“I want to defend my books by myself, from that person often becomes more important than the text. They write to me that most of the book, but this is offensive first of all for the book, is a fake that certainly does not help. When I write, I feel free. To save the books there are always readers, because the author, once finished, never knows well what he wrote. Talk to your readers is a tremendous comfort even when they are critical, and this happens often. They are the ones that help you better understand what you meant or was trying to say. ”
Words Michele Serra, journalist and successful writer, who can not bear to tell him the same thing, based, mostly, on boring clichés.
We talk about it at lunch, in a typical Roman trattoria in the Prati district, a short distance from the house (a relative) when its host is away in the capital. It ‘a city that gave birth, who loves and knows very well, but that is “more and more crushed and pulped”.
Today is divided between Milan, where he grew up, and Piacenza, which has a land of many hectares, who likes to cultivate when he has time. “I do not shop for the farmer; I take care of the earth in his spare time but always with great passion and dedication to the job that is very tiring and respect, “says Huffington Post. The thing that bothers him the most? “Being called a radical chic, without a doubt.”
That expression invented by Tom Wolfe in 1970 after being a party to the New York home of Bernstein, is now used far away from its true meaning, always just so insulting and derogatory to indicate quell’incoerenza (alleged) people who define themselves politically “left” (assuming that there are still today), but then have income greater than that of ‘militants’ of the same political movement and they do things that they can not afford.
Why are scandalized as if those people (wealthy) can spend their own money to buy food, clothing or to do something of quality, while on the other hand, nothing is said, for example, when other loans are not rich and files kilometers to win the latest model of a mobile phone?
What Serra, are assured of the usual ill-thinking, he bought at the Dubai airport, but is not that brand. In his new book, Everyone might , just published by Feltrinelli, calls egòfono, inspired by the idea of Joshua Ferris in his novel speaks of “my machine”, “but in this case the sin is all about ego, “he says.
He decided to give the new word to Julius, his protagonist, often arguing with his girlfriend Agnes, because he is still with the phone in hand, even when she is with him. Like many, is suffering from “looking down syndrome”, a state of psychological dependence that is manifested in the inability to look away from their egòfono, dangerous because it makes you distracted and does not make you become aware that there may be a danger to road or by car: the keyboard is attached to continuous light to see if you got an email, to check email or a notification of one of the many social networks.
“My book is not against technology, God forbid, but the intention was to point out a certain amount of autism technology”, the author explains that with his previous book, The lying – the story of a father who does not speak with his son, the story of the prevailing sentiment of a generation of parents that is the confusion – has sold four hundred thousand copies with translations in nine languages.
‘ Everyone might ‘ puts at the center of the story Giulio Maria, a thirty-six born to elderly parents who live in the country of Capannonia, “not a place” of the post-industrial north indeterminate but still recognizable. With his friend and colleague Ricky Giulio studies the celebrations of the players after the goal, small gestures that tell humanity increasingly narcissistic. Is an anthropologist, but “of course still lives with his mother,” a community that somehow they “unites”: a widow in great shape which travels to the eighty and a bachelor who is going to bring to forty, “two old brothers “aware that the condition on the one hand has its advantages, the other helps that time has lost its pace and almost stopped its flow.
With his father, Julius had almost never taken: “He was a quiet man who spoke only the words necessary logistics family”, makes him say Serra, and the few times he spoke, in his voice always felt a certain weakness. Still he has within himself the searing memory of the slap received that one time, at the table, for using too many ‘I’ in a sentence. “It was not a dirty word, but none of us could have imagined that it would become.” “I felt that I despise you and choose, from the heart, the spirit, contagious restlessness of my mother,” he said. “A woman always in the grip of a lust for novelty, it is not known if animated by boredom or by precise intentions of marital infidelity.”
Julius is taciturn, one of those who in school always took less than six, accustomed to standing on the sidelines is puzzled about the world, is lost, while the friend instead is an eternal optimist. And ‘biased and sarcastic against almost everything that surrounds it, is not happy with himself and did not like it, “is a pain in the ass stable”, as would his girlfriend.
Look and judges from the inside, plays a part in the disorder of the landscape and people, suffering diseases describing. He feels responsible for the ugliness in which they live that has worsened since they built round (“the still manufacture because our destiny is the wrong way”?), The same one as Giorgio Bocca, “the old Mouth”, hated by all himself when he had to make the journey by car from Milan to Courmayeur and vice versa.
“sorry for the conditions of a place is equivalent to just hear him, to say that this place belongs to us. Everyone could make a gesture that can heal the ugly surroundings “, explains Serra. “That aspect of Julius I particularly cared. His bad mood is not detachment, but tell a membership. It ‘sad to as the landscape surrounding it and because it knows that it can not escape from there. ”
“I do not speak on behalf of a thirty-six, but those years are representative of a passage, a kind of suspension of time,” says the author. “The shed his father’s the only thing he has left, is the hero of unused book, her subject forgotten, the true protagonist of the novel”, but this you will understand just by reading and – believe us – nothing is taken for granted and the ending will surprise you.
Before leaving, we pause even to speak of human beings in general (“they are bulky, as claimed by Giulio in the book, and this is a small phobia that sometimes I too”) women ( “I grew up in a matriarchal family, like their pragmatism”), the character of Greek mythology, Narcissus, and defined it as a guide known to him in Pompeii (“one sciémo total”, an expression that henceforth It became part of the lexicon family home Serra), and Gipi (“is his art and nothing else”), who designed the cover of the book, a man with the head of a boar, obviously not by chance.
Finally, we take a photo together, but not a selfie, because, as written and as we reiterated in voice, that word has been around for a long time, is an old slang term for American teenagers . “Being a selfie means getting a pugnetta: as we know here, hard workers, we report everything to the tooling. Even the activities to be done by hand, the meccanizziamo “. From today, make a selfie never be the same. You are warned.
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