What
is [ Lena’s Spaghetti?[1] for Djelal and Juanita If every picture I made was about Italian Americans, they’d
say, “That’s all he can do.” I’m trying to stretch.—Martin Scorsese, Premiere (1991) Preliminaries for a Reading[2] Italian/American art
forms—more precisely, literature and film—have often been defined as those
constructed mainly by second-generation writers about the experiences of the
first and second generations. In a recent essay on Italian/American cinema,
for example, Robert Casillo defined it as “works by Italian-American
directors who treat Italian-American subjects.”[3] In like fashion, Frank Lentricchia had previously
defined Italian/ American literature as “a report and meditation on
first-generation experience, usually from the perspective of a second-generation
representative.”[4] Indeed, both constitute a valid attempt
at constructing neat and clean definitions for works of two art forms—and in
a certain sense we can extend this meaning to other art media—that deal
explicitly with an Italian/American ethnic quality and/or subject matter.[5] Such definitions, however, essentially
halt—though willy-nilly by those who offer them—the progress and limit the
impact of those writers who come from later generations, and thus may result
in a monolithic notion of what was/is and was/is not Italian/American
literature. Following a similar mode of thinking, Dana Gioia has more
recently proposed a similar definition in his brief essay, “What Is Italian-American
Poetry?”[6] There, Gioia describes “Italian-American
poetry . . . only as a transitional category” for which the
“concept of an Italian-American poet is therefore most useful to describe
first- and second-generation writers raised in the immigrant subculture”
(3).[7] One question that
arises is, what do we do about those works of art—written and/or visual—that
do not explicitly treat Italian/American
subject matter and yet seem to exude a certain, ethnic Italian/American
quality, even if we cannot readily define it? That is, can we speak to the
Italian/American qualities of a Frank Capra film? According to Casillo’s
definition, we would initially have to say no. However, it is Casillo himself
who tells us that Capra, indeed, “found his ethnicity troublesome throughout
his long career” (374) and obviously dropped it. My question, then, is: Can
we not see this absence, especially
in light of documented secondary matter, as an Italian/American signifier in potentia? I would like to say yes.
And in this regard, I would suggest an alternative perspective on reading
and/or categorizing any Italian/American art form.[8] That is, I believe we should take our
cue from Scorsese himself and therefore “stretch” our own reading strategy of
Italian/American art forms, whether they be—due to content and/or form—explicitly Italian/American, in order
to accommodate other possible, successful reading strategies.[9] Because of the work
of those who have offered alternative perspectives through some of the more
recent analytical and interpretive tools of hermeneutics, deconstruction,
semiotics, and the like we can readily broaden our view of what constitutes
the Italian/American experience in the arts. I would thus propose that we
reconsider Italian/American literature, for instance, to be a series of
on-going written enterprises that establish a repertoire of signs, at times,
sui generis, and therefore create
verbal variations (visual, in the case of film, painting, sculpture, drama,
etc.) that represent different versions—dependent, of course, on one’s
generation, gender, socio-economic condition—of what can be perceived as the
Italian/American signified. That is, the Italian/American experience may
indeed be manifested in any art form in a number of ways and at varying
degrees, for which one may readily speak of the variegated representations of
the Italian/American ethos in literature, for example, in the same fashion in
which Daniel Aaron spoke of the “hyphenate writer” and Aijaz Ahmad discussed
new ways of considering “third-world” literature.[10] Reading Filming Writing Having now offered
these definitions of Italian/American art forms and how we can further
redefine in a more broad manner what is and is not Italian/American, in this
case, cinema, we can now turn to Joseph Greco’s Lena’s Spaghetti and see that it is, in fact, not an explicitly
Italian/American movie. In fact, one may want to argue that there’s nothing
Italian/American about this movie at all, except perhaps for the two words
“Lena” and “spaghetti.” But I would contend that in this film there is something
