Amleto De Silva, "La nobile arte di misurarsi la palla"

I state that I sometimes write reviews in the plural maiestatis, not because I am of aristocratic lineage but because I was taught this way at university in the fabulous eighties. However, to comment on “The noble art of measuring the ball” by Amleto de Silva (I will not call him Amlo, as we are not confident) I will use the first person, since the subject touches me and moves something inside me. I also state, by way of information, that I am not a “professor acting as vice principal”, that I voted for the Pd but only occasionally and that sometimes I even “mi reco” to the baker instead of just going there and that my husband has exactly what he deserves, which is me.

The noble art etc. is a novel by Amleto de Silva (I have already said this), collaborator of Repubblica, satirical author for Smemoranda and Enrico Montesano, reviewer of ilmiolibro.it. After having sufficiently self published, he relies on the care of the ‘round midnight editions to tell the story of Enea Pellegrini, of his frustrated talent, of his ambitions as a professional writer and of his encounter with absolute evil, that is, the schools of writing.

De Silva declares that he has never attended a writing school. Me neither. I did not do it for fear that the low self-esteem I have was irremediably affected and, according to what happens to poor Enea, I seem to have acted well. Enea leaves the province and goes to Rome; already on the verge of suicide due to personal and family problems, he invests everything he has in enrolling in the school, the most prestigious, the one that will open all the doors to him, which will make him an established author. The School, on the other hand, is a nest of vipers that bite and parasitize each other. The pupils are slaves of the teachers, in turn writers of average fame who believe they are God on earth, fear competition like the plague and try to overthrow all other people’s artistic ambitions. At the school everything is done except teaching. Primarily aspiring writers are “discouraged”, convincing them that their ambitions are common and vulgar, that they do not possess skills or talent, that having a novel in the drawer is a shame, that in Italy you write too much and read little.

“Eh but in Italy everyone has a novel in the drawer. Apart from that honestly I never understood what is wrong with having a novel in the drawer, I would understand a loaded gun without a safety when I have three children in the house, but a novel, and then in the drawer. “

In fact, the first to know nothing about books are they, the teachers, who spend their time gossiping, picking up female students, being literary award jurors and paid reviewers of novels they don’t read.

“The fact was that doing that job took a lot of time to spend on public relations, and reading was just an unpleasant waste of time. Of course each of them knew very well what their colleagues were doing, had done or were about to do, but they didn’t read each other. At most they controlled each other. “

The School is an indefinite place, remembers “The firm” of “Il Padrone” by Parise, not surprisingly in turn inspired by the publishing house where the writer from Vicenza worked. It constitutes a kind of theatrical background, vaguely attributable to a fake Parisian habitat, in front of which characters who are caricatures and parodies move, but the surreal deformation is not even too much, given the nature of this ecosystem made of careerism, rivalry and badness.

This, in my opinion, also happens in the literary universe of the web: internal wars between bloggers, envy and jealousy between aspiring writers of no fame, hoarding of fans from one page to another with likes, virtual espionage. Although this is another story, de Silva, who urges us to use Facebook and Twitter, to write on blogs, to exploit self-publishing, etc., seems to have, perhaps unwittingly, also absorbed part of the environment.

He is not tender with writers, with booksellers and publishers, but the category that he most abhors — not wrongly — is that of editors, the infamous who force you to rewrite everything what you have already written, to modify it, to standardize it. I have paid the price, forced to ruin my own novel, peppering it with grammatical errors, under penalty of exclusion from the possibility of being presented to a publisher. This publisher turned out to be a very banal printer who tried unsuccessfully to steal me ten thousand euros. After that, I, before self-publishing the text, that is to fully fall into the category of “failed losers”, had spend hours putting everything back as it was before. But let’s go back to Enea. Enea ends up into the clutches of Enzo Di Donna, a fictional character who is a condensation of various personalities revolving around the publishing world. Enzo is stupid, profiteer, mean, treacherous, full of himself and unable to “measure the ball”, that is, to be aware of his own limits. Enzo steals Enea’s ideas, destroys the novel that he painstakingly and honestly wrote and appropriates it for his own purposes. In short, thanks to the relationship between Enzo and Enea — perhaps it is no coincidence that both have the same initial in their name, one being the dirty alter ego of the other — de Silva launches his liberating cry: each one must write what he wants and how he wants, there is no line to follow, there are no instructions, art is not harnessed and not taught, the last judgment belongs to the readers and not to the editors. Above all, there are no rules: if Salgari had “only written about what he knew”, I say, he would have set his novels in Veneto, if Tolkien had “prepared the lineup” he would never have discovered what the Ring was for. Last but not least, the re-evaluation of the plot which now seems to have disappeared from the literary panorama. If you have a story to tell, if you have brainstormed to invent it and fit all the elements of the plot together, they shake their heads, they tell you that you have not been able to hook the “current trends”.

