Italian Ways: On and off the Rails from Milan to Palermo, by Tim Parks

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Tim Parks è uno scrittore inglese nato nel 1954, che si è trasferito in Italia, dove abita tuttora, nel 1981. Ha scritto numerosi romanzi e alcuni libri, Italian Neighbours (1992), An Italian Education (1996), A Season with Verona (2002), Italian Ways: on and off the rails from Milan to Palermo (2013), in cui racconta le sue esperienze di vita in Italia e le sue impressioni del nostro paese con un'acutezza straordinaria. Il suo ultimo libro di saggistica, Where I am Reading From: the changing world of books (pubblicato da Harville Secker, 2014), è una selezione di articoli scritti per il New York Review online in cui presenta una serie di riflessioni sul romanzo, sul mercato dei libri, sullo scrivere in genere, sulla traduzione, e ve lo consigliamo vivamente. Vi proponiamo in basso uno degli articoli del libro, in cui menziona Eco, Baricco, la Ginzburg e Verga, The Dull New Global Novel, che è davvero interessante:

Not all writers share the same sense of whom they are writing for. Many may not even think they are directing their work at any audience in particular. All the same, there are clearly periods in history when, across the board, authors' perceptions of who their readers are change, something that inevitably leads to a change in the kind of texts they produce. The most obvious example was the period that stretched from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century when writers all over Europe abandoned Latin for the vernacular. Instead of introducing their work, as before, into an international arena presided over by a largely clerical elite, they 'descended' to local and national languages to address themselves to an emerging middle class. 

In the history books this shift to the vernacular tends to be presented as a democratic inspiration that allowed a wealth of local vitality into the written text and brought new confidence to the rapidly consolidating national languages. That said, it was probably driven as much by ambition and economic interest as by idealism. There came a point when it no longer made sense to write in Latin because the arbiters of taste were now a national rather than international grouping. Today we are at the beginning of a revolution of even greater import that is taking us in a quite different direction. 

As a result of rapidly accelerating globalisation we are moving towards a world market for literature. There is a growing sense that for an author to be considered 'great' he or she must be an international rather than a national phenomenon. This change is not perhaps as immediately evident in the US as it is in Europe, thanks to the size and power of the US market and the fact that English is generally perceived as the language of globalisation, so that many more translations are from English rather than into it. However, more and more European, African, Asian and South American authors see themselves as having 'failed' if they do not reach an international audience. 

In recent years authors in Germany, France and Italy - all countries with large and well-established national readerships - have expressed to me their disappointment at not having found an English-language publisher for their works; interestingly, they complain that this failure reflects back on their prestige in their home country: if people don't want you elsewhere, you can't be that good. Certainly in Italy, where I live, an author is only thought to have arrived when he is published in New York. To appreciate how much things have changed one need only reflect that the reputation of writers like Zola or Verga would not have been dented at all by failure to achieve publication in London. 

This development has been hugely accelerated by electronic text transmission. Today, no sooner is a novel, or even an opening chapter, complete than it can be submitted to scores of publishers all over the world. It is not unusual for foreign rights to be sold before the work has a local publisher. An astute agent can then orchestrate the simultaneous launch of a work in many different countries using promotional strategies that we normally associate with multinational corporations. Thus a reader picking up a copy of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, or the latest Harry Potter, or indeed a work by Umberto Eco, or Haruki Murakami, or Ian McEwan, does so in the knowledge that this same work is being read now, all over the world. Buying the book, a reader becomes part of an international community. This perception adds to the book's attraction. 

The proliferation of international literary prizes has guaranteed that the phenomenon is not restricted to the more popular sector of the market. Despite its questionable selection procedures and often bizarre choices, the Nobel is seen as more important than any national prize. Meanwhile, the International IMPAC in Ireland, Premio Mondello in Italy, and the Inter-national literature Award in Germany - prizes aimed at 'international' literature rather than works from the country in question - are rapidly growing in prestige. Thus the arbiters of taste are no longer one's compatriots - they are less easily knowable, not a group the author himself is part of. 

