The new Italian Weird
You may be happy to know that the underground scene in Italy is very vibrant. A good part of contemporary writers that we will analyze in this column come from that scene. They didn’t study creative writing in an MFA program or even have a formal education. They experience their existence in a deep way and eventually decide to put that trip on paper. Like many people, you would say. But what makes them lucky is the fact that the hidden litweb in Italy is very influential. If you continuously send stories or reviews to the dozens of literary online magazines, you will eventually get published, and if you get published many times you will be noticed by some publishing houses. If you happen to be particularly good, it may be possible that your book will sell some copies. If the sales are good and your book becomes relevant, you may be quoted on this useless column about contemporary Italian literature.
At this point you’re probably wonder why we’re considering this column useless. I will give you a few good reasons:
- none of the books we are going to review in the next months have been translated to English.
-the aim of this project is not to translate some Italian masterpiece, but just to review them and eventually translate some lines.
-we don’t know how the copyright works for a translation.
So, apologies, but you won’t be able to enjoy the books we are talking about unless you speak Italian. But, hey, don’t be pissed. We are in 2024 and useless things are very important in this world. So I suggest you keep following this column so that one day during a dinner where everyone is talking about literature, you will be able to say “yes, the Italian literary scene is fermenting nowadays”. You will also be able to quote the names of some writers, even if you can’t quote what they wrote. If no one at the table speaks Italian you can learn by heart a couple of random sentences and you will be fine. I suggest Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia, which is quite weird.
But let’s get back to the juicy part of this useless column, the new Italian weird.
As a first statement we have to say that the NIW doesn’t exist. It doesn’t have the characteristics to be considered a movement, luckily. It wouldn’t be very exciting to be part of something that is the “new” version of something else. Does anybody remember a single name of a new Dadaist? Just joking…
So we refer to a group of writers that get regrouped under this identity, but at the same time take distance from that definition: an attempt of classification that makes sense, but finally gets disproven by the reality of facts. That’s what Andrea Zandomeneghi, one of the most eminent voices in the Italian literary scene, answered when I asked him what he thinks about NIW. I tried to investigate what the reality of facts is, but I caught him at the wrong moment and he didn’t give any further answer. Zandomeneghi is an alcoholic that plays with the mystery of pharmacology and yes, is a damn author.
We can say a lot about the definition of weird, how it started in the USA with authors like Poe and Lovecraft, how it changed pattern in the 80’s with the New Weird, where the element of supernatural started to be treated with much more introspection, and how in the last twenty years it gained a new interest with authors coming from different places such as the romanian Cartarescu, the bulgarian Gaspadinov or the french Volodine: all authors whose works have been translated into English and you should read. But as a first edition of this column we stop here, and we keep all these aspects for the future. Before closing, we will translate some lines of an Italian author who doesn’t fit in the definition of New Italian Weird, but was the cornerstone for them: an author who gained fame back in the 80’s for his ruthless realism in analyzing the lives of heroin addicts, transexuals, and other groups living on the fringes of society. We are talking about Pier Vittorio Tondelli who, with Altri Libertini (Other Libertines), changed the relation in between the writers and the editorial world. Altri Libertini is a serial composed of six stories. Un Viaggio (A Trip), is the longest one and explores the adventure of a young homosexual fellow that travels around Italy and Europe seeking for a new identity that passes through orgies, arrest, heroin addiction and the mutable world of the 80’s. The decade that violently opened the postmodernist dimension. What we are about to analyze is the description of a daily trip in the Italian countryside, a fast-changing environment after the industrial revolution and the intensity of the aspects of the real due to the mainstream culture. The gaze is moving from the character to what is surrounding him, but everything passes through the lens of his imagination: the prostitutes and the pimps are stars and tycoons on Broadway in his altered perception. This switch, this mythologization of reality, is one of the characteristics of the weird.
Let’s check some lines :
Roaming fugitive night launches rapidly along the street of Emilia to take out from my lungs everything that I have inside. Lonely and vagabond night through which to scroll all of my thinking in a car bound towards the prairie. Leave the stories filling up my head so after it can rest, it likes to stay in the plazas to spy on the people that are walking and are pontificating and looking at the clouds, so many fantasies, one on top of the other, but nothing gets tired. Run then, the car decides where to go, she turns up and down on Emilia’s road going towards the hills and the mountains or towards the rivers and the reclamations and the rushes. In between Reggio and Parma I forget the dizziness and trying to guess the number of bars, including the one inside the clubs and the outdoor dance hall now that it is August and they have opened the veranda to better enjoy the mosquitos and the smell of the farmland, fat and fertilized. Along Emilia’s road are those shining and flashing signs, the large parking lot, and finally the concrete structure and violet neons and the halogen lamp that stands straight and swings back and forth as a cone of light that weaves high in the sky and seems to be on Broadway or on Sunset Boulevard on one of those good nights with stars, tycoon producers and great myths.
Original
Notte raminga e fuggitiva lanciata veloce lungo le strade d’Emilia a spolmonare quel che ho dentro, notte solitaria e vagabonda a pensierare in auto verso la prateria, lasciare che le storie riempiano la testa che così poi si riposa, come stare sulle piazze a spiare la gente che passeggia e fa salotto e guarda in aria, tante fantasie una sopra e sotto all’altra, però non s’affatica nulla. Correre allora, la macchina va dove vuole, svolta su e giù dalla via Emilia incontro alle colline e alle montagne oppure verso i fiumi e le bonifiche e i canneti. Poi tra Reggio e Parma lasciare andare il tiramento di testa e provare a indovinare il numero dei bar, compresi quelli all’interno delle discoteche e dei dancing all’aperto ora che è agosto e hanno alzato persino le verande per godersi meglio le zanzare e il puzzo della campagna grassa e concimata. Lungo la via Emilia ne incontro le indicazioni luminose e intermittenti, i parcheggi ampi e infine le strutture di cemento e neon violacei e spot arancioni e grandi fari allo iodio che si alzano dritti e oscillano avanti e indietro, così che i coni di luce si intrecciano alti nel cielo. E pare allora di stare a Broadway o nel Sunset Boulevard, in una notte di quelle buone con dive, magnati produttori e grandi miti.
Conclusion
We’ve been playing so far, but one of the purposes of this column is to create a bridge in between two countries that in the past had a lot of interconnection in the artistic terms. The political terms are very unsatisfactory, Italy is still a military colony of USO and together with many others are creating an inhospitable ecosystem. As free thinkers we have to open up better communication and better artistic relations. With art and literature we can throw a brick against the massive wall of this fucking weird world.