Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Roberto Saviano: "Gomorrah" doesn't defame Napoli



Roberto Saviano is a courageous Italian journalist whose groundbreaking book on organized crime in Napoli (Naples) Italy and its international reach has made him, in the words of Sir Salman Rushdie "in greater danger than [Mr. Rushdie] ever was."

Saviano's book (also adapted into a film), which seems at the forefront of the New Italian Epic (NIE) literary movement, has done more than ruffle feathers or upset the apple cart - it has made him a target of organized crime, requiring him to live under round-the-clock security protection.

Today, Saviano answered accusations that his book had defamed Napoli by its portrayal of the reach of organized crime into everyday life, often with devastating and fatal effects. Based on my doggerel translation of a section of the online interview, Saviano indicates that Gomorrah was an attempt to look at crime internationally through the lens of his hometown. The worst part is to hear that at I defamed Napoli with my book ', says Saviano. 'In reality' the book looks at the world through Naples. His book is 'a form of resistance, of testimony that comes from knowing that you can fight crime'. According to Saviano, the point is that there is a fundamental need to speak out and fight against crime because. Crime can't be accepted just because it exists."

The New Italian Epic is a literary movement in Italy that seems to dig much deeper than America's "New Journalism" of the 70s, dealing with issues of politics, ethics, more profound social issues and conditions with life and death implications, such as organized crime, compared to the largely cultural studies of Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese (although the late Norman Mailer, as always, remains an exception).

Roberto Saviano has taken a profound step in challenging organized crime which, he suggests, is not just deeply rooted in his home town, but which has spread its influence around the world, including the highest most visible peaks of celebrity, wealth and media culture.

--Brooklyn Beat
Article (via Yahoo - Italia)from Italian news service ANSA here:

http://it.notizie.yahoo.com/10/20090602/tso-saviano-non-ho-diffamato-napoli-ecf2551.html

Wikipedia on Roberto Saviano: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Saviano

A reflection on "Gomorrah" in the context of the New Italian Epic [The Wu Ming Foundation]:
http://www.wumingfoundation.com/english/outtakes/NIE_have_to_be_the_parents.htm

The Kool-Aid Kid: Richard Wolffe on the 2008 Election

100 days not withstanding, I guess we have crossed a threshold of sorts as the journalists and pundits have had time to digest and produce reportage and analysis on the 2008 election. The irrepressible Richard Wolffe, of Newsweek and MSNBC, has a new book on the campaign coming out shortly that includes some choice nuggets.

No matter where you were early in the primary period, if you were a Dem, by the fall, everyone was boarding the Hope Express. But as Mr. Wolffe's book shows, that was not always the case. One choice nugget from the book that should bring back memories from the primary campaign:

Rendell Drinks The Obama Kool-Aid — Literally

After Obama locked up the nomination, Pennsylvania Gov. and ardent Clinton supporter Ed Rendell got a note from an Obama supporter attached to a can of Kool-Aid telling him to drink up.

So the next day at a Philadephla fundraiser for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, the ever-demonstrative governor poured it into a glass of water and proclaimed: "Now I feel that Senator Obama is the most wonderful person ever to have lived in the United States of America. The smartest, most sensitive most decent and honorable man. Now I understand what you guys have been feeling for the last six months."


Politico article here: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=9F33A169-18FE-70B2-A8EE1E9062F808C8

