Alessandro Piperno, 51 years old, Roman, researcher of French literature at Tor Vergata, 2012 Strega Prize with “Inseparabili”, director of the “I Meridiani” Mondadori series, is the new curator of the “Novel” section of the Turin Book Fair. We meet him freshly appointed outside the Gobetti Theater in Turin, while he holds his pipe in one hand and a large trolley in the other to go and catch the train.
How did you get involved?
«The new director Annalena Belini called me, with whom I have cultivated a decades-long friendship. She told me about the sections she had in mind and she proposed that I take care of the fiction section, asking me what impact I could give it. Then we compiled a list of possible writers, people with whom I have a certain confidence, with them or with their work, also because I will be the one interviewing them.”
Who is it about?
«They don’t know they’re involved yet so I can’t tell them, but the idea is that for some time I’ve preferred reading writers who write about writers rather than critics. I think for example of the Russian poet Brodsky, who wrote wonderful things. It is a more naïve point of view, but also more genuine and specific. A bit like asking a footballer and not a commentator, because only the former knows the smell of the pitch. Ultimately, each of us who does this beautiful and difficult job finds ourselves dealing with a series of issues that are much more practical than we might imagine. And very often this definitively modifies and distorts our way of reading. When we are kids we seek identification and intertwining, then we evolve and look at something different. Like a tailor who, in addition to the cut, begins to take an interest in how the warp is made. I’m interested in talking about it with some writers I respect.”
How will your relationship with the Book Fair evolve?
«Up until now I’ve stayed with the classics. I frequented it as a boy as a reader and then as an author with a frequent and fruitful relationship. The new role will change the nature of all this a bit. Obviously I will mainly deal with my section, but since it is fiction I will be asked for an even broader contribution.”
A wish about the upcoming edition?
«The only aspect that I have sometimes suffered from, but I don’t always have the Blue Room in my heart for example, is that on some occasions there is a lot of noise and it feels bad. I hope people pay attention to this. Then it’s such a well-oiled machine that I think we just have to deal with the contents.”
And what relationship does it have with Turin?
«With pure joking spirit I can say that he continues to harass me. My partner is from Turin and my academic teacher, the French scholar Enrico Guaraldo, was too.”