Specials

 

The piazza, meaning a place to meet and tell stories, has been a “school of observation” for me. It was the place where I heard stories and oral narrations of street theater. Therefore it formed me, as if it were a speaking library. But this piazza no longer exists. Italians no longer spend time in the piazza, at least not as spectators of an event. Perhaps it still exists in some small towns, but television has wiped it out for the most part.

 

 

 

I am familiar with piazzas in the north, as well as the south because my mother is from southern Italy. I remember as a child, the first time I arrived in the piazza in Baranello, a small town in Molise. I noticed something strange. I realized that there were only women seated at the doorsteps of the houses. I asked my grandmother: “But where are the men?” She responded that “they all went for coffee in Canada.” At that time, more than half of the male residents of the town had emigrated.

 

 

It is, again, the place for stories and emotions. There is day and night, and it can be a meeting place or a threatening place. For children it is a place to play outside and, therefore, it can be transformed into an adventure. But it can also be dangerous, so it might be safer to stay shut at home, oppressed by ghosts and numbed by television.

 

 

The time of the book is not the time of everyday life. The winds of time–past, present, and future–all exist inside one single breath. It is neither frightening nor friendly, and the characters live much longer than a human life. The reader will decide if, and in what way, his/her time in everyday life and time in book resemble or are distant from each other.

 

 

I think that shared cultural places exist, as well as “sequel-literature” that does not want to surprise readers, such as certain best-sellers. Frequently Americans like to read about a stereotypical and simplified Italy and the same goes for Italian readers with respect to America. For this reason, Italian readers are more familiar with Grisham than Melville. But if we leave the somewhat miserable topic of literature, then everything is more exciting and unexpected. In this sense, I am a writer who is a bit outrageous, not very “Italian,” or at least this is how they often see me abroad.

 

 

I do not know what they would be like, and for this reason I would be curious to meet them. I have already met British readers and I was struck by the fact that there were so many young readers among them, as there aren’t as many in Italy.