate ways to learn what would happen. Clearly they thought it a success or I wouldn't have been reading the published results. The book isn't for everyone. It helps if you have academic blood in your veins, but anyone who loves The Quartet and is interested in what someone else liked and found interesting will enjoy reading these letters.
  
  Personally I found I needed these four women to bring some important themes to my attention. The first time
  I read the Quartet, I zoomed right through them finding them hard to put down. This second time, I'm reading much slower and still I missed things: the violence in the neighbourhood in direct proportion to the poverty; the competition between the girls with whatever is handy. First schooling and when Lina no longer went to school, riches and wealth. The letters also point out the cruelty between the two and that it comes with the territory. I looked back over the many books I've read about friendship and I have never read the cruelty of friendship stated so matter of factly. Or the passion. Or the many other qualities of a friendship that last over sixty years.
  
  The Ferrante Letters made me think. And I liked that. I'm ready to start all over again from the beginning. I also found it interesting that these women didn't know each other well when they started writing the letters to each other. They seemed inspired by the friendship between Lena and Lila. They jumped right into deep revelations, questions and remarks. They are very different personalities and it was enjoyable sensing the different thoughts about the themes they talked about. I loved that one of them went to Naples and tried to find the neighbourhood. That's something I would have done. That's love!
  
  I recommend this book to anyone who loved the Ferrante Napolitan Quartet and who want to be stimulated to consider the books more thoughtfully. It is a book you could read and put down and pick up again later. In fact, I don't think one should read this book in one helping.
  
  I suspect this was a one time experiment but I would love it if they did the same thing with another beloved book.
  
• 
  Vincent

  My star ratings are really meaningless. Probably more so here than most of my other reviews. That said, I did like this quite a bit and I finished it in like 2 and a half vacation days, so that says something. The rating, and a large portion of my enjoyment, is tied to the letters sections, both the four main collaborators and the guests. This is the type of criticism (here it's literary, but this style could and should extend elsewhere) I enjoy thoroughly. My favorite criticism are those that cross into the personal and manifest specific emotional connections to the text or whatever topic. So the letters here which traverse summer experiences, past ferrante readings, academia, political theory, and more are truly great. The more I reflect on my Ferrante reading the more I realize just how thorough, dense, and just fucking great these books are. So reading more perspectives on this text with totally different takeaways was immensely fulfilling.
  
  That said, the essay section was a bit of a slog, but also very good and refreshing? I don't know. Maybe I just don't like academic literary criticism. It reminded me a lot of high school and college where we analyzed passages and interpretations in a way I found constricting and joy sucking. But, I don't think I'd assign those adjectives to these essays in the slightest. Perhaps it just recalled bad memories that I haven't gotten over. Yet, certain parts of the essays did feel bloated and I did more or less finish each of the essays, with the thought , "the core ideas here are really interesting, but why was this so long and I don't care about these other literary references." Maybe that just means I'm a dumbass or not the target of these writings, but whatever that was my takeaway. Also, everytime Jill Richards mentioned how when she teaches literary criticism she tells her students to not do this or that, I thought, "yes, this is why I hate most literary criticism, and fell off English and writing as an academic exercise."
  
  In some sense, it felt like reading the reactionary mind and other dense political theory text, where I did spend a lot of time drudging through and being annoyed with the language, but ultimately the core takeaways of the book were good enough that I didn't care about my relative lack of enjoyment with the process.
• 
  Toni

  The Ferrante Letters exist for one audience only: The exuberant Ferrante Fan. This brilliant book is like an academic book club of sorts. Four literary, intelligent women got together to discuss the quartet of writings, four books, by the writer know as Elena Ferrante, beloved by many. This collection is a testament of that incredible gathering.
  
  Personally, I sought out this book in hopes that it would help me better understand what I was missing in my understanding of Ferrante's books, and in all truth, the appeal! I just could not see it, and I desperately wanted to see it. I needed help! Even my Italian heritage was of no help! (Weak smile.)
  
