Like every year, I haven’t read even one of the books nominated for the witch. I promise remedy if someone can show me a witch’s candidate book that tells the borders of this decrepit land with the precision with which they were portrayed during the live transmission from Hadrian’s Temple yesterday morning (what they told us is actually not so : We have women’s quotas retroactive to nineteen hundred years ago, and now it’s the temple of Vibia Sabina and Adriano) to communicate the twelve semi-finalists.
According to Mike Nichols’ rule, the beginning immediately tells us what the heart of the story is: nobody speaks Italian here. We are in the temple of the literal culture of Rava and Fava, and there isn’t one who doesn’t speak like a Roman innkeeper listing you the dishes of the day.
The first speaker – who, like everyone else, does not introduce himself but says of the Chamber of Commerce – asks us not to applaud him “because my wife is in the audience and I am not allowed to spread myself”, and the tone of the story is immediately set: We are, as always, in a Vanzina film.
The Lord has a diction worthy of Er Cotica, but of which he is aware: at a certain point he says “the bag with which Esse, because we Romans have a lexical error that means it becomes borza” . You have a lexical error, which makes you think the utterance is lexical, but let’s not argue.
Then we move on to the Councilor for Culture, to whom I don’t want to say so cruelly that it’s about the current Democratic Party tripe and sauce; but I will be cruel enough to emphasize that it really says “the magnificent scenery of Valle Giulia”, which forces us two hundred and thirty viewers of Live Facebook to ask ourselves: But if reading books is not enough, not even people to be who it is in the year 2023 without ironic coloring say “splendid setting”, what the hell are books for? Wouldn’t we give the witch the more sophisticated Candy Crush screenshot first?
(Later, after failing to illustrate the methods of selecting the eighty titles, our hero will have a new setting to praise, “the victor will enjoy the extraordinary setting of the Palatinate Forum,” and my knees will get over one look forward to buckets in which they can be milked).
Then comes the president of the Bellonci Foundation, who, I swear, speaks exactly the same as Verdone in that gag in which he played the politician “always striving for renewal”. The pounds, he says. At some point she says “we’re back again” and I don’t know what she’s talking about because I’m thinking hard about how to describe the “o”, which doesn’t contain anything Italian, in the great cultural environment in which this magnificent ceremony of fiction is realized.
When the president of Strega Alberti (the liquor boys) arrives, I wonder, horrible racist that I am, how is it possible for a guy from Benevento to be the closest thing to Italian; I reply that compared to the smug province of Rome, the outlying provinces are more aware that it’s one thing about the local dialects you speak at home with loved ones and another thing, the Italian you speak on official occasions. Sure, then he says “Latsa batta not list” (he means: last, but not least), but you can’t have everything.
“We’re in a magical environment” (who knows if they’ll publish a catalog of possible adjectives for frames then), the women’s quota comes to the microphone and explains, “we’re a bit known as a bank that can read”. (the lady represents a sponsor) but then he says «we are close to the Strega Prize and all related initiatives» and I didn’t think that so many matches in one sentence could be wrong and then you see me I’m right: A bank that can read does not know how to express itself.
Finally comes Petrocchi – in the 20th century one would have said: the patron of the fair – who commemorates the sponsor who sends the books to the juries around the world (if we ever avoid unnecessary pollution by sending PDFs), one of the worst misfortune that befalls those who receive books: the empty box. Every time I get a box the size of a moving box with a single book, surrounded by plenty of plastic to not bang too much into a container that isn’t that big, which is also suitable for moving , every time I think of Greta Thunberg and cry.
After the videos of the authors nominated for the European Strega Prize, apparently coming equally from Only Fans and the news that the videos sent by Bellini and Cocciolone, Petrocchi returns to explain it to us, eighty chosen Italians Books, 45 are by women (and trans? You’re not transphobic. And the non-binary?), many of which are even candidates by men. How generous. That reminds you of the aspesi of yore: in front of the feminist man, underwear on and off you go.
And to tell us that «reading is the most important tool to experience the world»: Petrocchi is the only Italian more traditionalist and 20th century than me. “Where am I going?” he asks us at one point while illustrating graphs made by people who have absolutely no idea how graphs are made, pies that should give us persuasive information, such as . B. How many publishers who have never participated before compete each year at Strega.
In the stalls, in the temple that once belonged to a patriarchal man but is now owned by a couple, I suspect that, like all Roman stalls at a cultural event, they want to go to the buffet. But all candidates are still missing. We’re very lucky, we’re live on Facebook, that we can pour ourselves a drink without waiting for all twelve semi-finalists. (With their books, in which they will later tell us “we die a lot”. Allegria!, that instrument of experiencing the world that Mike Bongiorno would have said).