One more flash of holidays, and then we’re back. We could ask ourselves what will remain of this August, full of controversy, indignation, gossip and media enthusiasm as never before, but we know that many answers have already been written, on closer inspection, in some books that are defined as fundamental – and precisely in this month we decide to read or re-read them, to dedicate the summer to them. Let’s take Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, an arduous undertaking but not without secret pleasures. As is strangely known, it is set in the years of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on the eve of the First World War, in a climate where the characters dedicated to various activities but above all to the organization of the celebrations for the emperor’s birthday lose a lot time to discuss a “Parallel Action” to demonstrate Austria’s greatness to the world; without combining anything. Among the many possible interpretations there is one suggested by Musil himself in an interview, when he explained that he, as a writer, was interested in «what is spiritually typical, I would even say the spectral aspect of happening».
Curious. It seems exactly what we have been interested in, some more or less, in these twenty days, and which has reached its climax with regard to The world upside down, the book self-published on Amazon by General Vannacci and shot to the top of the best-selling charts from the internet giant. There is no doubt that there is something spectral in all of this: not so much for what one reads (these are ideas between the conservative and the reactionary in no way extraneous to the culture of the forces that support this government, if anything expressed with a certain arrogance) but for the success of the book itself. Matteo Salvini has solemnly promised to read it, and this already seems like news. The obvious question is: are all the others concerned readers wanting to verify or enthusiastic supporters? Arguments like this are certainly not a rarity in bookstores, and who knows how many publishers wouldn’t have accepted the manuscript anyway. An editor could have given him good advice, would have “dressed” the text in a less “spectral” way – or brutal, even if perhaps no one would have noticed the book afterwards; but the choice of self-publishing seems to imply the refusal of any intermediation, between imprudence and naivety, not excluding a certain arrogance. It is the law of social networks – and of current politics -; and Amazon is their prophet.
Something similar, certainly not in substance but in the communicative mechanism, happened (how much more we’ll talk about it…) with the case of gossip that clogged mid-August much more than the car exodus: the video in which the Turin financier Massimo Segre publicly breaks his promise of marriage with his partner Cristina Seymandi, accusing her of sentimental betrayals. And here, beyond so many more or less wise, more or less virtuous considerations on the topics, Musil already had his answer, ready and sharp, a century ago, when his world was dancing on the abyss. He gave it by making the protagonist of the Man without qualities discuss with his cousin Diotima, vestal of the parallel Action, about sexual relations. “Do you believe that adultery sometimes seems like an all too simple solution to marital conflicts?” says the great lady, also very tormented by her own personal affairs. The answer of the man without qualities is definitive: «In any case he is the most harmless!».