beneath the surface that, to a certain degree, reflects the director’s
Italian Americanness, his enthusiasm for his heritage as a third- or
fourth-generation Italian American. It is something that, in the words of
Roland Barthes, instead of being, let’s say, the cardinal functions/nuclei or
catalysers, would be, instead, something in the line of the indices or
informants:[11] that is, secondary signs—bits and pieces
of information—that lie below the surface, which the regular viewer might
easily overlook. And, here, when I say regular viewer, I have in mind the
opposite of what we might call a “model viewer,” to echo Eco, or an “ideal
viewer,” as someone like Chatman, Iser, or even Prince would have it.[12] Lena’s Spaghetti
is the story about Herb—or Herbie, as his mother calls him—a lonely
thirty-three year-old mailman who takes out a personal ad, and Hannah—or
Lena, her adopted, fictitious name for their correspondence—a thirteen
year-old girl who just moved to a new town. The correspondence that develops
between them becomes the clay from which Greco sculpts a tender and lyrical
story of two people in search of that something which is missing in their
respective lives. Lena’s Spaghetti,
one might say, is basically about love, or more precisely, about the
blossoming of love, or, further still, the field, to use a metaphor, on which
the seeds of love are sown and from which one may reap a harvest. In a
similar vein, we might also see this reaping as a metaphor for artistic
creation, precisely because there are, even though this is a film and there
are no films represented in it, references nevertheless to artistic creation,
albeit indirect. There is a reference to writing, first of all, in Lena’s
diary, as well as the correspondence that takes place between her and Herb,
who initially places a perosnal ad to which Lena responds. Secondly, there
are also numerous references to painting. In fact, we see that the postcards
that travel back and forth between Lena and Herb are reproductions of, if
they do not at the very least echo, Renaissance art—we have the painting of
the two putti, as well as the Mona Lisa that lies on top of a stack
of mail Lena received from Herb.[13] There is, in addition, the equally
significant element of Herb’s own hobby, which is painting. In dealing with the
notions of artistic creation, or self-reflexivity, as well as the structure
of a particular work, whether that work be written or visual, one also talks
about framing and/or bracketing. In the beginning of Lena’s Spaghetti we find that Herb—someone yearning for a
significant other, searching greatly for love—is literally framed by the two
lovers who now wait for him to dole out their mail. Herb, that is, stands
uncomfortably between these two people, as they, conversely, so naturally
express their love for each other in front of him. Such framing/bracketing
also occurs on other occasions throughout the film. The female letter
carrier, Adele, is framed early on within the truck-door of her postal
vehicle; later, when Herbie catches her reading his mail from Lena, she is
again framed by her truck’s door; thirdly, she is framed once more at the end
of the film, when Herb finally invites her to dinner. In a similar manner,
Lena is also framed on a couple of occasions—in the mirror in the bathroom,
where she appears to be the young girl she truly is; other times she is
framed by the mirror in her room, where she is shown writing to Herb or
reading his letters. The last time we see her in this framed situation, she
realizes she must not write any longer to Herbie. One of the more
explicit examples of self-consciousness, or self-reflexivity, may be viewed
through the lens of the notion of representation, that is representation of
reality. What we, as viewers, see at the end of the film is, in fact, a sign
of reality, in that which takes place when Lena decides she can no longer
write to Herb because things have become, we might say, too hot for her;
though in her case the more correct term might be frightening, since he now
admits his love for her and that they should finally meet. In a previous
shot, we saw Lena sitting on her bed, contemplating Herb’s letters. In this
case, we see a similar shot in which she is now writing/narrating that she
will not be able to meet Herb. What is significant here, as well as before,
is that we are not looking at a sign of reality; that is, we are not looking
at the interpretant of an object, as Peirce would call it.[14] We do not directly see Lena, we see,
instead, her reflection in the mirror.