What are the consequences for literature? From the moment an author perceives his ultimate audience as international, the nature of his writing is bound to change. In particular one notes a tendency to remove obstacles to international comprehension. Writing in the 1960s, intensely engaged with his own culture and its complex politics, a novelist like Hugo Claus apparently did not care that his stories would require a special effort on the reader's and above all the translator's part if they were to be understood outside his native Belgium. In sharp contrast, contemporary authors like the Norwegian Per Petterson, the Dutch Gerbrand Bakker and the Italian Alessandro Baricco offer us works that require no such knowledge or effort, nor the rewards that such effort will bring. More importantly, the language is kept simple. Kazuo Ishiguro has spoken of the importance of avoiding wordplay and allusion, to make things easy for the translator. Scandinavian writers I know tell me they avoid character names that would be difficult for an English reader. 

If culture-specific clutter and linguistic virtuosity have become impediments, other strategies are seen positively: the deployment of highly visible tropes immediately recognisable as 'literary' and 'imaginative', analogous to the wearisome lingua franca of special effects in contemporary cinema, and the foregrounding of a political sensibility that places the author among those 'working for world peace'. So the overstated fantasy devices of a Rushdie or a Pamuk always go hand in hand with a certain liberal position since, as Borges once remarked, most people have so little aesthetic sense they rely on other criteria to judge the works they read. 

What seems doomed to disappear, or at least to risk neglect, is the kind of work that revels in the subtle nuances of its own language and literary culture, the sort of writing that can savage or celebrate the way this or that linguistic group really lives. In the global literary market there will be no place for any Barbara Pyms or Natalia Ginzburgs. Shakespeare would have eased off the puns. A new Jane Austen can forget the Nobel.   

Capita spesso, quando si sta riflettendo su un certo tema, che il tema spunti un po' dappertutto, e questo ci è capitato la settimana scorsa guardando il programma della ABC The Mix. Infatti, durante programma, il presentatore, James Valentine («Giacomo Valentino») chiede a Steve Kilby, la voce principale (il «lead singer») del gruppo The Church, e a Stuart Coupe, giornalista musicale, se ci fosse davvero un «sound australiano» che contraddistinguesse i gruppi rock australiani degli anni '70 e '80. La discussione che ne segue è interessante. Ecco il segmento:

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Se Where I'm Reading: The Changing World of Books è interessantissimo, il penultimo libro di saggistica di Tim Parks, Italian Ways: On and off the Rails from Milan to Palermo (Harville Secker, 2013) è straordinario e, per chi è interessato all'Italia, assolutamente da leggere. Nel libro il signor Parks racconta la sua esperienza ventennale dei treni italiani, dovendo fare il pendolare tra Verona, dove abita, e Milano, dove insegna, e ci racconta del viaggio intrapreso nel 2012, in treno ovviamente, da Milano a Palermo ed infine ad Otranto, in Puglia. Ma il tema dei treni, è semplicemente lo spunto geniale per raccontare l'Italia con i suoi pregi e difetti. Scegliere un brano in particolare da proporvi è un'impresa difficilissima perché quasi ogni pagina contiene delle osservazioni molto belle e incisive. Nel brano in basso, in una scena familiare a tutti coloro che hanno preso un treno frequentato da pendolari, il Signor Parks, che vuole godersi il viaggio e leggersi un libro in santa pace, si ritrova in una carrozza piena d'Italiani che…parlano:     

At 7.40 the train stops in the town of Brescia. This is Lombardy now. Suddenly a middle-aged man a few seats down from me comes to life. He jumps up, slams open the window, and is leaning out, beckoning to friends on the crowded platform. 'Qua, qua. In fretta!' Here, here. Hurry! He is saving seats for them, a coat on one, a bag on another, a newspaper on the next. In less than five minutes the train is crowded, it's packed. People are standing, pushing. No one can find space for their bags. Worse still, everybody is talking. Everybody seems to know each other. 

This is something I have never observed in England. There, on a commuter train, most of the passengers are shut away in themselves, in a newspaper, a book, or trying to prolong the dreams of an hour before. There's a pleasant melancholy to the journey. But not on the Interregionale to Milan. These dead are alive, which is so much more disconcerting. Either the travellers are neighbours in Brescia or work colleagues in Milan. They form knots of animated discussion all down the carriage. Some knots know other knots and intertwine and snag. Students swap study notes. Football, politics and the proper way to prepare an asparagus risotto are urgently discussed. I insert a pair of yellow sponge earplugs. 

