Strega certifies the end of creativity and fiction. Recommended naps
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Strega Prize 2025
The ceremony of the most important Italian literary award sinks into boredom: dull fiction, self-centered novels and no real surprises. Pasolini used as a cultural screen, while the television show drags on tired and predictable
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Quick, an idea for the Strega . We mean the ceremony. That doesn't put to sleep even those who have to watch it for work. "Interested" is a big word now. Without the obligations of a reporter, we would have settled for Michele Ruol - a new voice, a magnificent and unexpected gift. We already knew Andrea Bajani. Paolo Nori too, in all his talent. It's not a crime to hope for something original . A little story that was circulating in the publishing world - English-speaking, a few decades ago - was the following. A debuting writer always talks about his family, even when he pretends to set his novel on the red planet, or in prehistory. They will always be Mammut, Babbut, Figliut (himself), more or less disguised. Change city, at least? Never, say the writing schools: write what you know well, and the family will come in handy. Remove the names - changing them is no longer enough - no one will notice. Not even if you drop them off a spaceship. Not even if they have green skin with scales. Friends, and at this point even enemies, will recognize the anecdotes, the girlfriends, the stolen sweets, the broken-down bicycles. Even the little green men will have something they are fond of, and a fat, bad boy who takes it.
Inventing something new: never. Giving meaning to fiction: for goodness sake. Being creative: never in life. Talking about yourself, always and in any case, without interruption. We dozed off during the panegyric, monologue, or celebration of comrade Pier Paolo Pasolini. Why risk it? Pasolini is “high culture”, even if no one reads him anymore. Even if at the Strega they treated him terribly, and he wrote an invective that was literature much more than many candidates – this year and also several years ago. Pasolini is cited by those who are lacking in literature, he always makes a great impression. In literature, and also on a cultural level. But who will dare to bet on another name?, here we are at “Pasolini forever”. Anna Foglietta dedicated the monologue to him, based on “we miss Pasolini, we miss him like bread”; “Pasolini against the algorithm”. And off we go with “wake up, Italian readers: we need a catalogue of uncertainties, and also a sense of restlessness”, “without forgetting the sharp and merciless gaze, against the culture of consumption that is devastating us”. In closing: “Free Palestine!”, stealing the craft and slogan from Elio Germano. If this is the culture on TV, “we prefer not to”, as in “Bartleby the Scrivener: A History of Wall Street”, written by Herman Melville in 1853. It will not gain the cause one more reader. The pieces of the finalists read by Filippo Timi – very good, he has erased the memory of certain fine female speakers – must be accompanied by two musicians. But why? What do they have to do with it? The viewer is bored and must be woken up with a plin plin?
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