The Second-Hand Story: Origins, Meaning, and Use

Abstract

This article investigates the emergence, the significance, and the purpose of a characterising contemporary narrative structure, which I term ‘the second-hand story’. Updating the longstanding tradition of the reported tale, second-hand stories pivot on the figure of a narrator who listens and reports other people’s stories. Since at least the 1980s, several examples of this form can be found in contemporary Western literature (Philip Roth, W.G. Sebald). Yet equally significant cases can also be found in Italian contemporary literature, from Tabucchi’s Tristano muore (2004) to Walter Siti’s latest works. Problematising and extending the notion of testimony, I argue that the narrator in these narratives can be described as a witness. Both involved and detached, such a narrator attempts to mediate between his own subjectivity and that of the one whose story is being told, envisaging the emergence of a relational paradigm in contemporary Italian literature.