“The Devil” is the inspirational card of “Play Books”

The Devil is one of the tarot cards that most inspires fear: represented by a creature that is half man and half beast, it recalls the primordial and instinctive side of man, obsessive behaviors, excessive attachment to worldly pleasures. Yet if well channeled, the energy of this card can represent an intense creative force. With the introduction of the writer and philosopher Ilaria Gaspari, “Play Books”, from Thursday 20 June on RaiPlay, presents an episode full of temptations and obsessions, inspired by the Arcanum “The Devil”.
We begin with “The Last Judgment” by Luc Lang, starring Henry Blain, the infantile, sadistic, libidinous head chef of Strangeways prison in Manchester: the novel halfway between pulp and social fresco, won the prestigious Prix Goncourt. Robert Perišić, one of the most important contemporary Croatian voices, returns with new “Existential disasters and crazy expenses”: 23 stories that mix the tragic and the comic, the absurd and the bizarre, with characters always poised between evil and worse. But temptations also come from the internet: Luigi Gobbi tried to immerse himself in “In the mind of the hacker”, a text that informs and raises awareness about the dangers of cybercrime. Claudio Morici this week pays homage to the great writer Jack London, the author of legendary novels such as “The Call of the Wild” and “Martin Eden”. The protagonist of an adventurous existence, London was also an inveterate drinker, and he dedicated intense memoirs to that demon who dragged him into an abyss. The comic recommended by Zuzu is “Shady ”, a ramshackle and exaggerated influencer, through which the author Brecht Vandenbroucke makes fun of all those who are obsessed with the need to appear and be liked Matteo Vitelli, brings the public to the cinema with “The Wolf of Wall Street” by Martin Scorsese: based on the autobiography of Jordan Belfort, the film tells the rise and fall of a New York broker and his large-scale frauds, played by a Luciferian and irresistible Leonardo Di Caprio. It is a treatise on the philosophy of pleasure, male and female, “Lamerica” ​​by Gianna Nannini, re-performed for the occasion by the singer-songwriter Giulia Anania. In the space created in collaboration with the Premio Strega Poesia, Laura Pugno then proposes “Ciberneti” by Francesco Terzago, dedicated to the devil of our time: the Anthropocene, the climate catastrophe, the change in the beloved landscape. For the Theatre, Gioia Salvatori follows “Napoli Milionaria!” by Eduardo De Filippo, a still very current work on the diabolical power of money to corrupt everything. Finally, in the “Extra Books” spin off of the week, Vittorio Castelnuovo’s guest is Roberto Napoletano, an expert, like few others, of the economic and political history of recent decades. This is confirmed by the book “The Black Swan and the White Knight”, which warns of the main problems and at the same time reveals possible ways out of the crisis.
“Play Books”, produced by Rai Contenuti Digitali e Transmediali, is available at the link: https://www.raiplay.it/programmi/playbooks