novel Archivi - Keep Calm and Drink Coffee

FAME D’ARIA – HUNGER FOR AIR

May 20, 2023 | BOOKS

Fame d’aria – Hunger for air is the latest book by Daniele Mencarelli published by Mondadori.

Daniele Mencarelli has needed no introduction for a while now.

Fame d’aria – Hunger for air appealed to me because of the structure, the writing and the way in which in real time the reader gets the full load of the eighteen years of life with Jacopo.

Jacopo is not the main character; Jacopo is Peter’s son, Pete is a man.

I say just a man because that is what I thought as I got to know him one line after another.

Pete is not a superhero, he is not a champion, he is not even an example. Peter is simply a person, a human being, as are all those who try to behave in the right way against the waves of the storm that is life: an incessant and continuous lashing that hits inexorably.

Also for this reading I thank Monica, and then I also say thank you to Luciana for pointing me to the meeting with the writer organized by The Pleasure of Telling.

In this way I was able to listen directly to Daniele Mencarelli’s words and find out how his need to tell this story came about.

About six years ago he met a Peter and began to put the pieces together, details that seem to have no importance until the accumulation becomes an element that turns into writing, thinking about how to translate a memory “saved with a name” as if it were a document that has the power to illuminate the path to which to give life.

The immersion inside a life that was not his own was brutal for Daniele Mencarelli; no frieze was allowed to hide the disfigurement that always had to prevail.

In this book the author shifted to the third person while always keeping the present tense because he likes to give the impression that the events happen as they are read because he feels they are less distant.

I must say that the goal was fully achieved because even me as a reader felt literally inside the story.

The novel has an antecedent: in 2000 while going for a beer, Peter meets Bianca. They recognize each other and it is love at first sight.

In 2023 Pietro is a 50-year-old man and his car breaks down in Molise, with him there isn’t Bianca, there is his son Jacopo who is 18 years old and unfortunately has very low-functioning autism.

The village where they stop to look for a mechanic: Sant’Anna del Sannio does not exist in reality although it resembles many places that each of us can identify.

Pete and Jacopo are headed to Puglia where Bianca is waiting for them to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary.

The unexpected lasts three days and revolves around three characters: Oliviero the mechanic, Agata the bar owner, and Gaia. Thanks to her, we enter the father’s inner world and discover everything that families like theirs lack.

Basic seed: the scene as a moment of unveiling the human exactly as I was telling you about the Peter who I discovered while reading.

Daniele Mencarelli was born as a poet, poetry is able to name things, it captures the depth with respect to the scene. Narrative, on the other hand, is architecture of scenes that then takes the form of plot and psychological arc of the characters.

In fact, poetry should not be “strict poetic language,” but should live within the elements of the novel form.

Literature is a gesture that is meant to bear witness.

These words of Daniele Mencarelli find a particular embodiment in the book Fame d’aria – Hunger for air , I think.

But what struck me most was to learn about the author’s personal “hunger for air.”

Over-inked pages that give a sense of claustrophobia.

From this “hunger for air” literally comes the need to open up vertical spaces in the horizontal narrative.

The need to perceive much presence of white, that is, need to break the sentence and go to the head as if it were a need for air.

Reasoning as a poet in certain moments of the human you arrive with a broken speech. In the highest places of the human one arrives only with lyric.

A personal hunger for air.

How about you? When do you feel your hunger for air?

FILOSOFEGGIANDO IN ALLEGREZZA

Aug 19, 2022 | JOURNEY FROM MUG TO MUG

Filosofeggiando in allegrezza is the blog that gives us a new stage of the Journey from mug to mug, and now I have plenty of joyful serenity for these pictures too!

As you may have guessed, the photo below the title is from Spain: Galicia, and to be precise it is from the Vigo Book Festival.

As Feiras do Libro de Galicia take place every year in various towns and cities in Galicia, in the spring and summer months, with stalls run by booksellers, and an extensive program of parallel activities, such as readings, meetings with authors, exhibitions, book presentations, etc., that make these events a meeting of great cultural interest.

The writer who most universalized Vigo was Jules Verne, in a passage from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Have you read it?

I missed it until my son brought it home from the elementary school library, but there’s always time to recover, right?

In Verne’s novel, the Vigo estuary hides very rich treasures from the Battle of the Bay or Battle of Rande.

“So, Mr. Aronnax (…), we are in that same bay of Vigo. It is up to you to unravel its mysteries.”

The battle took place on October 23, 1702 between the Anglo-Dutch and Spanish-French coalitions during the War of the Spanish Succession. Spanish galleons arrived at the Vigo estuary laden with the greatest treasure that had ever crossed the Atlantic: gold and silver, jewels…

“The sand was littered with those treasures. Then, laden with that precious booty, those men would return to the Nautilus, deposit their burdens and resume that inexhaustible fishery for gold and silver.”

Since then hundreds of dives have been made in the waters of the Vigo Estuary in search of treasure. Without going any further, six battle-related wrecks were located and identified in 2011.

Thus, don’t you think that the quote chosen to introduce the Festival:

THE BEST STORIES BEGIN WITH GOOD COFFEE

is simply perfect?

If you want to discover further interesting anecdotes about Galicia, don’t miss the description of the trip here on Filosfeggiando in Allegrezza.

Speaking of precious things then, here are two coffees from Monforte de Lemos!

So after Verne we can also mention Miguel Cervantes’ El ingenioso caballero don Quijote de la Mancha, precisely with reference to the Count of Lemos.

But about Monforte de Lemos you can ind more details on Filosfeggiando in allegrezza in the second part of the report.

And what about you? Where have you had your coffee lately?

ELENA AND LAURA

Dec 12, 2021 | THE X-MAS CAROLS

Fifth day of the Advent calendar with Elena and Laura: two sisters and a room of books!

