Giartosio imagines his mind (and ours) as the attic of an imposing and dusty tower, crossed by beams of oblique light. Among the bright dust, very tall Ikea wooden built-in wardrobes stand, stained with grease and marked by burns. Behind each door, extractable columns hold shelving and tray shelves. Here, in this invisible space, the author rummages through the “pieces” of his language (and ours), extracting the words to observe them closely, listen to them and question them.
He thus takes us on a journey through his life, from childhood to adulthood, with language as a compass and guiding thread. Words, in this case, are not just communication tools, but living material to be shaped to investigate one’s identity, family ties, cultural formation and relationship with the world.
Between anecdotes and reflections, every word seems carefully placed to guide our actions or reveal something extremely specific and necessary. One gets the impression, quoting Giartosio, that each of us is guided by the ultrasounds we emit and by the strength of the convective motions that words —pronounced aloud— generate around us.
Page after page, the story of Giartosio’s relationship with words turns into an opportunity to write an autobiography of grammar that he built throughout his life. And like a person told he becomes a character, a spoken language becomes language. Hence the hope that one’s language can be the gateway to everyone’s language. Because language is, as Giartosio says, “everything that can be dreamed of”. And it concerns us all, simply because we use it. For this reason, we can say that we have all already written this book.
Autobiogrammatics it is a work that skilfully intertwines autobiographical elements, linguistic reflections and a deep introspection. A complex and layered book that requires active commitment from the reader. It is not a work to be devoured in one sitting, but a text to be savored slowly, page after page. Each sentence is an invitation to reflect on one’s life, on the relationship with language and on immense power of words.
