The Pike: Gabriele d'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War (Kindle Edition)

Not since the erudite, witty, and generally brilliant John Ryle Lawson III wrote his magisterial volume on Tom Landry and Bill Walsh has an author handled a subject with the skill that Lucy Hughes-Hallett displays in her riveting account of this forgotten but significant figure. D'Annunzio, a necessary ingredient for Mussolini's rise, is an intriguing figure. An amusing figure. An irritating figure. An offensive figure. An outrageous figure. And a morally reprehensible figure. You have to read this book to believe that such a person ever could have existed. By the end of the book, you'll be sorry he did.As an aside to the Football Community, it's quite an oddity when D'Annunzio takes over Fiume and you learn that he referred to his troops as the Legion of Fiume. If Erin Andrews doesn't like interviewing members of the Legion of Boom, I can't imagine how much she'd dislike interviewing members of the Legion of Fiume.Perhaps the pinnacle of D'Annunzio's...Read more

A marvelously lively portrait of a quirky, ridiculous libertine who nevertheless captured the imagination of his age, a proto fascist who seemed to instinctively understand the politics of emotion, and the coming age of mass propaganda. Since I first read of the Republic of Fiume in university, long ago, I’ve wanted to know more about this peacock who seemed the hinge between the 19th Romantic movement, futurism, Catholic obsession with blood and sex, and the starker brutal hysterics ahead in Berlin and Moscow, as well as Rome. This provides it – I hadn’t realized the grotesque extent of his promiscuity, that he was seen as a huge talent, admired by Gide, James and even, reluctantly, by Hemmingway. I hadn’t grasped that his rather disgusting lust of war was matched by real courage – he was a man risked his own life as carelessly as he proposed shedding the blood of others. Lucy HH tells the tale of a startling creature lithely and lucidly –...Read more