ABSTRACT
In the queer flashbacks of serena's marriage, Giulio presented the man ufacture of gender in unexpected ways. Giulio had been holding down a stable job with a Sardinian bank since the days of the shotgun marriage. There were only two ways to get married: A Catholic church wedding would get us automatically registered with the Italian state, and its religious bond would be indissoluble; the other option was a civil wedding. In popular mythology, communists were heathen ogres who ate babies, red dev ils who'd land their in hell. The party in power, Democrazia Cristiana, was a centrist conservative formation that had traditionally benefited from red scares. Gavino, Antonio, and their father, Giulio, seemed to me dolce vita types modeled on Fellini's vitelloni, looking for antidotes to the snug monotony of provincial life.
