ON WRITING, NOWADAYS (in Italy)

For me writing means to be un écrivain engagé, to be an existentialist writer such as Camus, Sartre, and also, although someone cannot agree into calling them "existentialists", Yukio Mishima, Junichiro Tanizaki and Yasunari Kawabata. Engagé does not necessary mean that it should be in a strictly political sense, even though it possible to conceive this position like this. Engagé can also be understood in the sense of a writer who searches for the life meaning in facts that concern our own daily existence. A writer can be engagé in creating a certain kind of literature that tends to make people think, to find a way to make people reflect on existence, breaking certain traditional consolidated narratives. In creating alternative voices (alternative narratives) with reference to the dominant ones.
The ideal figure of our writer is an engagé writer who owns a-just-writer-status, i.e. a writer who professionally is only a writer, and not writer and ... writer and ... and ... (writer and journalist, writer and lawyer, writer and actor, writer and journalist and film director ... etc. ad infinitum).
In the field of information, for example, it has always been said that videos longer than three or four minutes are not supposed to be watched. And three or four minutes are though considered an excessive length. It has always been said that contents must be moderately strong because people might get bored by deep analyses ... but lateley it turns out that some independent and alternative sources of information (Byoblu, an Italian video blog, for example) that do exactly what has always been demonized (a two-hour video about economics, politics, internet digitalization, conspiracy and world-wide lobbies ...) gained an incredible success by doing a type of information that has found an a priori unimaginable following on the internet.

We therefore believe that the time is ripe for breaking up the kind of literature of complete disengagement that is currently dominant, what I call the anodyne literature, the meme-literature, which has as main purpose, to put it in a nutshell, to strengthen the transversal globalist category capable of incorporating everything "Read, if you really need it, but stop fucking around!"
This does not mean making a boring literature, but fast-paced stories, that catch the interest of readers in the while strong contents are offered, i.e. contents that are alternative to the dominant models which have instead as their aim the maintenance of a status quo, a prolonged stagnation without interruption, which diverts individuals from the hope of any change, which was the driving force of the post-war Italian economic boom, of the hippies movements as well, and of the student protests of 1968 characterized by popular rebellions against military and bureaucratic elites (regardless of the manipulations and infiltrations that have been proven in these movements).

I do not want and cannot (as I have no proof) say that there is any literature censorship, or any manipulation by publishers side (as there is indeed in the field of media information) but a filtered literature is active, yes. The publishers accept and publish only what corresponds to what has been tested by their preemptive filters: authors who guarantee a certain number of sales, authors who are presented by, who have been selected by, who write according to certain models and styles, who avoid references to ... authors who do not sympathize with a set up ideological editorial line (querelle Vittorini vs Tomasi di Lampedusa, in post war Italian literature) ...

In this temporary grid many other species of filters can be inserted - I have exemplified the most immediate and instantaneous.

Writing a good book does not mean anything. You can write a good book and remain perfectly unknown. You can write crappy books and become a bestselling (I mention some examples: Jonathan Littel, Les Bienveillantes; Lize Spit, It melts; Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan sun ...), or modest texts passed off as masterpieces (Paolo Cognetti, Eight mountains) ... or boring writers but passed off as new Dostoyevsky (Elena Ferrante, Elizabeth Strout ...). I limit myself to just a few examples, but the list could be lengthened by a lot more examples.

I therefore believe that it should be increased intellectual honesty in writers: If you want to be a serious writer, you have to read (many) other books first of all, you need to have something to say, you must know how and what to write, you should give people hope to change their condition, you should be prepared to break up any status quo which denies hope.

Critics must be real critics and not mere flunkeys of publishers. And publishers have to keep an eye on their budgets, but also to promote Culture. And the State's primary objective must be to promote Italian culture, language and values, in Italy and abroad.

Finally, the writer must be conscious, that he can NEVER claim to please everyone, the more he breaks the aforementioned schemes the more he will incur a similar impasse. Books are like perfumes, it has not to be forgotten, books are something strictly linked to personal taste. Nonetheless, a writer must have a well-defined line of writing and researching to follow, regardless of the fact that he can address multiple audiences.