I find the sharing of this strong passion for reading between two sisters fantastic.

Elena and Laura make me think back to the times when my brother and I exchanged books, in our case the preferences were a bit different, but this was an added value for me: in some way this helped to complete.

My brother writes very well, even though he doesn’t want me to say it.

So I will say that Elena and Laura are really good and talented, I followed their The house of souls published serial on the blog and, in case you haven’t read it yet, I absolutely recommend that you retrieve it!

I also report their novel The secret of the trees of which I anticipate only one name: Endelaman Crosel who struck me not only for the particularity, but because it was invented by Elena-child-version.

The Christmas story by Elena and Laura instead is called Christmas, snow and chocolate:

A snowball hit the mailbox just as Ella was closing the shop. She turned abruptly and met the eyes of two children intent on a battle: they seemed mortified. She smiled and waved at them. The two smiled in turn and ran towards the park… go on here.

BEWITCHED?

Jul 9, 2020 | BOOKS, ITALY

1947: a meaningful year for me, my mother’s birth year. She, who was used to buy 10 lire of old newspapers just to have something to read. She, who made me grow up in a house with a large library full of books of all kinds.

She, who simply loved to read.

Never any imposition, never any particular advice. It was all natural, I still remember the titles that struck me most as a child, then I still could not know the story, yet they were already in my mind, ready to be rediscovered at the right time.

And one day, just like her, I simply started reading too.

1947 is also the year of the first literary prize Strega which took its name from the liqueur produced in the Guido Alberti family company who was a patron of it and who subsequently, after his marriage to the astrologer Lucia Alberti, began his acting career and was directed by directors such as Federico Fellini Francesco Rosi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Eduardo De Filippo and Roman Polanski. A biography that in itself would seem like a novel.

In the long list of winners of the editions that have followed each other from year to year, respectable names appear and a few days ago I read a statistic published by Gabriella which showed an overwhelming male majority .

I sincerely have to recover several things from the past, but Monica opened a window on the present, also giving me a key to the book that won the 2020 edition: The hummingbird by Sandro veronesi published by La nave di Teseo.

I gladly approached it, without knowing the author, without knowing the previous success Chaos Calmo and without knowing the various dynamics that led to this second victory.

“You are a hummingbird because like the hummingbird you put all your energy into staying still.”

The quote on the back cover immediately offers the first food for thought: suddenly static is considered as an effort, and not as the absence of movement.

The movement of the book is constituted by the temporal jumps with which the author leads the narration according to a very symbolic thread, alternating exchanges of letters and digressions with stories of daily life poised between the apparent normality and a crescendo of paradoxical situations.

I found particularly curious how the rather unlikely events of the main character made me think of Forrest Gump, a sort of coincidence, since I had just written a post about it.

But following the idea of the hummingbird, and trying to fly backwards to review everything from a different perspective, I developed the idea of metaphors to reconfirm the only true certainty we have: life has surprises in store and often revolutionizes plans and certainties.

But for the truth we are not still, we resist, something very different.

I think I’m not the only one to have found a sort of cross with painful personal experiences, of course then everyone continues on their tracks, but the scars remain in common.

This book also gave me a reference to childhood in reading the descriptions of summer places: Toscana’s sea near Bolgheri, Marina di Bibbona, Punta Ala, having also spent my holidays exactly on that same coast, and I found myself facing the thought of how we used to take things for granted until this particular summer, and how we never thought they could vanish.

So “bewitched”? Strega means witch

No, but happy as every time a reading inspires reflections.

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

May 9, 2020 | BOOKS, ITALY, MEDIA, MOVIES, SCIENCE, WORLD

“It is sometimes said that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world can cause a hurricane on the other side of the globe.”
This quote comes from the 2004 film The Butterfly Effect and is inspired by a theory taken up and debated in numerous areas.
Once again, as happened for the War of the Worlds: the inspiration comes from a science fiction novel, it is in fact Ray Bradbury who in his Sound of thunder attributes to the proper death of a butterfly during a journey through time, a variation of future events:

Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling,
“No, it can’t be. Not a little thing like that. No!”
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead.

Another coincidence, also in this case the story was broadcast by the BBC in 2011: here if you want to find the podcast (butterfly from about 35 minutes but I would advise you to listen to it all if you have time).
The butterfly symbol was taken up by Edward Lorenz, mathematician and meteorologist professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in his 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Science and later in a 1979 lecture that went down in history.
In general, the butterfly effect belongs to quantum physics and more precisely to the basis of chaos theory.
Chaos is the most congenial aspect to me, but actually I didn’t want to talk about this … not this time, at least.
Antonietta Gatti is perhaps known to most as “the wife of” despite her respectable curriculum. Her skills add up over time, and I would list, almost a bit to summarize, this recognition: she has been awarded the title of Fellow of the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering for her contribution to the progress of science. The various national societies of biomaterials and bioengineering have tens of thousands of members worldwide and the union of the various companies has elected Dr. Gatti to be part of the elite of scientists that consists of 32 members, and she was part of a parliamentary commission of inquiry as a responsible consultant. I know, difficult to read, but I found her report very interesting, perhaps because I live in a highly polluted area: here the mortality rate from tumors is terrible:
She deals with nanopathology or pathologies induced by micro and nano-sized particulate exposures, i.e. powders with dimensions less than 100nm (0.1 microns) but her research has become difficult due to the reduced availability of a suitable microscope.
Her flapping wings has not changed the world yet, but she has been able to reach the hearts of people who have made it possible to buy a new electron microscope with their donations.
Let us not stop at the fact that individually we cannot make a difference, let us not stop flying lightly on the difficulties, each of us can be the butterfly of change, let’s believe it, and do not let ourselves be crushed in the mud.