And so far so good, so far I agree with de Silva: Enea’s hilarious and bitter adventures seem to me a breath of fresh air and truth in a world that, the more I know, the more I feel sick. However, the doubt arises that the author identifies himself not only with Enea, but also with his negative counterpart. Certain expressions of contempt (such as those towards the aforementioned “professors” or towards the “literary prize half-measures” and the constant insulting everyone), end up coinciding precisely with the attitude of Enzo Di Donna. As if de Silva defended writers and readers but, at the same time, denigrated them, as if his critique of the system was transformed into self-criticism from within.

One of the things that he most often affirms is that you have to write mimetic dialogues of common and everyday language. Perfect, right, but not always and not only. There is also a more elegant, perhaps more retro, more “professor” style, obviously in the right context, in the appropriate novel. There is also formal research. Bad language may be fine, catchy, realistic and funny, but it’s not necessarily the only one imaginable, otherwise all fiction, especially that of the “standard male”, as I call him, would turn into a slew of swear words between desperate people telling their sexual woes at the bar. Category, this of the standard male writer, if you will allow me, just as unpleasant as the one to which the poor “professors” etc. belong. But, despite the insistence on vulgar words, despite the tendency to ramble and dwell, despite not being afraid of repetitions, despite the Sacred Rules of the School, de Silva’s style is neither banal nor sloppy and it is certainly very funny. The parody of the clichés of the publishing world is hilarious, from the “need for robust editing work”, to the “post-feminist lucid intellectual”, “to the painful inner journey”, and I also add the terrible “coming of age novel”.

But the work is not just a reconstruction of the environment in a satirical tone, as it progresses it becomes more and more a traditional novel, with perfect dialogues, bordering on the script, and a captivating plot, which produces suspense and empathy towards the protagonist.

“While he was putting it on let’s measure our bank accounts, for example, I felt bankrupt because I didn’t have anyone who really cared about me. While I was interested in adhering to what I felt, what I knew I was, I felt more failed than ever while raping my poor novel, he was interested in winning, that is, not letting people know that he was what he was: a thief, an adulterer, a gossiper, an ignoramus, a hustler. “

A plot that, in the end, touches the shades of mystery story, with all the pieces that fit together, with the spring that snaps and shows what happened in the previous pages in a completely new light, forcing you to an active rethink, to a “suspension of distraction”. A bit like it happens in Rowling’s books, and never mind if de Silva is furious about the combination.

The book is more complex than it seems, since, in its construction, it uses the very mechanisms it makes a fool of, first of all Love, at the basis of almost everything that is written and published, then the famous and reviled “arc “, see character evolution. The ending itself can be read on two levels. The first is Enea’s awareness to remain whole and clean, to keep intact the sense of one’s own value despite everything. The second is genre parody, and in this key it stops appearing forced and sloppy.

However, on the standard-scurrilous-male-writer, de Silva has something extra, that is sarcasm, mockery, satire. Even if poor Enea will probably not become the anti-hero capable of embodying the spirit of our age, it is easy for Zeno Cosini to happily smoke a last cigarette with him.

I like to conclude with a sentence from de Silva’s blog, amlo.it:

“Because thanks to my readers I have understood one thing, which seems easy but it is not. In the end it doesn’t matter if you go to literary salons or to prizes, but what the book and reader do on the sofa, calmly at home. Or on the tram on the way to work. That is, the book. If you like it or you don’t like it. Whether it’s written well or shitty. If there is a story and if there is, if you are interested in knowing how it ends. The rest is chatter. “

The problem, however, I add, is getting to these readers.