In the morning I read an interview with Christopher Guest (the one who made Spinal Tap).
He talks about dialogue in films and how it never really matches real life because scriptwriters don't like the untidiness of it on the page. But last night I was at dinner with friends and at times it seemed as if the conversations had been scripted beforehand; perhaps this was a slightly ragged first rehearsal but there was definitely a structure to it all; people were listening to each other and even when it appeared that they weren't, a reference a few moments later made you realise that they had been after all.
It's impossible to describe a dinner party without thinking of Dickens' description of the Veneerings’. (And then, in Italy, it’s difficult not to think of Alessandro Barrico’s discussion of it on a TV programme a few years ago; and then you have to think of someone saying that she imagined Barrico writing with a mirror attached to his belly so that he could see how beautiful he was as he wrote.)
Saturday night, however, was a dinner between friends and noone was trying to score points off one another and there were no great social truths to be told. It was amazingly relaxed - there were no 'epiphanies', no horrible moments of truth when you realise something about someone or you give something away about yourself. Everyone seemed able to talk about whatever they felt like.
(Put the same people together with the addition of two or three others and everything would have been completely different - more competitivity....)
At the table Mario kicked off with a Lou Reed comment – A Walk on the Wild Side was a perfect moment for him. I felt obliged to mention the interview I'd read in which he came over as a complete asshole/bastard. This led to a reflection on the nature of genius by Alberto, (mentioning De Chrico's declaration that he had invented surrealism himself), which eventually led to a discussion of literary geniuses.
Mario said that he had a problem with literature, no, actually, two problems. Everyone was aware that he was preparing them to rip him apart, walking into the lions’ den.
The first problem is that he doesn't really like the activity of reading; he prefers sport (Mario's appearance would not lead you to assume this; he is noticeably short – in a nation of short men – and shows no sign of that incredible reflexive co-ordination that great athletes have).
The second problem is that he doesn't like modern authors and refuses to read them. For him Moby Dick is about the most modern thing he wants to read.
And here we had a classic Italianism. The arguments went around the subject of ‘modernism’ and ‘classicism’ but noone tackled Mario on the fact that surely he had read, and continues to read, things more modern than Melville – he must have done in order to make the comment in the first place. The literal truth of his statement wasn’t what was to be discussed. Later he recommended a piece of writing from the last ten years and noone saw fit to point out the contradiction in what he was saying. Consistency isn’t necessarily a virtue in Italy.
In fact, Mario had a third problem: of the six people at the table he was the only one who isn’t a ‘writer’ in some way or another. (He’s also the only one who drives a Mercedes – and the only one ever likely to - despite his protestations of poverty at the end of the evening.)
And so we moved on to best opening sentences of novels and from there to a discussion of how to translate the opening sentence of Underworld. (He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.) The translation of ‘voice’ as ‘lingua’ provoked absolute outrage.
The evening was agreed over. We’d eaten superbly, drunk (without getting drunk) and talked. It had been an evening that worked.
Bar Addis Abbeba had closed when we left the building but the Timbuktu Phone Center (via Lecco number 5) was still open.
He talks about dialogue in films and how it never really matches real life because scriptwriters don't like the untidiness of it on the page. But last night I was at dinner with friends and at times it seemed as if the conversations had been scripted beforehand; perhaps this was a slightly ragged first rehearsal but there was definitely a structure to it all; people were listening to each other and even when it appeared that they weren't, a reference a few moments later made you realise that they had been after all.
It's impossible to describe a dinner party without thinking of Dickens' description of the Veneerings’. (And then, in Italy, it’s difficult not to think of Alessandro Barrico’s discussion of it on a TV programme a few years ago; and then you have to think of someone saying that she imagined Barrico writing with a mirror attached to his belly so that he could see how beautiful he was as he wrote.)
Saturday night, however, was a dinner between friends and noone was trying to score points off one another and there were no great social truths to be told. It was amazingly relaxed - there were no 'epiphanies', no horrible moments of truth when you realise something about someone or you give something away about yourself. Everyone seemed able to talk about whatever they felt like.
(Put the same people together with the addition of two or three others and everything would have been completely different - more competitivity....)
At the table Mario kicked off with a Lou Reed comment – A Walk on the Wild Side was a perfect moment for him. I felt obliged to mention the interview I'd read in which he came over as a complete asshole/bastard. This led to a reflection on the nature of genius by Alberto, (mentioning De Chrico's declaration that he had invented surrealism himself), which eventually led to a discussion of literary geniuses.
Mario said that he had a problem with literature, no, actually, two problems. Everyone was aware that he was preparing them to rip him apart, walking into the lions’ den.
The first problem is that he doesn't really like the activity of reading; he prefers sport (Mario's appearance would not lead you to assume this; he is noticeably short – in a nation of short men – and shows no sign of that incredible reflexive co-ordination that great athletes have).
The second problem is that he doesn't like modern authors and refuses to read them. For him Moby Dick is about the most modern thing he wants to read.
And here we had a classic Italianism. The arguments went around the subject of ‘modernism’ and ‘classicism’ but noone tackled Mario on the fact that surely he had read, and continues to read, things more modern than Melville – he must have done in order to make the comment in the first place. The literal truth of his statement wasn’t what was to be discussed. Later he recommended a piece of writing from the last ten years and noone saw fit to point out the contradiction in what he was saying. Consistency isn’t necessarily a virtue in Italy.
In fact, Mario had a third problem: of the six people at the table he was the only one who isn’t a ‘writer’ in some way or another. (He’s also the only one who drives a Mercedes – and the only one ever likely to - despite his protestations of poverty at the end of the evening.)
And so we moved on to best opening sentences of novels and from there to a discussion of how to translate the opening sentence of Underworld. (He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.) The translation of ‘voice’ as ‘lingua’ provoked absolute outrage.
The evening was agreed over. We’d eaten superbly, drunk (without getting drunk) and talked. It had been an evening that worked.
Bar Addis Abbeba had closed when we left the building but the Timbuktu Phone Center (via Lecco number 5) was still open.
