Sicilian Culture: News: East Liberty Book Review

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East Liberty Book Review
Author: Joseph Bathanti, Simpsonville SC Banks, Channel Books, $22
Sunday Star-News - Wilmington, N.C. Childhood memories shimmer with poetry Ben Steelman, Staff Writer
October 21, 2001 - - East Liberty is a tough, working-class Italian - American neighborhood in Pittsburgh, where the locals all share a distinctive "smart mouth" and chip on the shoulder, "where a smack in the head waits around every corner," where "feeling sorry for someone is as close as anybody gets to feeling superior."
Here, between the mid-1950s and the early '60s, little Bobby Renzo navigates the years from 5 to 13. He's a fish out of water - not as bad as Montmorrissey Hilliard, the neighborhood's alcoholic black cross-dresser, or Platehead, the crippled kid in the wheelchair.
Still, the nuns at Divine Providence School whisper and tut-tut about Bobby's "home life" behind his back. In the age of Ozzie and Harriet and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, he comes from A Broken Home.
His pretty mom, Francene, who works down at Sears, is raising him alone, with occasional help from his Italian-spouting Nonna and her husband with his long, hanging mustaches. Bobby's dad is nowhere around, reduced to a couple of fading memories.
Occasionally, very occasionally, a man comes over, but more often Francene and Bobby laugh and watch old movies together on TV (black- and-white, naturally) or "wrestle" in imitation of their local good- guy hero, Bruno Sammartino.
East Liberty is the first novel from Joseph Bathanti, a poet who's been a regular on North Carolina's literary scene since moving here as a VISTA volunteer in the 1970s.
It's also the latest winner of the Carolina Novel Award, the prize established by former Wilmington writer Ellyn Bache and her Banks Channel Books imprint.
A real-life native of East Liberty, Mr. Bathanti has taught around the Tar Heel State, including at St. Andrews College in Laurinburg, whose press published his 1997 collection, This Metal. Currently, he's an assistant professor of creative writing at Appalachian State.
Like many novels by poets, East Liberty is strong on atmosphere and detail, somewhat hazier on plot. Instead of a strictly chronological narrative, Mr. Bathanti shifts back and forth through Bobby's childhood, highlighting memories as they occur to him.
Like other East Liberty kids, he heads off into the scrub forests of "the Hollow" - the only vaguely wild region in an urban landscape where the yards are oiled - to scuffle with black kids from "the Projects" on the other side.
He's terrified by "Spacaluccio," an Italian bogeyman of uncertain features. Like lots of Catholic boys, he dreams of becoming a priest but, like a lot of poor kids, he can't resist the temptation of occasional shoplifting, from penny candies to items as large as a baseball bat.
Even Bobby realizes, however, that his memories are uncertain. A devout Pirates fan, he's convinced he witnessed the moment in 1960 when his other hero, Bill Mazeroski, hit a homer in the bottom of the ninth of the seventh game of the World Series, beating the haughty Yankees - yet he knows, logically, that he couldn't be there.
This leads to other questions: Did he really remember those times with his father, with the "Gulf" tag on his shirt, or were they dreams? East Liberty covers much familiar fictional ground. There are the usual parochial-school stories (as in Chris Fuhrman's Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, one of Bobby's pals is a budding artist), the usual neighborhood gangs (led, inevitably, by a boy named Dom). At least the Mafia doesn't put in an appearance.
Most of the time, though, Mr. Bathanti puts an original spin on childhood images that retain their poignance. East Liberty should be savored slowly, like a good lyric.

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