Status Updates From Everybody's Right

Using a New Year’s Eve trying to seduce Antonella as a case study, Tony delivers a lecture that ends with him crying, not unlike Jep’s lecture about how NOT crying at a funeral ends with Jep crying (94).

Somewhere between between skewering academics and celebrating his own skill at seduction, Tony Pagoda lost me. I read at least two pages on autopilot. Who’s at fault, my eyes or his words? (83)

Chp. 4 begins the Beatrice saga of why Tony really sings. Yet his sex-at-first sight feels like satire (70).

Chp. 4: Sings honest pain (57). Beatrice disappears. Peppino ruin his voice (61).

Chp. 3: The murder of Maurizietto (50), the boat chase, 20 grams of cocaine from Mr. Heavy (55).

Chp. 2: Titta Palumbo debates calzone and Margherita pizza with Gino Matire. Guitarist v. bassist shuts down lead vocalist (40).

Point about chp. 1’s structure: reversals both within & across scenes.

Further structure of chapter 1 plot includes what seems to be Italian lyrics:
“Un treno per Il mare”
“Una cometa nel cuore”
“Quel che resta di mi”
“Un giorno lei mi penserà”
“Non c’ero amavo”
“Lunghe notti di bar”
“Gondolier, carry me back to Napoli”

Chp. 1 structures contrasts: Tony’s 13-million lire ring v. Sinatra’s $122,000 dollar (1979 prices) v. guitarist Titta’s wedding ring. After big hall concert during which Tony’s balls feel “cubic” and “hexagonal,” (25) they are “pulverized” by the theft of Tony’s ring by three hookers while he was on the phone to his wife and daughter….

The foreword is a list poem — disguise this paragraphs —of things Maestro Mimmo Repetto cannot stand.