 First edition cover | |
| Author | Mari Tomasi |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Milwaukee: Bruce |
Publication date | 1949 |
| Pages | 289 |
| OCLC | 414117 |
Like Lesser Gods is a 1949 novel by Mari Tomasi about the Italian-American stonecutters of Granitetown (a fictionalized version of Barre, Vermont), and their dedication to the work despite the danger of silicosis. Originally published by Bruce, a small Catholic press, it was republished by the New England Press in 1988 and 1999.
For years, Maria Dalli pleads with her husband Pietro, a granite carver, to take up a less dangerous line of work. Pietro refuses. One day at work, the boss threatens to fire Pietro's co-worker for making a mistake. Pietro tells Maria that if the boss were ever to treat him that way, he would quit.
Later, Maria finds out that Pietro has been hard at work on what he considers his masterpiece: a granite headstone in the form of a cross, "smothered" in vines. Remembering what Pietro said about quitting, she wakes in the middle of the night, slips into the shed where Pietro works, and chips away a piece of the stone. Her plan fails: when the workers arrive the next morning, it is obvious to everyone, including the boss, that Pietro's work has been deliberately sabotaged.
Pietro never suspects his wife, but Pietro's uncle, Mister Tiff, confronts her. He promises not to tell, and advises her to accept the fact that for Pietro, his work will always be paramount.
Silicosis gradually destroys Pietro's health, and he is admitted to a sanitorium, where he dies a slow death. (The sanitorium in the novel closely resembles the one on Beckley Hill in Barre that treated local granite workers.) In his final moments he imagines he is back in the shed, at work on his finest piece, the granite cross. [1]
In The Italian American Novel, Rose Basile Green writes, "The point of Like Lesser Gods is that the work men do is their participation in the divine order of creation." [2] According to Helen Barolini, Tomasi is also implicitly contrasting the choices available to men and women in the Dallis' culture. Pietro is entitled to put his pride of workmanship ahead of all other concerns, including family; Maria is not. Given that Tomasi produced only two novels in her lifetime, Barolini asks, "Could Tomasi have felt in her own life that, as a woman, she could not, as Pietro did, give everything to her art?" [3]
Tomasi began working on Like Lesser Gods as early as 1941. She was working for the Federal Writers' Project in Vermont at the time, interviewing granite workers and their families. This research not only informed the novel but influenced her writing style. Interviewers were advised to write straightforward, detailed prose, avoiding "flowery" or "gaudy" language; as examples, they were given excerpts from the writings of Émile Zola and from Pietro Di Donato's Christ in Concrete . [3]
The novel grew from a short story, Stone, which first appeared in Common Ground in 1942. In 1948 Tomasi received a fellowship from Bruce, a small, Milwaukee-based Catholic publisher, which allowed her to complete the novel. It was published in 1949, and launched at a reception in New York City. [3] It was republished by the New England Press (Shelburne, Vermont) in 1988 and 1999. An excerpt is included in Helen Barolini's The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women. [5]
Tomasi's collection of interviews was published posthumously in 2004. That book, Men Against Granite, takes its title from a passage in Like Lesser Gods, when Pietro's doctor is preparing to deliver the bad news: "Stonecutters were all the same. Men against granite. They hated to admit defeat." [4]
Soon after its publication, Like Lesser Gods was named Book of the Month by the Catholic Literary Foundation. [3] It was one of the few works by women discussed in Rose Basile Green's pioneering study, The Italian-American Novel (1974). Green wrote, "More than a document of regional history, Miss Tomasi's book is an evocative and symbolic story, a lucid picture of America at work, a colorful weaving of the Italian ethnic experience into the American tapestry." [2] It is considered a significant work of Italian-American literature, and is still popular in Vermont, where it was taught for decades in the local schools. [6]
Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa, 12th Duke of Palma, GE, known as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, was an Italian writer, nobleman, and Prince of Lampedusa. He is most famous for his only novel, Il Gattopardo, which is set in his native Sicily during the Risorgimento. A taciturn, solitary, shy, and somewhat misanthropic aristocrat, he opened up only with a few close friends, and spent a great deal of his time reading and meditating. He said of himself as a child, "I was a boy who liked solitude, who preferred the company of things to that of people", and in 1954 wrote, "Of my sixteen hours of daily wakefulness, at least ten are spent in solitude."
Barre is the most populous city in Washington County, Vermont, United States. As of the 2020 census, the municipal population was 8,491. Popularly referred to as "Barre City", it is almost completely surrounded by "Barre Town", which is a separate municipality.
The Leopard is a novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento. Published posthumously in 1958 by Feltrinelli, after two rejections by the leading Italian publishing houses Mondadori and Einaudi, it became the top-selling novel in Italian history and is considered one of the most important novels in modern Italian literature. In 1959, it won Italy's highest award for fiction, the Strega Prize. In 2012, The Guardian named it as one of "the 10 best historical novels". The novel was made into an award-winning 1963 film of the same name, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon.
Helen Stuart Campbell was an American author, economist, and editor, as well as a social and industrial reformer. She was a pioneer in the field of home economics. Her Household Economics (1897) was an early textbook in the field of domestic science.
Helen Frances Barolini was an American writer, editor, and translator. As a second-generation Italian American, Barolini often wrote on issues of Italian-American identity. Among her notable works are Umbertina (1979), a novel which tells the story of four generations of women in one Italian-American family; and an anthology, The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (1985), which called attention to an emerging, and previously unnoticed, class of writers.
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Dr. Rose Basile Green (1914-2003) was an American scholar, poet, and educator. Among her publications were a study of Italian-American writers, titled The Italian American Novel: A Document of the Interaction of Two Cultures (1974), and several volumes of poetry, specializing in the sonnet form. She was also a founder of Cabrini College in Radnor, Pennsylvania, and the first chair of its English department.
Mari Tomasi (1907–1965) was an American novelist who portrayed the lives of Italian immigrants in Vermont. Literature professor Thomas J. Ferraro calls her "the first significant Italian American woman novelist." Tomasi also worked as a journalist and local historian, and served a term in the Vermont House of Representatives.
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Carol Bonomo Albright is an American author, editor, and educator in Italian-American studies. She has published many books and articles on the subject and taught classes at the University of Rhode Island and the Harvard University Extension School. She was editor-in-chief of Italian Americana, a peer-reviewed cultural/historical journal, for over 25 years.
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