Laura is six years old when her parents, two professors, decide to move from a residential area in northern Rome to Laurentino 38, a public housing neighborhood on the other side of the city, one of the most infamous places in Italy. The parents’ intention is good: to bring their children into contact with “real life”, today we would say to take them “out of the bubble”. It’s a shame, however, that Laura is never able to integrate into the group of children and then teenagers in the neighborhood, indeed in that context the event takes shape that will also mark her in adult life: the beating by a boy. The trauma, the condition of outsider, the social masks, the feeling of inadequacy, self-sabotage: Laura, now forty years old, a producer in a film production company, questions herself about her experience while also reflecting on the concept of failure. In her narrative debut, One day I will tell you everything (Harper Collins, pages 252, 17.50 euros), among the 82 current candidates for the Strega prize, Laura Buffoni mixes parts of essay and memoir, philosophical reflections and introspection, drama and comedy, in search of the reasons that lead her to be «always out of sync, late or ahead of events».
The cover of One day I will tell you everything by Laura Buffoni (Harper Collins, 252 pages, 17.50 euros).
Why did you want to write about failure? From the outside it doesn’t look like a failure at all.
«I am an integrated and functioning person, but for this very reason I thought it might be interesting to think about the act of failing. I wanted to understand why this sense of being out of tune with reality continued to haunt me. So I started writing an essay, but then as I wrote it I started putting anecdotes and memories into it. And little by little I arrived at the trauma, the Laurentino 38. In the end the autobiographical material exploded and ate up the book. And I realized that I was inside an autofiction with a wise man’s skeleton. The publisher asked me not to hide, I decided not to.”
Autofiction is a big problem: what is the limit it has established? What did he tell and what not? In her book, her ex tells her at a certain point: be careful, it’s dangerous.
«Yes, when I told him what I was doing he told me that books are like dreams: real events that you put together and in the end create a story, but in the morning when you wake up that dream has become true, at least for others. I was careful, I wrote what I felt was right for me and for others. I forget a lot, this book is a work of archeology of memory, a way to bring memories back to light.”
The border that he never seems to cross, unlike Carrère, master of autofiction, for example, is that of the murky.
“Yes, it is. There are unsaid things that I won’t say, but they are beneath the words, they are what fueled certain emotions. And then everything is filtered through irony.”
What was it like putting the trauma of the beating on the page?
«I remembered the event very well: a girl who provokes me, tells me to kiss a swastika drawn on a wall, I refuse and the beatings start from there. And then the hospital, the complaint and the threats. It wasn’t painful, because it was an almost pre-packaged story, I knew it well. But I realized that I didn’t remember anything about the context or the aftermath. How many times have they called me to threaten me? How many times have I called the police? I don’t know how much I fantasized or how much things really happened like this. But I thought a lot about putting myself in the position of victim, which is often an excuse for all of us: the world is against us, that’s why we can’t do things even if we’re very good.”
Victimhood was a risk, but it’s also all the rage today.
«It’s always a great temptation, I hope I’ve avoided it. It’s true, today there is this drift, but for me the trauma was just a trigger, an opportunity to talk about how certain events become self-narratives that serve us to excuse our shortcomings.”
How did you come to terms with the Laurentino 38 experience?
«There were two epiphanies. My friend Valerio Mastandrea who shows me the film Pieces directed by Luca Ferrari, in which I see the man who beat me again. It was a bit of a shock. And then when by chance, on a bus, I saw the girl who had provoked me again: I had also discovered that she had gotten together with him, the boy, perhaps because of me. In short, she was on that bus holding a small child in her arms, and before getting off she smiled at me. That gesture struck me a lot.”
Has he forgiven them?
«No, not forgiven, but I understood them. I found out that her father had been hanged. They lived in incredible living conditions. I, who hated them for a long time, finally understood where that anger came from.”
What did you discover about yourself by writing this book?
«First of all that I can write and that through writing my story – so small, so specific – can become something for everyone. It’s a small book, like a film distributed in twenty copies, but which can cause a small avalanche, also because the criticism has been very generous.”
In the book he puts his family on stage. How did her family react?
«I was very worried about their judgment, but instead they understood and were even moved at some points. They judged the book, not me.”
You work in the cinema: One day I will tell you everything will it become a movie?
«I would like to, I’m talking about it with some people. We will see”.
