J. C. Casalini ".Otto."

The theme of the double in fiction has illustrious precedents, starting with the portrait aging in place of the corrupt Dorian Gray all the way to Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde. In the novel “.OTTO.”, By J.C. Casalini, the double is expressed in the classic Good / Evil dichotomy, where evil is Lucifer, the bearer of light, while it is darkness that is redeeming.

The aspiring magician Otto and his assistant / girlfriend Anna find themselves struggling with an evil reflection escaping from the mirror. The image of the illusionist materializes in a moment of despair, saves him from imminent suicide and promises him, in a Faustian pact with the devil, honors, money, glory and love. But it will not be the real Otto who will enjoy it, but his parasitic reflection, which, through the light and the refraction of the mirrors, will live a life of its own, performing ever more terrible actions.

It is true that the other Otto, the Reflected Otto, (with the mole/point on the wrong side) is still him, it is the other part of himself, the dark part that we all possess and that disturbs us, is the unconscious, the id that could take over and turn us into monsters at any moment - a loosening of inhibitions would be enough, a drug or a trauma would be enough. Otto is the mister Hyde who is hidden in each of us.

The magician’s reflection cannot be captured by technological means, it cannot be filmed or photographed. By contrast, it is the absence of an image, or its refraction and decomposition in the mirrors, that makes it stronger, more powerful, more visible. This, perhaps, is a metaphor of the modern world, where, paradoxically, those who do not show themselves (like Elena Ferrante) are more visible than those who are on television every day, and the pulverization and shattering of data in the chaotic magma of the network is equivalent to a cancellation.

The story would be very enjoyable, at least in the promises. It turns, however, into a sort of snuff film, where, if you don’t actually see a murder, violent sex and daily rapes are the masters in almost every chapter. Everything is seasoned in a philosophical, quantum-like sauce, with hypotheses regarding dark matter, fascinating but weighing down the narrative (and the language). They contrast with what remains, after all, only an action thriller.

“It is the changing balance of forces that determines the success or failure of a universe recombined in various dimensions. I savor its evolutionary pleasure every time out of pure egotism, and I urge its expansion to enjoy it as much as possible. I am the unstable container that gives itself with generous curiosity to consequential events in my interior and then regains possession of them at the end. “

“An event that never happened in the whole universe. An unhinged trinity. The monistic triangulation of light-matter-void of a living and thinking organic being had finally been broken. “

We hear that Casalini comes from film direction: “.OTTO.” is a screenplay expanded and developed into a novel. The ending remains open for a possible sequel: we have a comet with a double tail that announces the probable coming of an antichrist, we have Anna pregnant with an evil child of the Light, who, perhaps, will also have to fight with her own reflection, as the concluding prophecy suggests.

The best part of the story is undoubtedly the initial one, before the evil gets the upper hand. Then the narration is smooth and we are passionate about the events of the two lovers with their growing and realistic difficulties. It is along these lines that the author should set out, in our opinion, to obtain even better results. When the protagonist becomes the Reflection, however, empathy wanes even towards the victim Anna, identification is no longer possible, we witness the crescendo of misdeeds feeling disturbed but not involved, as if, really, we were seeing the images flow on a reflective plate.

The style of the novel, although fluid, has imperfections that the editing has not corrected, and an annoying alternation of tenses, increasingly in vogue today. Although it is a choice aimed at making us experience the various temporal dimensions of the narrative, this, let’s call it technique, is unsettling and slows down the reading. Particularly, we underline also in this case, the contrast between the passages of action written in a standard language and the philosophical ones that make use of convoluted and artificial periods.