Current Reading

  • Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War- Tony Horwitz
  • A Sultan in Palermo - Tariq Ali
  • Hitch-22: A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens
  • Negropedia- Patrice Evans
  • Dead Funny: Humor in Nazi Germany - Rudolph Herzog
  • Exile on Main Street - Robert Greenfield
  • Among the Truthers - A Journey Among America's Growing Conspiracist Underworld - Jonathan Kay
  • Paradise Lost - John Milton
  • What Is Your Dangerous Idea? Thinking the Unthinkable - John Brockman
  • Notes from the Edge Times - Daniel Pinchbeck
  • Fringe-ology: How I Can't Explain Away the Unexplainable- Steve Volk
  • Un Juif pour l'exemple (translated as A Jew Must Die )- Jacques Cheesex
  • The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
  • Pale King - David Foster Wallce
  • David Bowie: Starman bio - Paul Trynka
  • Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat - Andrez Bergen
  • The Future of Nostalgia -Svetlana Boym
  • Living in the End Times - Slavoj ZIzek
  • FIrst as Tragedy Next as Farce - Slavoj Zizek
  • How to Survive a Robot Uprising - Daniel Wilson
  • Where is My Jet Pack? -Daniel Wilson
  • Day of the Oprichniks - Vladimir Sorokin
  • Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin
  • First Civilizations
  • Oscar Wilde -Andre Maurois
  • The Beats - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • SDS - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • The Unfinished Animal - Theodore Roszak
  • Friends of Eddy Coyle
  • Brooklands -Emily Barton
  • Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahme-Smith - Entertaining and historical
  • Dictionary of the Khazars - Pavic
  • Sloth-Gilbert Hernandez
  • War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
  • Charles Addams: An Evilution
  • Life in Ancient Greece
  • Time - Eva Hoffmann
  • Violence - S. Zizek
  • Luba - a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez
  • Life in Ancient Egypt
  • Great Apes - Will Self - riveting and disturbing
  • Lost Honor of Katherina Blum - Heinrich Boll - could not put it down
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed (author deserving of new wide readership)
  • Living in Ancient Mesopotomia
  • Landscape in Concrete - Jakov Lind - surreal
  • 'There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby'-Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - creepy stories - translation feels literarily "thin"
  • Mythologies - William Butler Yeats (re-read again & again)
  • How German Is It ? - Walter Abish
  • The Book of Genesis - illustrated by R. Crumb - visionary
  • "Flags" - an illustrated encyclopedia - wish I could remember all of these. Flag culture
  • Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
  • Ubik - Philip K. Dick
  • Nobody's Fool - Richard Russo
  • Hitler's Empire - Mark Mazower
  • Nazi Culture - various authors
  • Master Plan: Himmler 's Scholars and the Holocaust - Heather Pringle
  • Eichmann in Jerusalem - Hannah Arendt
  • Living in Ancient Rome
  • Traveling with Herodotus -R. Kapuszynsky
  • Oblivion - David Foster Wallace - Some of his greatest work
  • Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace - still wrestling with this great book
  • Netherland - Joseph O'Neill - staggeringly great read
  • Renegade - The Obama Campaign - Richard Wolffe
  • Mount Analogue - Rene Daumal
  • John Brown
  • Anathem - Neal Stephenson - love Stephenson but tough slogging first few chapters
  • 7 Deadly Sins
  • ALEX COX - Alex Cox
  • FIASCO by Thomas Ricks
  • I, Fellini - Charlotte Chandler & Federico Fellini
  • Best of 20th century alternative history fiction
  • Judah P. Benjamin - Eli Evans - Confederacy's Secretary of State & source of the W.C. Field's exclamation
  • Moscow 2042 - Vladimir Voinovich - Pre-1989 curiosity & entertaining sci fi read; love his portrayal of Solzhenitsyn-like character
  • Gomorrah - Roberto Saviano - Mafia without the It-Am sugar coating. Brutal & disturbing
  • The Sack of Rome - Celebrity+Media+Money=Silvio Berlusconi - Alexander Stille
  • Reporting - David Remnick - terrific journalism
  • Fassbinder
  • Indignation - Philip Roth
  • Rome
  • Let's Go Italy! 2008
  • Italian Phrases for Dummies
  • How to Pack
  • Violence - Slavoj Zizek
  • Dali: Painting & Film
  • The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight - Jimmy Breslin
  • The Good Rat - Jimmy Breslin
  • Spook Country - William Gibson
  • A Blue Hand - The Beats in India - Deborah Baker
  • The Metaphysical Club - Louis Menard
  • Coast of Utopia - Tom Stoppard
  • Physics of the Impossible - Dr. Michio Kaku
  • Managing the Unexpected - Weick & Sutcliffe
  • Wait Til The Midnight Hour - Writings on Black Power
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed
  • Burning Down the Masters' House - Jayson Blair
  • Howl - Allen Ginsberg
  • Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Palace Thief - Ethan Canin
  • John Adams - David McCullough
  • The Wooden Sea - Jonathan Carroll
  • American Gangster - Mark Jacobson
  • Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Gawker Guide to Becoming King of All Media
  • Jews and Power - Ruth Wisse
  • Youth Without Youth - Mircea Eliade
  • A Team of Rivals - Doris Goodwin
  • Ghost Hunters -William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death - Deborah Blum
  • Dream -Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy - Stephen Duncombe
  • Love & Theft - Eric Lott
  • Exit Ghost - Philip Roth
  • Studio A - The Bob Dylan Reader

Current Listening

  • Alexi Murdoch Wait
  • Wilco Summer Teeth
  • Wilco The Album
  • Carmina Burana - Ray Manzarek (& Michael Riesmann)
  • Polyrock - Polyrock
  • 96 Tears - Garland Jeffries
  • Ghost of a Chance Garland Jeffries
  • Yellow Magic Orchestra
  • Mustang Sally Buddy Guy
  • John Lee Hooker
  • Black and White Years
  • Together Through Life - B. Dylan
  • 100 Days 100 Nites - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
  • DYLAN: 3 disc Greatest...
  • Glassworks - Philip Glass
  • Wild Palms - Soundtrack -Ryuichi Sakamoto
  • Dinah Washington - Best of..
  • Commander Cody& His Lost Planet Airmen Live at Armadillo