Obici: biografia [Obici: Biography]. New York: Tipografia Ed. Scarlino, 1943.
Title
Obici: biografia [Obici: Biography]. New York: Tipografia Ed. Scarlino, 1943.
Description
"Impressioni" of novelist Italo Stanco follows at end.
Caminita describes the source of inspiration for this biography: walking up Broadway one evening with an editor of Il Corriere d’America. The sight of the electric sign at 47th Street and Broadway advertising the Planters Peanut and Chocolate Company, founded by Italian immigrant Amedeo Obici, prompted Caminita to think about how Obici’s “genius, his feverish work and pioneering spirit overcame every obstacle and asserted himself superbly in the industrial life of this great nation.”
An exception to Caminita’s typical anarchist-inspired production, and issued following Caminita's editorship of a once-fascist newspaper in Scanton (Il Minatore), as well as his much earlier phase as an anarchist editor of La Questione Sociale of Paterson, this work - besides the above inspiration - presumably arose from the need to pay the bills, and was the last major work of Caminita.
Kenyon Zimmer, in Immigrants against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America (2015), argues convincingly that while the book did in some sense signal the successful Americanization of a once-radical immigrant, one should not ignore that Caminita also praised Obici's religious nonbelief, his anti-racism and his friendships with Socialists. Zimmer also points out that the book's back page proudly listed "Other Works by Ludovico Caminita," including all of the anarchist tracts published during his by then long-ago Paterson days.
Caminita describes the source of inspiration for this biography: walking up Broadway one evening with an editor of Il Corriere d’America. The sight of the electric sign at 47th Street and Broadway advertising the Planters Peanut and Chocolate Company, founded by Italian immigrant Amedeo Obici, prompted Caminita to think about how Obici’s “genius, his feverish work and pioneering spirit overcame every obstacle and asserted himself superbly in the industrial life of this great nation.”
An exception to Caminita’s typical anarchist-inspired production, and issued following Caminita's editorship of a once-fascist newspaper in Scanton (Il Minatore), as well as his much earlier phase as an anarchist editor of La Questione Sociale of Paterson, this work - besides the above inspiration - presumably arose from the need to pay the bills, and was the last major work of Caminita.
Kenyon Zimmer, in Immigrants against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America (2015), argues convincingly that while the book did in some sense signal the successful Americanization of a once-radical immigrant, one should not ignore that Caminita also praised Obici's religious nonbelief, his anti-racism and his friendships with Socialists. Zimmer also points out that the book's back page proudly listed "Other Works by Ludovico Caminita," including all of the anarchist tracts published during his by then long-ago Paterson days.
Creator
Ludovico M. Caminita
Publisher
Tipografia Ed. Scarlino
Date
1943
Format
19 x 14cm; 248 p.
Language
Italian
Citation
Ludovico M. Caminita, “Obici: biografia [Obici: Biography]. New York: Tipografia Ed. Scarlino, 1943.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed May 2, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/30.
Comments