  These four educated and successful and accomplished women saw it and they wrote this book to help others see it! Here it is for all to read; really you must read; it's as if you've gained admittance to a really special book club.
  
  There's a word in Italian, it's really slang and strongly changed in each dialect, so I'm not going to even attempt it here, but it basically translates to: "hardhead." There's probably a word in every language for kid or person who's stubborn or a hardhead; well, that was me. I was called that name in my family constantly.
  
  So, if you can relate, ignore them and read this anyway. Authors appeal to each person in different ways. That does not label them or us as good or bad, just a different connection.
  
  Thank you Netgalley, and the women authors of the Ferrante Letters
  
• 
  Rebecca H.

  This book is a must-read for anyone who loves Elena Ferrante and for anyone who wants to think about new directions in literary criticism. Four critics got together and decided to read Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels over the course of a summer and write letters to each other about the experience. This book collects those letters and also includes a more formal essay by each author developing ideas explored during the group reading. The letters and essays mix personal responses to the books with insights into their artistry: their characters, style, themes, etc. As a Ferrante fan, and as someone who likes innovative writing about literature, I loved this unusual form of criticism. The letters and essays felt intimate, ground-breaking, and vital. I would love to see more academic criticism that is communal and unafraid to acknowledge that it’s written by real people whose lives, experiences, and emotions affect their interpretations.
  
  
  https://bookriot.com/2020/01/08/indie...
• 
  Frankie

  This was a slow read but I quite enjoyed it. I struggled at times to separate the voices of the different writers talking through the Neapolitan series, but at a certain point it came together and also stopped mattering. I found lots in here to enjoy even beyond my interest in Ferrante’s work. In that sense it kind of annoyed me that the introduction worked so hard to justify the book’s existence and significance. This is an imperative in academia, but I think this book has a broader appeal alongside Frantumaglia and the series itself. I wish I had experienced the Slow Burn project in real time(apparently the book came out of a blog or website) but this was definitely a worthwhile read and I’ll miss the companionship of these people. It almost makes you feel that you’ve been in conversation.
  
  I received this as an advance reading copy from netgalley.
• 
  June

  (This title constantly reminded me of the Cheever letters episode of Seinfeld.)
  
  This book will not be everyone's cup of tea, but I really enjoyed it. It is sort of a book club meets epistolary novel--4 women (3 academics, 1 novelist) take on reading the works of Elena Ferrante one summer, writing long letters to each other, emulating the intellectual exchange between Lenu and Lila in Ferrante's novels. Each offers a longer essay in part II, revealing very different takes on what they uncovered in this reading project. Finally, there are several guest letters from others lucky enough to join the discussions. And some great notes and references that would be useful to anyone studying Ferrante.
  
  Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for a digital ARC for the purpose of an unbiased review.
• 
  Gab Nug

  I love these letters… I loved them in grad school, when I first read them on the LARB’s website, and I love them even more now that they’ve been collected into a single volume.
  
  If you loved the Neapolitan novels, and have found yourself spouting incoherent enthusiasms when asked why you loved them, and how they were a paradigm shifting reading experience, and changed your sense of what the novel, as a form, can do—these are for you.
• 
  Lauren Hakimi

  This book name-dropped lots of scholars and used sophisticated language to express mostly unsophisticated ideas. Though they used interesting quotes from Ferrante's work that I enjoyed, the essays didn't really take me anywhere. It is not clear to me how the authors' collaboration actually benefited their criticism.
• 
  Erika

  I found the essays at the end, especially the first one, more compelling than the actual correspondence but an interesting idea
• 
  Anita Raychawdhuri

  Really beautiful, accessible, and thoughtful literary criticism. Sort of book I’d love to write. I love how the letters mimic the complicated friendship of Lila and Lenu.
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  Layla Platt

  This book took me a while to get through. As someone who doesn’t read a lot of criticisms this was a bit of a challenge for me but I am so thankful I read it.
  I loved knowing that other people had the same ideas and thoughts I did while reading the quartet.