November 01, 2008
First Published: 20:55 IST(1/11/2008)
Last Updated: 00:58 IST(2/11/2008)
Wu Ming’s concept of the UNO - Unidentified Narrative Object
As a man who earns his monthly bread from trying to figure out new ways of saying the same old goddamned things, the concept of the Unidentified Narrative Object has come as a blinding revelation. An Unidentified Narrative Object (UNO) is, in the words of an Italian group of writers calling itself Wu Ming, a blend of non-fiction and fiction used to describe and produce in the reader a giant block of unidentified feelings about a specific subject.
Unlike Truman Capote’s ‘fact+fiction=faction’ and its obsessive hankering for details, the UNO slithers about like a beast, sometimes trodding the path of hard reportage, sometimes flipping over into personal mutterings, sometimes tripping on philosophical ruminations, sometimes diving into novelistic ‘voices’ and sometimes gearing into social theory. And unlike Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘gonzo journalism’, it’s dead serious. The UNO’s only purpose is to get us reacting violently on a subject using all the tricks known in the narrating trade.
The book that led me to the discovery of Wu Ming’s concept of the UNO is the staggeringly graphic Gomorrah by Italian journalist Roberto Saviano. The book burrows deep into the underbelly of the organised crime network of Naples, the Camorra, and tells us in sensual detail how whole towns are destroyed, globe-spanning connections spanning continents affect lives and livelihoods, high-end fashion is stitched to low life, and how in all this, blood flows, not like in the
gangster movies, but banally, like in local car accidents. more
gangster movies, but banally, like in local car accidents. more
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