Review: SPIT THREE TIMES by Davide Reviati

Spit Three Times by Davide Reviati

Spit Three Times by Davide Reviati. Seven Stories Press, New York, 2020. $28.95.

In the Age of Covid, add this to your #StayAtHome reading list: a sprawling graphic novel in the grand tradition by a romantic Italian artist-writer, a true auteur-cartoonist, Davide Reviati. He’s one of those bulls in a china shop who is not afraid to break any so-called “rules” to storytelling. The more cloistered set might find his work a bit confounding but, no, this is authentic and passionate work. I like to call this kind of intimate and uninhibited linking of word and image, “letting the sketchbook come to life!” That’s exactly what is happening. The story, ostensibly, is about a bunch of local rough-cut teens in a rural Italian village who lock horns one doomed summer with a band of Roma gypsies. It takes a long time for anything to happen and it feels like really nothing is happening. This, of course, allows plenty of room for anything to happen during this nearly 600-page work!

Raw rage on the page.

Guido, a pint-sized punk, is supposed to emerge as our lead character but he seems to get pushed back down by the rest of the ensemble. Another tough local teen, Grisu, with his lustrous mane of hair, perpetually steals the show. Then, among the Roma gypsies, there’s crazy Loretta and even crazier Gyppo. Reviati is merciless in his depictions of both the locals and the Roma pariahs. No one is spared; no one is particularly likable in this gritty tale and therein lies the challenge for the reader to see what to make of things. Reviati does not claim to have any easy answers and is more trusting of any hard-working local mechanic than most academics whom he finds to consume mountains of books but not even shit out one letter of insight. There’s certainly much truth in that observation.

A reverie of masterful drawings full of whimsy and compelling metaphor.

Jamie Richards provides a brilliant translation to Reviati’s first book available in English. All the quirky dialogue and posturing appears to have been saved intact. Richards’s translations include Igort’s Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks, Giovanni Orelli’s Walaschek’s Dream, Serena Vitale’s interviews with Viktor Shklovsky, Shklovsky: Witness to an Era, and Igiaba Scego’s novel Adua.

Born in Ravenna (Italy) in 1966, Davide Reviati leads a double career of illustrator and cartoonist in publishing and the press (Il Manifesto, La Stampa, L’Unità), while collaborating in the screenwriting of movies. Morti di sonno, his graphic novel published in Italian by Coconino Press in 2009, was awarded the best album prize at the 2010 Napoli Comic Con. The French edition (published by Casterman) won the award for the best book in translation in 2011.

Spit Three Times is best described as a languorous graphic novel but in a most offbeat and delicious way! Reviati, by allowing himself a large canvas, gives his characters all the room they need to bare their souls. In fact, there is quite an intriguing sequence with the local boys all dreamily lounging about naked, letting it all hang out, without a care in the world, uninhibited and unbridled. Perhaps one will only add a cowboy hat to his attire as he gets a beer. Maybe another will decide to literally piss on his friend as a prank. And then, just as impulsively, they all jump in for a dip in the lake. They all laugh for no reason. The scene gently dissolves as Reviatti adds the grace note observation that, “at twenty, you’ll laugh at anything; at forty, we only laugh in scorn.” That’s the sort of world-weary wisdom found here that charms every page.

Spit Three Times is available as of April 28, 2020. For more details, visit Seven Stories Press right here.