The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels by Giorgio Manganelli,
Tim Feeney

Giorgio Manganelli. Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels. Trans. and preface Henry Martin. Preface by the author. McPherson, 2005. 214 pp. $24.00.

A friend once pointed out the fallacy of describing narratives as circular. A narrative can contain elements that are recurrent, but a truly circular narrative would be endlessly repetitive, with no beginning or end, pages around a central core like a novelistic Rolodex. (Joyce apparently envisioned something similar for Finnegans Wake.) This is worth keeping in mind while reading Centuria, whose subtitle, of course, promises 100 “ouroboric” novels (which average a page and a half and which could also be classified as short-shorts, exempla, fabliaux, or “novels from which all the air has been removed”). In precise and sometimes stiff prose (e.g., “the gentlemen’s deaths . . . confute this putative salubrity of the air”) most of the early novels describe “a gentleman” in dramatic if ordinary circumstances of love and indifference, of doubt and mistrust, of experiencing the relief that comes with romantic rejection. But soon, en masse, these gentlemen start dying at train stations, spontaneously crumbling to dust, and carrying their heads like saints. Then ghosts start to take center stage, and dragons, living spheres, and dinosaurs. Many of these figures recur in the other “novels,” but don’t strictly repeat, which brings us back to the ouroboros, the tail-biting snake of Centuria’s subtitle. The eternally circular ouroboros is generally accepted to symbolize life’s completion and renewal, but bear in mind that the ouroboros is actually a snake that’s eating itself in a nihilistic, autophagous felo-de-se, and it seems that Manganelli might have envisioned Centuria not as circular (which it’s not—its recurrent elements are more symphonic, like Curtis White’s Requiem or even Calvino’s Invisible Cities), but as ouroborically destructive. But it’s a particular kind of destruction: as fire is cleansing, Centuria is metadestructive, immolating itself (and, by extension, its traditions), but leaving in its place something new and pure and often spellbinding. [Tim Feeney]


Interview with Founder Board of Directors Funders Submission Guidelines Dalkey Archive Full Catalog Current and Forthcoming Titles Recent Titles Review of Contemporary Fiction Special Library Offer Special Backlist Sale Stores & Wholesalers Academics Libraries Reviewers Context Casebooks Author Interviews Links Dalkey Archive News Events Newsletter

The Review of Contemporary Fiction Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels by Giorgio Manganelli, Tim Feeney Giorgio Manganelli. Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels. Trans. and preface Henry Martin. Preface by the author. McPherson, 2005. 214 pp. $24.00. A friend once pointed out the fallacy of describing narratives as circular. A narrative can contain elements that are recurrent, but a truly circular narrative would be endlessly repetitive, with no beginning or end, pages around a central core like a novelistic Rolodex. (Joyce apparently envisioned something similar for Finnegans Wake.) This is worth keeping in mind while reading Centuria, whose subtitle, of course, promises 100 “ouroboric” novels (which average a page and a half and which could also be classified as short-shorts, exempla, fabliaux, or “novels from which all the air has been removed”). In precise and sometimes stiff prose (e.g., “the gentlemen’s deaths . . . confute this putative salubrity of the air”) most of the early novels describe “a gentleman” in dramatic if ordinary circumstances of love and indifference, of doubt and mistrust, of experiencing the relief that comes with romantic rejection. But soon, en masse, these gentlemen start dying at train stations, spontaneously crumbling to dust, and carrying their heads like saints. Then ghosts start to take center stage, and dragons, living spheres, and dinosaurs. Many of these figures recur in the other “novels,” but don’t strictly repeat, which brings us back to the ouroboros, the tail-biting snake of Centuria’s subtitle. The eternally circular ouroboros is generally accepted to symbolize life’s completion and renewal, but bear in mind that the ouroboros is actually a snake that’s eating itself in a nihilistic, autophagous felo-de-se, and it seems that Manganelli might have envisioned Centuria not as circular (which it’s not—its recurrent elements are more symphonic, like Curtis White’s Requiem or even Calvino’s Invisible Cities), but as ouroborically destructive. But it’s a particular kind of destruction: as fire is cleansing, Centuria is metadestructive, immolating itself (and, by extension, its traditions), but leaving in its place something new and pure and often spellbinding. [Tim Feeney]

Search the full text of our books: