The Economist - USA (2020-08-29)

70 Books & arts The EconomistAugust 29th 2020

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T

he only benefit to overplaying the

Beatles’ greatest albums—surely a com-

mon problem in these lockdown days—is

that it forces the listener back to their less

celebrated material. Weary of “Rubber

Soul” and “Help!” is at hand.

“Rubber Soul”, written and recorded in

two months in late 1965, is considered a wa-

tershed in the band’s development. The al-

bum was the first over which the Beatles

had creative control, and it is both experi-

mental and coherent. On “Norwegian

Wood”, George Harrison introduced the si-

tar to pop; John Lennon showed a new lyri-

cal depth on “In My Life”. Ringo Starr called

it the band’s “departure album”. By compar-

ison, “Help!”, a poppier album completed a

few months earlier, might seem to repre-

sent what they were departing from.

The silliness of the film to which it

formed the soundtrack hasn’t helped its

reputation. It featured the four being

chased around the Alps by evil cultists who

were after one of Ringo’s rings. But the

Beatles did not evolve in fits and starts, just

rapidly. Many of their later innovations are

discernible on “Help!” in nascent form.

Its title track was a forerunner to Len-

non’s more confessional style. “And now

my life has changed in oh so many

ways/My independence seems to vanish in

the haze,” he wrote of his confining mar-

riage. His anguished tone was belied by

George Martin revving up the tempo. The

effect is comical—one of the band’s quali-

ties—as well as incongruous.

There is a similar tension in some of

Paul McCartney’s contributions. “Last

night is the night I will remember you by

...when I think of things we did, it makes

me wanna cry!” he sings on “The Night Be-

fore”, one of the jauntiest songs about re-

jection ever. It feels like a teenage precur-

sor to “I’m Looking Through You”, his dig at

Jane Asher on “Rubber Soul”.

“Help!” also features a lot more experi-

mentation than is commonly remem-

bered. “I’ve Just Seen a Face”, another

McCartney foot-stomper, was the band’s

first fully acoustic song (and includes a

prime bit of Beatles Scouse, rhyming “her”

with “aware”). The string quartet on “Yes-

terday” was equally novel. The song’s pro-

motion of Mr McCartney, who wrote and

performed it solo, seems in retrospect to

prefigure his rise to dominate the band. But

on “Help!” that role still belonged to Len-

non, who contributed most of the mid-60s

pop that is its therapeutic essence.

“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”, his

homage to Bob Dylan; “You’re Going to Lose

That Girl”; “Ticket to Ride”; “It’s Only Love”:

these songs include some of the sweetest

melodies and tightest harmonies the band

produced. Without underrating the extent

of Lennon’s later contributions, they per-

haps represent the moment at which he

was at his zenith compared with his two

songwriting rivals in the band. Play them

through lockdown days: they can help. 7

On the therapeutic properties of an

early Beatles album

Pop music

Send for “Help!”

home

entertainment

battle to define themselves independently

of men.

Giovanna is 12, secure in the love of her

intellectual parents until a question dis-

rupts her world. Is she or is she not “very

ugly” like her father’s estranged sister Vit-

toria, “a monstrous being who taints and

infects anyone who touches her”? The

search for an answer leads Giovanna to the

depths of Naples, and the poverty-stricken

neighbourhood from which her father es-

caped. Like the Neapolitan quartet, this

story revolves around tension between the

subterranean working class and the

heights occupied by wealthy intellectuals.

Yet on this smaller canvas it focuses on

male entitlement and the female rage that

results—and the lies about both that men

and women tell themselves.

Like Elena and Lila, Ms Ferrante’s world-

famous heroines, Giovanna and her aunt

Vittoria represent those with and without

education. Vittoria is an older version of

the brilliant and irresistible Lila, drawing

Giovanna into the violent world of her

neighbourhood. Yet unlike Lila, Vittoria is

repellent, distorted by a life of loss and

stunted opportunity. The men in this book,

too, are nearly all “animals” who want only

sex and callously upend women’s lives.

When a family rupture lays bare her own

father’s lies, Giovanna plunges into a crisis

of self-hatred in which she makes herself

as ugly and obnoxious as possible.

This abasement is painful to witness.

Readers inhabit the obsessive, anxious

mind of an adolescent girl, see-sawing be-

tween pride and degradation. When a male

professor takes an interest in her, redemp-

tion seems nigh. Naturally, Ms Ferrante re-

jects the romantic template. But Roberto is,

instead, the first man to look at Giovanna’s

eyes and not her breasts. From him she

gains not love, but understanding. “I felt

like laughing,” she reports at 16. “I had been

deceived in everything...but the mistake

had been to make it a tragedy.” What she

really wants is to be respected, she con-

cludes: to feel she is “much more than a

cute or even beautiful small animal with

whom a brilliant male can play a little and

distract himself”.

Fans will appreciate the many parallels

with Ms Ferrante’s earlier books. Stark real-

ity coexists with magical objects, in this

case not dolls or shoes but a gem-studded

bracelet that propels the plot. Ms Ferrante’s

unique style—again superbly captured by

Ann Goldstein’s translation—is as urgent

as ever, proceeding by confrontation and

volcanic self-revelation, with little tradi-

tional description. Ms Ferrante’s women

are angry, prickly, intelligent and exhaust-

ed by the effort of trying to exist in a patri-

archal world. So fundamental a truth is a

challenge few writers take on. But then,

few are as able, as Ms Ferrante has put it, “to

tell without distortions what I know”. 7