The Coming of Fabrizze: A Novel (Black Squirrel Books)

FOREWORD BY TONY ARDIZZONE

Black Squirrel Books
Kent, Ohio

B
LACK
S
QUIRREL
B
OOKS
The Black Squirrel Books imprint includes new nonfiction
for the general reader as well as reprints of valuable studies of Ohio
and its people, including historical writings, literary studies,
biographies, and literature.

© 2010
BY
R
AYMOND
D
E
C
APITE

All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2009045843
ISBN
978-1-60635-028-7
Manufactured in the United States of America

First published by David McKay Company, Inc., 1960.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
DeCapite, Raymond.
The coming of Fabrizze / by Raymond DeCapite;
foreword by Tony Ardizzone.
p. cm.

Originally published: New York : D. McKay Co., 1960.
ISBN
978-1-60635-028-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)∞
1. Immigrants—Fiction.
2. Italian Americans—Fiction.
3. Railroad construction workers—Fiction.
4. Working class—Fiction.
5. Cleveland (Ohio)-Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3554.E17748c66 2010
813'.54—dc22
2009045843

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.
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“I was watching for you.”

Foreword

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I
F you agree that one of the truest delights of reading fiction involves the encounter of an engaging narrative voice—a style that rings in your head with an arresting melody and compels you to continue to turn a book's pages when the matters of life call you away—then you'll absolutely love Raymond DeCapite's novel
The Coming of Fabrizze.
Even after half a century—
The Coming of Fabrizze
was first published in 1960—this absolute gem of a novel remains fresh. The story of a community of Italian immigrants who settle on the South Side of Cleveland during the 1920s and put their hands to work laying track for the mighty railroad heading west, DeCapite's debut novel is a book for the ear, a joyous celebration of voices, a sweet American hymn. Rendered largely through crisp declarative sentences and the rhythmic dialogue of its many colorful characters,
The Coming of Fabrizze
is an ethnic classic, the story of Italian immigrants who came to these shores and built America.

The novel focuses on a single young man, who eventually becomes a community organizer and leader, Fabrizze. Named Cennino by his father, the young man yearns to go west and tails the older Augustine, a bird of passage who returns to his village in the mountains of Abruzzi (now Abruzzo) after eight years of hard labor in America. Here, the mythic father accepts the young man and anoints him with a new and powerful name.

Though some may believe that most or all Italian immigrants left their native land with the hope of settling in the New World, only a fraction actually did; indeed, from 1907 to 1911 seventy-three out of every one hundred Italians who arrived in the United States returned to Italy. Caught between two worlds, these became known as “birds of passage.” Even though three-quarters of all Italian immigrants were farmers or worked for a share of the crops grown on another's land, most immigrants who came to America didn't want to farm in the New World since farming implied a firm commitment to place that the immigrants were not willing to make. Instead they headed to the cities, where jobs were plentiful. They left their wives and families behind, sending money home whenever they could.

Augustine takes Fabrizze with him to the New World and helps him get a job on the railroad. Though later on Augustine returns to his beloved Italy (in response to a friend pointing out that Augustine comes and goes, comes and goes, and asking him where it will all end, Augustine sadly gazes down at the weight of his work shoes and responds, “The end of it? In the end I'll have no home at all.”), Fabrizze burns with energy and ambition and rushes headlong into America's bright promise.

The immigrants soon follow the charismatic Fabrizze as he rises through the ranks. A supervisor puts him in charge of the men on his crew for a day or two, and under Fabrizze's direction the men work so hard and well that soon Fabrizze is put in charge of maintenance and track repair. He rewards Augustine by giving him a pleasant job as day watchman, then works so diligently he is promoted again. Everyone decides that Fabrizze is in need of a wife, and what ensues is a delightful episode about introductions and courtships, culminating with Fabrizze's marriage to a woman named Grace. Fabrizze is put in charge of hiring, and soon a long line of Italian immigrants appears outside Fabrizze's house. Characteristically, he invites each man inside for a glass of wine, hiring as many as the railroad can bear.

Fabrizze also sends his money back to Abruzzi to enable others to come to Cleveland, where, he assures them, a job on the railroad will be waiting for them. He helps others in the community find wives and husbands. Fabrizze and Grace's grandfather, Mendone, go down into Fabrizze's basement and begin making wine.

Fabrizze and Mendone then open a store filled with sausages and cheeses, olives and horse beans, wild onions and sleeping snails. In the store window they hang a picture of Augustine, taken when he was young. As even more profits mount more money is sent back to Italy, which in turn allows more immigrants to make the passage to the New World. In this way
The Coming of Fabrizze
is both a social history as well as a testament to the ethnic muscle and sweat that not only built but also shaped the character and soul of America.

Fabrizze's financial interests turn, inevitably, to the stock market. Given the novel's time period—the 1920s—you can well imagine what happens next as the charismatic leader of this thriving Italian community agrees to collect funds from everyone and then invests everything in the stock market, making everyone, at least on paper, rich. There are plans to use the money to build houses for more immigrants and thereby expand the community. In the end, after the Wall Street crash of 1929, rather than taking everyone down with him, Fabrizze sacrifices everything he and Grace own so that others in the community might not suffer as badly. Like the hardworking father who is killed in a construction site accident on Good Friday in Pietro di Donato's brilliant
Christ in Concrete
, Fabrizze sacrifices himself so that others—his family—might benefit. He then disappears, and those left behind begin to tell stories about him and say that the day he will return will be “like a feast day.” They say that when Fabrizze comes back he'll bring the band from the church, and in celebration they'll string lights up and down the street and make a festa.

Born in Cleveland in 1924, DeCapite served in the United States Coast Guard between 1942-1945 and later earned a bachelor's degree and a master of arts degree from Case Western Reserve University.
The Coming of Fabrizze
was praised by
The New York Times
as “a modern folk tale filled with love, laughter and the joy of life.… Reading these merry pages is something like eating a dinner of the very best spaghetti and meat sauce with plenty of Chianti and a string orchestra nearby playing ‘Santa Lucia.'” The
New York Herald Tribune
wrote of the novel, “The wine flows incessantly. The music never stops. You can all but smell the sausage and onion frying right out there on the printed page.”
Kirkus Reviews
reported, “What distinguishes this almost mythic tale of an immigrant—who succeeds by virtue of hard work and honesty—from other diaspora narratives is not only its good-natured tone, but its poetic language,” and goes on to praise the novel's “amazing ear for the lyrical patterns of everyday speech.” The novelist John Fante called DeCapite “a writer of exquisite talents.” In 1962
The Coming of Fabrizze
was awarded the prestigious Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature. DeCapite has also been the recipient of the Ohioana Award and the Cleveland Critics' Circle Award, and his work has inspired his son Michael not only to become a writer but also to found his own publishing company, Sparkle Street of San Francisco.

The Coming of Fabrizze
puts Raymond DeCapite squarely in the company of the very best Italian American writers: Pietro di Donato, John Fante, Jerre Mangione, and Helen Barolini. Indeed, as Fabrizze himself might suggest, we might drop the qualifying adjective and list DeCapite as among the best American writers of his time.

Delight in the story. Allow yourself to be charmed by the characters. Read favorite passages aloud to family and friends.
The Coming of Fabrizze
is a classic.

Tony Ardizzone