Thus, what we find ourselves looking at is a sign of a sign of reality; the
image/concept, that is, is no longer separated from us, as would be the case,
by one degree of separation—i.e., through one sign and/or image. Rather, this
reality is distanced from us through a second degree of separation—that is,
we now have a reflection (Lena’s mirrored image) of a sign (= interpretant),
that is “Lena,” which represents instead what we would readily call an
object, a notion, a signified, a concept.[15] It is also at this
point where we witness a radical shift in Greco’s visual narration. The
switching of scenes, which up to this point has been an almost seamless
process, is no longer a smooth transition from the previous scene to the
next. We now have a momentary blank, a black screen, a literal gap in the
narration that is also, in its own right, a metaphorical gap that Wolfgang
Iser discusses as part of his general notion of the phenomenology of reading.[16] In this vein, such a gap constitutes for
the viewer, especially the “model/implicit” viewer, a moment of repose for
him/her to reconcile the information that s/he has gathered thus far,
throughout the visual narration, in order for him/her to reconstruct a
logical narrative sequence. Parallel to the
radical shift in narration is a radical shift in the narrative. The
relationship, or the desired relationship between Lena and Herb changes
dramatically. That is, that desire for the “unique female,” what we first saw
in Herb’s personal ad, his search for the “unique female” at this point
actually becomes concretized, whereas before in the writing, in the correspondence,
she remained exactly that—an idea, words, signs—an idea on paper, never an
actual human being. Thus, on the one hand, Herb’s desired person is now
reified in the figure of Adele (= “unique female”), while, on the other,
Lena’s (or, now, Hanna’s) desired person, a friend inasmuch as a friend is
also emotional support, is reified in the young girl on the bus, as they now
walk off at the end as friends. These dynamics thus come to a head as both
desires are satisfied—the search for the “unique female” on Herb’s part, and
the search and/or desire for a friend on Lena’s. One significant
aspect here with regard to writing, or the desire for writing, is that the
activity becomes the conduit, the channel, or, to remain faithful to my
initial metaphor of sown fields, writing—or better, the paper on which one
writes (canvas, with regard to Herb’s painting)—is the field on which such
seeds of desires and ideas are sown. At the beginning, Herb’s personal ad
underscores the importance of writing as some type of source of satisfaction
and/or happiness: “Like to write?” opens his personal ad. In a similar
manner, Lena in turn expresses an analogous emotion when she states in her
diary that “Lena [is] the only friend [she has].” And through writing, Herb
and Lena create an imaginary relationship that brings them, though ever so
temporary, a semblance of happiness. But writing is also
just that, writing. As stated above, it constitutes an imaginary world of
ideas, notions, and desires that are not and/or can not be concretized. They
remain in the realm of the imaginary. This harsh truth comes to light at the
end of the film when Lena sends Herb her farewell letter. At this point, the
two media—writing and painting—seem to be brought to the fore. In front of
his painting of a woman eating spaghetti, Herb reads Lena’s letter, which she
signs, “Your pen pal,” thus keeping herself within the realm of the written,
far from the real world and far from Herb. Lena’s sign-off, that is, recalls
the writing process as invention, as creation of a reality, if not as the art
of writing—But not Reality! And in like fashion, Herb, in turn, replicates,
albeit unknowingly, Lena, as he also has set up an imaginary world that
exists only in the realm of paper and canvas, not in the concrete world. Yet, writing as
conduit, we may assume from the film’s ending, has a positive value within
the greater scheme of this love story. This, I would submit, is signaled
throughout the film in a number of ways. First and foremost, writing, or the
delivery of the written word, is what Herb does. In this real world of the
written, love may still blossom, though not between Lena and Herb. Instead, a
relationship blossoms between Herb and his female counterpart, Adele, and
writing (the written) has its integral role. Though they do not write to one
another, as Herb receives his letters/cards from Lena, Adele reads them and,
through her reading, in a very peculiar manner, we might say, also engages in
an epistolary dialogue with Herb. After all, she is the one who actually
delivers to Herb his mail! In fact, in delivering to Herb one of Lena’s last
postcards, there is a moment when both Herb and Adele literally make a
connection. As she hands Herb Lena’s postcard, still holding on to an end of
it, she notices some paint on Herb’s nose. Herb, in the meantime, took hold
of the other corner of the postcard, and, as they each remain grasping on to
an end of Lena’s postcard, Adele wipes the paint off of Herb’s nose. What is
significant here, of course, is that the two, for the moment, are literally
connected by Lena’s mail (i.e., postcard) to Herb, which, in turn, up to this
point, was the topic of conversation between Herb and Adele. Mail, in fact,
is one of the very first, as also one of the very last, verbal signs we
see—for the film opens with Herb in the mailroom of an apartment building;
whereas the mailbox near Lena’s bus stop and the white basket in Adele’s
truck are two of the last verbal signs we see. Thus, while mail is one of the
reasons Herb initially moves to find his “unique female,” who just happens,
