Domenic Stansberry On The Inspiration Behind His Novel Novel: The White Devil

John Webster’s The White Devil is non widely read inward the U. S, nor is it oft taught inward the universities here. I discovered it through a paper review of theatrical production that was a sensation inward New York. I could non brand the trip to encounter it, but I read the play. Then read it again.

 It wasn’t till after I learned the roots of the story: how Webster had drawn his tale from the existent life events surrounding a murderous honey triangle that dominated the scandal sheets of the after Renaissance.  

I honey Webster’s play. I honey his nighttime vision. I honey the startling modern feel, his portrayal of pervasive corruption, the forbidden sensuality, the erotic undertone.   I am specially drawn to the woman individual character, Vittoria. Not because she is good—              because she isn’t.  She is an unfaithful wife, seduced past times the hope of wealth, who plays willing inspiration to the murderous impulses of an unscrupulous lover. Vittoria is the moral middle of the play, non because she seeks forgiveness, but rather because refuses to produce so:  she volition non to autumn to her knees before government looking non for jurist but a scapegoat: a means to cover their ain corruption.

Though it would last severely anachronistic, it is tempting to label The White Devil every bit a prototypical noir tale, in addition to to intend of Vittoria every bit embodiment of a of noir heroine. 

I produce well-nigh of my serious writing on a small, narrow desk facing the wall. I receive got a habit of tacking things onto that wall, tidings clippings, index cards amongst paw scrawled quotations, strange pages torn from magazines, photos, some of which remain upwards for years, yellowing, in addition to which oft (not always) uncovering their means into my fiction inward some cast or the other.

 My showtime attempts —absurd inward retrospect—at retelling The White Devil were historical fiction. I sketched out ii timelines on colored paper, pinning them on that wall: 1 drawn from Webster’s play, the other from the historical events surrounding the real-life murders.  I likewise taped upwards Renaissance portraits of the existent life principles—and after a magnificent photograph of Geraldine McEwan, inward the 1969 National Theater Production, inward what is oft referred to every bit the best dramatic staging of the play on a laid designed past times Fellini’s frequent collaborator, Piero Gherardi.

All this was marvelous stuff, but it exclusively led me deeper off the path, into an impenetrable thicket.

Why retell a flush that had already been thus good rendered?

The answer, every bit it turned out, was already on my wall: a clipping I had torn from the San Francisco Chronicle—the flush of Amanda Fox, an American telephone commutation educatee sentenced to 25 years for brutally murdering her Italian roommate. It was a sensational example that caught the fervid imagination of the tabloids, never hear the conviction was eventually overturned.   The motion painting of Fox was dark in addition to white, a mug shot of a adult woman inward her twenties, grainy, out of focus but nonetheless compelling, seductive in addition to innocent all at once, oddly similar to the photos of McEwan inward the phase piece of job of Vittoria.

More thus than the inquiry of guilt in addition to innocence, what struck me was the populace howl surrounding Fox’s case. It thus resembled the howl, to a greater extent than than 4 centuries earlier, which had enveloped Vittoria Accorombona. This led me to a realization that my flush should non last laid inward the Renaissance, but inward the hither in addition to now: inward contemporary time. Likewise, my Vittoria was non Italian. She was American, AKA Vicky Wilson, an aspiring actress, an ex-patriot mingling amongst her scheming blood brother amid the Roman glitterati.

I also realized that to tell this flush I must—like whatever practiced offense novelist— see the scene of the crime. So I wandered the streets of Rome, seeking out the places where Vicki powerfulness go, crashing parties at individual palazzos (or trying to), ending each even inward the Campo De Fiori where, or thus I imagined, my American Vicki instantly lived, inward a tiny apartment, inward a edifice many centuries onetime that had likewise been inhabited in 1 lawsuit upon past times the existent Vittoria in addition to her cuckolded husband.

One even inward the Campo, I noticed a immature couple, human being in addition to woman, who real much resembled each other, in addition to powerfulness receive got been mistaken for blood brother in addition to sis except for the overt means they fondled 1 another. As it turned out, they were Americans, in addition to their conversation at the tabular array behind me revolved or thus where they powerfulness acquire in 1 lawsuit they were done amongst Italy.

This didn’t strike me every bit meaning at the time, but after made me realise that my American heroine—once nether the gun, sought after past times the Italian government for crimes existent or imagined—would non seek refuge inward Padua, every bit the master copy Vittoria had. No, she would caput abroad, across the ocean—to the states maybe, to the coast—and thus farther on, to some unusual clime, inward endeavour to escape extradition.  I allowed myself to move into a flush written some 4 hundred years ago, itself a transfiguration of underlying events, based inward plow on source fabric questionably rendered, nonetheless somehow informing the electrical current moment, the yellowish clippings, the onetime pictures, the fading type on the wall.

The White Devil past times Domenic Stansberry (published past times Orion) Out now,

In the hot, shadowy streets of Rome, Vicki Wilson’s lovers proceed turning upwards dead. Vittoria, every bit she's known inward Italy, is a small-time actress who left behind a nighttime past times inward her native Texas in addition to followed her fading author hubby to the Eternal City. Guided past times her controlling, obsessive blood brother Johnny, Vittoria presently enters the upper circles of Roman society, becoming a paparazzi darling in addition to mingling amongst shady cardinals in addition to corrupt senators. Among them is Paolo Orsini, who speedily falls prey to Vittoria's charms. Too bad he's married; also bad his wife, an aging celluloid icon, is murdered.  From the ravishing beauty of Rome - a metropolis of nighttime secrets held inside the frescoed walls of glamorous palazzos - to the pristine beaches of Malibu in addition to the unsafe alleys of a mysterious South American city, Vittoria finds herself at the view of a lethal chase, spiralling dangerously out of control...