But it isn't enough. Half a dozen men and women in their early thirties are crowded around me. There is usually one who does all the talking while the others offer occasional confirmations or objections. When the sexes are mixed, the one talking is always a man. 'Juve was let off an obvious penalty again.' Juve or Juventus is one of the so-called Big Four football teams - Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan and Roma - that invariably win the championship. 'Did you see? Una vergogna.' It's a suit speaking, in his thirties with a nasal voice, a scrubbed bank clerk's face, an earring, a sneer, a bright red tie. He laughs and jokes constantly. The women exchange indulgent smiles. Two of them are standing arm in arm, touching each other. There's a strange collective consciousness to these groups, something quite physical. They like their bodies and they like their accessories, their. handbags and laptops and mobiles and tiny designer backpacks. 'Look at this I bought. Look at this.' They finger the new material and touch their friend's arm.

Ecco un'altro bel passaggio del libro che parla dei ragazzi del Sud che vanno a casa per la pausa estiva, dopo la quale riprendono il treno per tornare al Nord: 

It's so much more intense down here, the emotions on these platforms where Trenitalia hits its southernmost buffer and releases these Mediterranean children from the prison of the train into the loving clutches of mamma e papà. The sense that one has to go north for a serious career, or at least the start of that career, increases the south's perception of itself as forever the victim, abandoned, even punished by the callous and confident north. Poor us, poor us! And this winds up the emotions of greeting and parting; when perhaps the truth for many of these kids is that the south's asphyxiating family traditions, its asphyxiating adoration of its offspring, is as much the trigger for departure as anything else. True, the economic situation is dire. Youth unemployment is almost 50 per cent in the south. But many of these young men and women, after being spoiled silly in the summer weeks ahead, eating heavily and scorching themselves on perfect beaches, will be only too glad to be on the train again in early September. Then the carriages will be already there, waiting on the platform, and Father will quietly carry the bags on board, find the prenotazione obligatoria, hoist his daughter's heavy bags full of gifts onto the luggage rack, exchange a last embrace. The son will cross the aisle to wave to his mother standing on the platform and looking up at the window. She looks small and rather pathetic down there, her tired face upturned with a mole at the corner of her mouth; and he looks scandalously healthy after his days of seaside idleness, glowing with sunshine and sleek with pasta and pastries. It's embarrassing because no one can speak now. The windows are sealed. They can only look at each other through the greasy carriage glass. But you can't just turn away and sit down. You have to wait until the train moves. Papà has his arm around Mamma's shoulder and she is trying not to cry, or giving that impression. Really the boy is already gone, but, unfortunately, he isn't gone, the train should have left but it hasn't and Mamma is standing there on the platform and won't go away. He smiles, wishing she would leave, and showing her the palm of his hand, waves it a little from side to side in stifled farewell. Then she really does begin to cry and his father exchanges a pained look of weary complicity until, at last, again with that heartrending slowness that only a long train weighing hundreds of tons is capable of, the carriage begins to move, Mamma is inching away. She's waving and trying to laugh through her tears now. The motion brings relief and he can wave back properly unembarrassed before the quiet passengers around him. Mamma is gone. Papa is gone. Taranto. Reggio Calabria, Bari, gone. It's back to reality, adulthood, the north, greyness, Milan. 

Standing on platforms in Brindisi, Lecce, Taranto, observing a few of these scenes, I suddenly felt that it was a disgrace that in thirty years in Italy I had spent so little time in the south. And I felt it was a conspiracy of the north that had held me back. But also the testimony of those very children, so often my students, who when they arrive in Milan shrug their shoulders and tell you that you really don't need to make that journey, there is nothing there, in the south. This is my future, they tell you. The north. Yet of course many must go back. Or where would those mothers and fathers on the platforms come from? Perhaps they lose their enthusiasm for the north after they have graduated from my care. Perhaps Milan and Turin wear them down, or they find a state job in teaching and have themselves transferred to some school near home. They say you can live well on a state income in the south. 

Per finire, ecco due bei podcast di Tim Parks in conversazione con Rick Steves, che potrete trovare su iTunes [Rick Steves' Audio Europe] in cui il Signor Parks parla del suo libro, entrambi offrono consigli per coloro che viaggeranno in treno in Italia e, nel primo podcast, ci sono interventi da parte di alcuni ascoltatori. Eccoli e buon ascolto: 

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