temporarily, to be “Lena” (= a person with no face, hence a sign only), mail
is the very reason why he and Adele eventually get together, when Herb offers
to cook her an Italian dinner.[17] Italian Spice Turning now to a
discussion of what is or is not explicitly Italian/American about Lena’s Spaghetti, as I have already
stated earlier, one may surely argue that, on the surface, there is no
Italian/American quality to this film—except, of course, for something as
blatant and, dare I repeat, banal as Hanna’s made-up name, “Lena,” and her
trumped-up recipe for “spaghetti.”[18] Yet, were we to engage in a discussion
of implicit and explicit semiosis, we might easily find that a dose of
Italian Americanness and/or Italianness exists in the film’s visual
narrative in the foreshadows, in the background, namely, beneath the surface.[19] In this regard, then, any sense of
Italianness and/or Italian Americanness becomes, like that of Herb’s
mother’s English speech, an accent; it adds flavor to the narrative but it
does not necessarily move it into one or another specific direction. To cite
once again Roland Barthes, the Italian Americanness of Lena’s Spaghetti figures not so much as integral parts of the
narrative logic, rather as those indices and informants that we saw before—bits
and pieces of information that, while they are not necessarily the main
component of the film’s narrative, underscore those aspects of the story-line
such as character, feeling, atmosphere, and philosophy, as well as aid in
the authentication of the so-called facts of the story-line.[20] Other examples of
Italian/American signs appear in other parts of the film. Along with the
above-mentioned accent of Herb’s mother and her salutation of “ciao,” we also
have two specific names mentioned on two different occasions—Uberto and
Evalina—that conjure up images of, if not specifically Italian Americans, at
least Latins, be they Italian or Hispanics. Again, here, too, we must keep in
mind the notion of intentio lectoris—that
is, the reader’s interpretive arsenal in ascribing significance to these two
signs (Uberto and Evalina). These names, I would add, seem to appear at a
moment of need and comfort, when Herb seems to be at his two lowest moments
in the film. The first time is just before Lena writes to him for the first
time, as he, at home seemingly alone and dejected, receives a phone call from
his Italian mother in which she offers to fix him up with Evalina’s
daughter. The second time these Latin names appear is toward the end of the
film, when Herb is, once again, feeling dejected after Lena’s farewell
letter. Here, too, Herb’s mother’s accented voice reappears to offer,
unknowingly once again, comfort and solace in her willingness to fix him up,
for a second time, with Evalina’s daughter. On both occasions this seemingly
Italian/ Mediterranean mother, as we might readily consider her, comes to the rescue. A sense of Italian
Americanness is further articulated throughout the film via these and other
secondary signs. In the postcards that travel back and forth between Lena and
Herb, for instance, we find, as we saw above, reproductions of Renaissance
art in the recurring paintings of the two putti,
the cherubs. Secondly, I remind my reader once more of the Mona Lisa that stands out atop the
stack of mail Lena received from Herb. Thirdly, food, and more precisely,
spaghetti, becomes the common denominator. Namely, the appearance and
function of food in this film serve as a sort of elixir, that linchpin that
initially binds Lena and Herb, as it also ultimately brings together Herb and
Adele. That is, food is the initial nexuses for the epistolary relation-ship
between Lena and Herb, as well as the ragion
d’essere of the first date between Herb and Adele.[21] Of course, what is
ultimately significant, here, is that spaghetti—that is, the recipe for
spaghetti—brings together the lonely people in this film. It is food that
initially binds them. It is food, specifically Italian food, that brings
together these three people, fictionalized and real, and ultimately to some
degree, we may assume, satisfies their wishes and desires. Indeed, in the
end, it is Italian food that actually brings together Herb and Adele. So,
that while this is a story that is highly American,
a simple love story in that we
witness only the beginning of their love story, it obviously takes place
between two seemingly non-ethnic Americans. On the other hand, somewhere in
the background of this story, we may easily perceive echoes of an Italianness
and/or Italian Americanness that continues to rise throughout Greco’s visual
narration. To conclude, finally,
with the statement that this is, among other things, an Italian/American
film, I would submit thusly only inasmuch as America is that very
kaleidoscope, a country of unique individuals that form a unique population,
made up of people from all different origins, who at one point or another try
to become part of a mainstream, that is assimilate, and yet often tend,
conversely, to hold on to various bits and pieces of their heritage. In this
sense, then, Lena’s Spaghetti is
precisely that. It is an American film, that is by no means explicitly
Italian/ American, that is at the very best implicitly Italian/American
insofar as this American film has been, here and there, peppered with the
director’s Italian heritage.[22] Purdue University |
[1]Lena’s Spaghetti, directed by Joseph Greco, screenplay by Rachel A. Witenstein. Senior Thesis of The Florida State University School of Motion Picture, Television and Recording Arts. The Florida State University, 1994. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, September 1994.
