Thursday, February 27, 2025

The Cry of the Pork Vendor

Okay, Gadda keeps hitting me with sandwiches. It hurts. "A sandwich with a slice of pork. Big enough to last two days." Couple of pages later there's "a kind of hamburger swollen with papers more than a generous salami sandwich"... okay, that one... there's a lot to "unpack" as a scholar might say, or scholars used to say, or did they ever say that? The latter is not a real sandwich. It's a wallet as metaphorical sandwich. It is, per the translator William Weaver, a "rotten wallet." And look, I don't want to eat a wallet. I don't even want to eat a hamburger swollen with papers, or anything rotten at all. Now, I wouldn't turn up my nose at a generous salami sandwich, although I am no longer allowed to have generous salami sandwiches under the constant hectoring threats of a well-meaning physician. But Gadda includes the cry of the pork vendor, "Get you [sic] roast pork here! Nice roast pork... golden brown." Golden brown! Dear Lord, how much of this can I take?