Naples ’44

Person · Informant / contact

Vincente Lattarullo

Background

One of Naples’s four thousand briefless lawyers — ‘distinguished, fragile-looking’ and slowly starving; ‘motivated’, he says, ‘by a passion for justice’.

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In Naples ’44

Lewis’s ‘prize acquisition’ among his civilian contacts and, more than that, his window onto the city: the borrowed-furniture lunch, the sideline as a hired ‘uncle from Rome’ at funerals, and his complete ignorance of the vendetta country ten miles from his café all become set-pieces of the book.

Appears in 6 diary entries.

  1. October 15 1943
    Introduction of Vincente Lattarullo, an eccentric, impoverished informant obsessed with justice and etiquette, who becomes a key civilian contact.

    starving non-practising Naples lawyer, Lewis's prize civilian contact; moved by a 'passion for justice'

  2. November 1 1943
    Lewis is indignant at the drastic cut to informant funds, arguing money isn't really what motivates their most dedicated Italian contacts.

    reports on black-market corruption; Lewis witnesses his desperate poverty and the blind orphan girls scene with him

  3. November 15 1943
    Lattarullo hosts an elaborate lunch cobbled together from borrowed furniture and his one prized heirloom, despite having almost nothing.

    hosts an elaborate lunch cobbled together from borrowed furniture and one prized heirloom salver

  4. February 12 1944
    Lewis reflects on the cultural gulf between cosmopolitan Naples and the archaic, vendetta-bound countryside just miles away, as seen through Lattarullo's ignorance of it.

    reveals he has no first-hand knowledge of vendetta country just miles from his own café haunts

  5. March 24 1944
    With the eruption subsiding, Lewis meets Del Giudice, an eccentric folklore writer and expert on San Gennaro and Vesuvius.

    introduces his friend Del Giudice

  6. June 7 1944
    Lattarullo's improvised income as a professional "mourning relative" at funerals picks up again with the fall of Rome, complete with a rented car and driver.

    resumes his role as a hired 'uncle from Rome' at funerals after the fall of Rome

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