[2]These first few pages are a condensed version of a much larger section of my essay, “In (Re)cognition of the Italian/American Writer: Definitions and Categories,” Differentia, review of italian thought 6/7 (1994): 9–32, where, through a Peircean semiotic lens, I propose a redefintion of the Italian/American writer from the perspective of both chronology and cognition.
[3]See his “Moments in Italian-American Cinema: From Little Caesar to Coppola and Scorsese,” From the Margins: Writings in Italian Americana, eds. Anthony Julian Tamburri, Paolo A. Giordano, and Fred L. Gardaphé (West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1991): 374–96.
[4]He then continues to say that “in such writing Italian-American experiences and values are delineated in dramatic interaction with the mainstream culture.” See his review of Delano in America & Other Early Poems, by John J. Soldo, Italian Americana 1.1 (1974): 124–25.
[5]One problem with definitions of this sort is that they exclude any discourse on the analogous notion of, for example, the “hyphenate” filmmaker. I refer to Daniel Aaron’s “The Hyphenate Writer and American Letters,” Smith Alumnae Quarterly (July 1964): 213–17; later revised in Rivista di Studi Anglo-Americani 3.4–5 (1984–1985): 11–28.
[6]Dana Gioia, “What Is Italian-American Poetry?” Poetry Pilot (December 1991): 3-10. Now, with a brief postscript, in Voices in Italian Americana 4.2 (1993): 61-64, followed by a “Response” by Maria Mazziotti Gillan (65-66).
[7]Gioia, also, does not distinguish between ethnicity passed from one generation to the next vis-à-vis a member’s decision of the subsequent generation to rid him/herself of and/or deny his/her ethnicity, when he states that “[s]ome kinds of ethnic or cultural consciousness seem more or less permanent” (3).
[8]What is important to keep in mind is that one can perceive different degrees of ethnicity in literature, film, or any other art form, as Aaron already did with his “hyphenate writer.”
[9]Recent writings of Italian/American literary history and criticism have transcended a limited concept of Italian/American literature. New publications (literary and critical) have created a need for new definitions and new critical readings, not only of contemporary work, but of the works of the past. More-over, these new publications have originated, for the most part, from within an intellectual community of Italian Americans. A first successful venture at theorizing the Italian/American experience in literature is an acutely original contribution by Robert Viscusi, “De vulgari eloquentia: An Approach to the Language of Italian American Fiction” (Yale Italian Studies 1.3 [1981]: 21–38) which remains today equally fresh. Three other historical markers of Italian/American studies include Helen Barolini’s best-selling anthology, The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writing by Italian American Women (Schocken, 1985); Ferdinando Alfonsi’s anthology, Poeti italo-americani (Carello Editore, 1985); and the above-mentioned anthology, From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana; all three constitute firsts in their genre and format vis-à-vis Italian/Amerian literature. Other publications include the establishment of journals such as la bella figura and VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, and the resumption of the journal Italian Americana, as well as the recently published Differentia 6/7 (Spring/Autumn 1994), a special issue dedicated to Italian/American literature and culture, and Mary Jo Bona’s anthology, The Voices We Carry. Recent Fiction by Italian/American Women (Guernica, 1994). Finally, forthcoming in 1996 is Fred Gardaphé’s study, the first book on Italian/American literature in more than twenty years, Italian Signs, American Streets (Duke UP).
[10]In his response to an essay by Fredric Jameson on national allegory and third-world literature, Ahmad took issue with what he considered Jameson’s limited and reductive assumption that third-world literature revolves primarily around the notion of a national allegory. This notion that literature may revolve primarily around one or two notions in order for it to be considered such—or perhaps because it is considered such and not something else—may be seen as an analogue to the case of some ethnic literatures in the United States. Namely, that an ethnic literary piece has to contain certain thematic motifs or adopt specific formalistic structures in order for it to be considered part of that certain ethnic rubric. Otherwise, the work and its author are considered not to belong necessarily to that very same group of hyphenated writers. This somewhat reductive notion of categorizing art forms, limits our ways of examining them, I would suggest. For more, see Aijaz Ahmad’s response: “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National Allegory’,” Social Text 17 (1987): 4; now in In Theory (London: Verso, 1992).
