BOLOGNA – “Commissioner Mauro Mazza and the president of AIE Francesco Cipolletta were neither cautious nor serious. I’m a writer and I can be careless every day, they can’t.” The occasion is the dialogue at Rep Idee between Francesco Piccolo And Nadia Terranova on the role of writers “Writing in newspapers: truth or dare?” talking with Raffaella De Santis. And it is precisely the Repubblica journalist who presses Piccolo on the issue relating to his participation in the Frankfurt book fair where Italy is this year’s country of honour. In fact, Piccolo had announced his renunciation of going to the Buchmesse following the lack of invitation to Roberto Saviano.
«You can’t not invite Saviano to the Book Fair – he insists -, it’s as if the Davis Cup didn’t call Sinner because his tennis club forgot to include him in the list. In the case of Saviano, it is true that he did not appear in the publishers’ lists, because he was changing publishers, but no one, neither Mazza nor the AIE, asked the right question, which was: “why isn’t Saviano on the lists? ”. He is one of the most important writers we have”.
Piccolo also returns to the day of the announcement of the participants in Frankfurt, when when asked about the absence of Saviano Mazza he replied like this: “because we chose more original authors”, which is a rather vulgar answer. Such a contemptuous judgment on Saviano, Mazza must explain, is not a question of personal taste.” Equally harsh on the Italian Publishers Association.
“The AIE had a very serious role in this affair – accuses Piccolo – the explanation given was that since Saviano was not on the list of writers, they had nothing to do with it. Showing great caution towards the government, but being very careless towards us writers. He treated us like dicks and he’s not nice.”
Speaking of the current climate, Terranova recalls that before the explosion of the case Antonio Scurati, even one of his monologues on the police beatings of the students in the procession last March in Pisa, which was supposed to be broadcast on ‘Che Sara’, was censored by Rai. “They asked me to change some things, I refused. When I told this story to people I know I was told: ‘well, what did you expect?’. I may be naive, but I want to continue to be like this.”
Piccolo and Terranova then talked about their relationship with newspapers. «Since the post-war period – says Piccolo – the role of writers in newspapers has been understood as a commentary on current events and it has become a genre where the writer often shapes what everyone thinks. This is a modality I reject. I have made it a rule to write if I have something to say and if what I have to say is not obvious.” For Terranova, newspapers are instead “the space for more in-depth writing compared to social media. With some rules: I never write twice on the same topic and I rarely write an article about a topic I have covered in one of my books.”
Piccolo then amuses everyone when he talks about the difference in writing times between books and newspapers. “When you write for the newspapers, if you write a story, the next day everyone has read it, which is tragic and liberating. However, when I write a book, which perhaps I don’t let anyone read for three years, I live for three years with the doubt of having written bullshit”.
