Post by account_disabled on Jan 6, 2024 11:42:29 GMT 8
Another author I really like. I've read a few novels by him, all set in Texas. Lansdale was born in Texas and lives in Texas and sets almost all of his stories there. Why? Because he knows those places, because he loves them, because it is his territory and he wants to talk about it, because he knows the subcultures well. Our classics Verga set almost all his stories in his native Sicily, but Florence also appears (where he lived for some periods). Pirandello has such a vast production of works that it leaves you amazed. I remember some of his short stories, in which the real protagonists were ordinary people. The one from his town.
Can't we say the same about Manzoni? Isn't his most famous work set in his Milan? And can't we say the same thing about other classical authors? Why, I wonder, once did Italian authors write about Special Data their country and its people, often not leaving their own front door, and now it seems so difficult to do so, so banal, so strange, so unusual? Nationalism in fiction A negative meaning is often given to the term nationalism, when instead it should be identified as a support for one's geographical, cultural and social belonging. One of the meanings given by the Treccani Dictionary is: Feeling of strong attachment to one's nation, accompanied by an uncritical preference towards everything that belongs to it in a peculiar way. Nothing political, as far as I'm concerned. English and American writers prove to be nationalists, our classical writers ditto.
I'm not saying that all modern Italian authors aren't, but many emerging authors certainly aren't. Why, then, this rejection of one's own country? I believe that we live in an era without ideals, an era of carelessness, of absence of values and securities. All this takes us far away, in search of something that can give us comfort, refuge, hope. For me, at least, that's how it is. I look for this something in other places, often imaginary and, if Italian, in the past. My position on settings That I don't like the Italy where I was born and live is certainly no secret. I will therefore never set a story in my country and in these times, unless it is an apocalyptic story in which everything is erased. Other times I inserted elements that suggested a modern Italian setting (laptop with webcam, for example), but of today's Italy, apart from the names of the characters, there was nothing of today's Italy.
Can't we say the same about Manzoni? Isn't his most famous work set in his Milan? And can't we say the same thing about other classical authors? Why, I wonder, once did Italian authors write about Special Data their country and its people, often not leaving their own front door, and now it seems so difficult to do so, so banal, so strange, so unusual? Nationalism in fiction A negative meaning is often given to the term nationalism, when instead it should be identified as a support for one's geographical, cultural and social belonging. One of the meanings given by the Treccani Dictionary is: Feeling of strong attachment to one's nation, accompanied by an uncritical preference towards everything that belongs to it in a peculiar way. Nothing political, as far as I'm concerned. English and American writers prove to be nationalists, our classical writers ditto.
I'm not saying that all modern Italian authors aren't, but many emerging authors certainly aren't. Why, then, this rejection of one's own country? I believe that we live in an era without ideals, an era of carelessness, of absence of values and securities. All this takes us far away, in search of something that can give us comfort, refuge, hope. For me, at least, that's how it is. I look for this something in other places, often imaginary and, if Italian, in the past. My position on settings That I don't like the Italy where I was born and live is certainly no secret. I will therefore never set a story in my country and in these times, unless it is an apocalyptic story in which everything is erased. Other times I inserted elements that suggested a modern Italian setting (laptop with webcam, for example), but of today's Italy, apart from the names of the characters, there was nothing of today's Italy.