[11]Functions, for Barthes, are units of content that drive the narrative. The essence of the function, according to Barthes, “is the seed that it sows in the narrative, planting an element that will come to fruition later—either on the same level or elsewhere, on another level” (89). Catalysers, instead, fill up space between the cardinal functions. In turn, indices index character, feeling, atmosphere, and philosophy; and, in addition, informants serve to authenticate, they are pure data of immediate and, I would add local, signification. For more on Barthes’s notion of narrative, see his seminal strucutralist essay “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives” (1966) in Image Music Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977): 79–124.
[12]For various notions on this concept of the “model” and/or “ideal viewer,” see Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1979); Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1978); Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974); and Gerald Prince, “On Textual Readers and Evaluators,” VS (Versus) 52/53 (1989): 113–20.
[13]An Italian icon par excellence, the Mona Lisa appears in the background of numerous “American” films. One need only think back to the more recent True Love by Nancy Savoca.
[14]For more on Peirce’s tripartite notion of the sign, see, for a quick overview, Charles Sanders Peirce, “What is a Sign?” (1910?) in Philosophical Writings of Peirce (New York: Dover, 1955): 98–104.
[15]One may, indeed, speak in terms of self-protection and self-elucidation with regard to the character’s reflection in the mirror. Mary Jo Bona (“Broken Images, Broken Lives: Carmolina’s Journey in Tina De Rosa’s Paper Fish,” Melus 14.3–4 [Fall-Winter 1987]: 87–106) offers an acute reading of Carmolina in Tina De Rosa’s Paper Fish, when she states that Carmolina, in mimicking Leonardo, “writes in reverse both as a protection and elucidation of the self” (98), especially since, as Bona points out, citing Werner Sollors’s Beyond Ethnicity, “‘double consciousness characters may be attracted to mirrors, reflecting windows,’ [etc.]” (105). A curious difference between the book and the film, however, lies in who is using the mirror. As Bona points out, it is clearly the character, not the narrator, who uses the mirror. In the film, conversely, Lena does not consciously sit in front of the mirror in order to see herself in it. Rather, it is the directorial personality (or, narrating agency), what/whom in the literary text we might consider the author (or, narrator), depending on the circumstances, who places Lena in front of the mirror. Thus, we might look more toward Greco the director, and not Lena the character, and consider the mirror his self-protection and/or self-elucidation of his own double-consciousness (read, ethnicity) that is then mirrored (Pun intended!) in the character Lena.
[16]See, especially, his chapter, “How Acts of Constitution are Stimulated,” The Act of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978): 180–231.
[17]Indeed, because she belongs to the real world is one of the reasons why Adele can and does eventually touch Herb.
[18]Trumped-up since she takes the recipe from a cookbook.
[19]What is significant here for my reading strategy—as I assume the opening pages of this essay have already signaled—is that I adhere to Umberto Eco’s notion of intentio lectoris with ample conciliation to intentio operis, since any reader’s intertextual arsenal employed must always, to a certain degree, be context sensitive; in some way or another, that is, the reader’s decodification must jibe with the text. For more on Eco’s notion, see his “Intentio Lectoris: The State of the Art,” Differentia, review of italian thought 2 (Spring 1988): 147–68.
[20]As Barthes reminds us, I would point out that catalysers, indices, and informants have the common denominator of being, with respect to nuclei, expansions. Nuclei, instead, form finite sets, which are governed by logic, and are at once necessary and sufficient.
[21]Over the centuries, food has often appeared as a type of elixir or connector of people, be they characters in novels, short stories, plays, or, later on, in the cinema, a topic that deserves its own time and place. In the meantime, I would point out two recent studies on food: Gian-Paolo Biasin, Flavors of Modernity. Food and the Novel (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993) and Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food (London: Blackwell, 1993).
[22]One question that may rise here, and elsewhere, is how much of Greco’s implicit ethnicity is purposely hidden. With regard to such a desire on the artist’s part to mask her/his Italian Americanness, see Fred Gardaphé’s “Visibility and Invisibility: The Postmodern Prerogative in Italian/American Narrative,” Almanacco 2.1 (Spring 1992): 24–33.
My viewing copy of Lena’s Spaghetti came courtesy of the director, Jospeh Greco, whom I warmly thank. I also would like to thank Professor Mark Pietralunga who accepted an earlier version of this review for presentation at The Florida State University Conference on Comparative Literature and Film, 1995.