The Independent, 26 April 2003A Week in Books: The mystery of Luther BlissettBy Boyd Tonkin |
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It sounds like a pub-quiz teaser. What connects a fabled Watford FC striker,
a secretive clique of Italian subversives, and a pan-European publishing cult?
The answer is "Luther Blissett": both the real name of a high-scoring West
Indian-born footballer who bloomed at Vicarage Road but faded at AC Milan,
and the stolen sobriquet of a Bologna-based conspiracy of cultural pranksters.
Until 1999, the "Luther Blissett" collective staged a series of hoaxes and
stunts at the expense of the Italian media. For all the dense thickets of
ultra-left theory around their japes, "Luther" were playing the same game
of trick-and-mock as Chris Morris or Ali G.
Before dissolving "Luther Blissett", a group of jesters signed off with a
bang. They published, under the bemused soccer veteran's name, a bestselling
historical novel of Reformation and reaction: Q. "I am not pleased,"
lamented the genuine Blissett, "but what can you do about it?"
Q has finally reached Britain, in Shaun Whiteside's zippy and rumbustious
translation (Heinemann, £14.99). Set in Germany, the Low Countries and
Venice between the 1520s and 1550s, it dramatises the bloody popular revolts
that accompanied (and challenged) Luther's Reformation, and the Catholic undercover
strategies that wrecked these radical movements. Imagine Umberto Eco's knack
for the swashbuckling thriller-of-ideas crossed with an artful touch of the
Le Carrés, and you have a fair idea of the novel's mood. In fact, La
Repubblica has identified the authors as four young Bolognese activists:
Federico Gugliemi, Luca di Meo, Giovanni Cattabriga and Fabrizio Belletati.
But Shaun Whiteside assures me that there is (at least) a fifth man.
Amazingly, Q manages to transcend its collaborative origins. As a historical
blockbuster, it boasts pace, colour, excitement and suspense to spare. The
joins do show, but the collage approach suits this border-crossing panoply
of voices and textures. Our hero, who takes many names, survives the ruthlessly
repressed Peasants' Revolt of the 1520s, and the crazed millenarian regime
that seized power in Münster. He travels to spread the egalitarian gospel
of the Anabaptists in Flanders and Venice. Over three decades of adventure,
bloodshed and romance, he and his seditious "band of misfits" are shadowed
by a sly Roman spy. "Q" serves Cardinal Carafa: the head of the Inquisition,
future Pope Paul IV, hard-line heresy-hunter, and foe of any compromise with
Protestants. Our many-monikered narrator and this super-spy become entwined,
just like Smiley and Karla: "two sides of the same coin".
Q
works like a charm as a sordid, splendid period romp that painlessly informs
its readers about the theological strife that splintered Europe (and the banking
networks that re-connected it). Yet the reasons why a bunch of Bolognese stirrers
shoud seize upon this theme soon grow clear. Effectively, their novel also
operates as an allegory of Italian leftist politics since the Seventies. Out
of the chaos of Utopian gambits and guerrilla provocations, in a murk of subterfuge,
an elite plan for a "new world order" emerges.
Speaking of which, it would have shown more guts had the Q team snatched the
identity of someone grander. Hey, ragazzi, how about "Silvio Berlusconi" as
a truly fearless pseudonym? As for the real Luther B: he has gone back to
Watford, and is organising a benefit match on 24 May to help rescue his old
club's fragile finances. You can find out more from lbbv@watfordfc.com.
Maybe "Luther Blissett" should turn up to the game – or send a fat donation.
Anarchist collectivists or not, they can afford it now.
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